Zack's Kernel News
Zack's Kernel News
The Linux kernel mailing list comprises the core of Linux development activities. Traffic volumes are immense, often reaching ten thousand messages in a given week, and keeping up to date with the entire scope of development is a virtually impossible task for one person. One of the few brave souls to take on this task is Zack Brown.
Our regular monthly column keeps you abreast of the latest discussions and decisions, selected and summarized by Zack. Zack has been publishing a weekly online digest, the Kernel Traffic newsletter for over five years now. Even reading Kernel Traffic alone can be a time consuming task.
Linux Magazine now provides you with the quintessence of Linux Kernel activities, straight from the horse's mouth.
Maintainer Changes
Hans Verkuil posted a patch adding himself and Andy Walls as co-maintainers of the CX18 Video4Linux driver. Arnd Bergmann added a MAINTAINERS entry listing Jeremy Kerr as the SPU Filesystem official maintainer. Zhang Wei posted a patch adding Li Yang as his co-maintainer of the Freescale DMA driver. Steve Wise has listed Divy Le Ray as the CXGB3 Ethernet driver maintainer and listed himself as the CXGB3 iWarp RNIC driver. Paul Jackson sent in a patch announcing that Simon Derr would no longer be his co-maintainer of the CPUSets code and was being replaced by Paul Menage. Jean Delvare announced that Ben Dooks would be joining him as co-maintainer of the I2C subsystem. Auke Kok stepped down from being the primary maintainer of the Intel Ethernet drivers and handed maintainership to one of his co-maintainers, Jeff Kirsher. Jesse Brandeburg will remain a secondary maintainer on that project. Finally, Alan Cox has made a few more alphabetization fixes to the MAINTAINERSHIP.
Porting Linux to … Everywhere?
Octavian Purdila, Stefania Costache, and Lucian Adrian Grijincu are essentially trying to port Linux to run on all other programming projects. They call it the Linux Kernel Library project, and the goal is to convert various things, such as the Linux Virtual File System, into generic libraries that would allow anyone to insert them into their projects.
If successful, any operating system would natively be able to support any Linux feature, just by using this library. Their approach is to create the library as a direct port of Linux to a virtual architecture that could then be used by anything that wanted it.
Octavian, Stefania, and Lucian have made some progress already and are looking for volunteers to help keep the port up to date with the kernel.
GPL Violations
Every once in a while, someone tries to get around the GPL. Jo Shields recently noticed that the Taiwanese company Compro Technology was offering a binary-only driver for their product, only it turned out that the driver was actually a complete kernel image, a modified version 2.6.17.
Jo contacted the company as well as various members of the press, and Compro took the code down.
On their website, the company explained that they were in the process of complying with the GPL and would have their drivers ready in a few months. Bernd Petrovitsch wondered aloud whether they were perhaps just waiting for folks to forget about the violation before rereleasing it in another binary-only form. Time will tell.
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Juno Computers Launches Another Linux Laptop
If you're looking for a powerhouse laptop that runs Ubuntu, the Juno Computers Neptune 17 v6 should be on your radar.
-
ZorinOS 17.1 Released, Includes Improved Windows App Support
If you need or desire to run Windows applications on Linux, there's one distribution intent on making that easier for you and its new release further improves that feature.
-
Linux Market Share Surpasses 4% for the First Time
Look out Windows and macOS, Linux is on the rise and has even topped ChromeOS to become the fourth most widely used OS around the globe.
-
KDE’s Plasma 6 Officially Available
KDE’s Plasma 6.0 "Megarelease" has happened, and it's brimming with new features, polish, and performance.
-
Latest Version of Tails Unleashed
Tails 6.0 is based on Debian 12 and includes GNOME 43.
-
KDE Announces New Slimbook V with Plenty of Power and KDE’s Plasma 6
If you're a fan of KDE Plasma, you'll be thrilled to hear they've announced a new Slimbook with an AMD CPU and the latest version of KDE Plasma desktop.
-
Monthly Sponsorship Includes Early Access to elementary OS 8
If you want to get a glimpse of what's in the pipeline for elementary OS 8, just set up a monthly sponsorship to help fund its continued existence.
-
DebConf24 to be Held in South Korea
Busan will be the location of the latest DebConf running July 28 through August 4
-
Fedora Unleashes Atomic Desktops
Fedora has combined its solid distribution with rpm-ostree system to make it possible to deliver a new family of Fedora spins, called Fedora Atomic Desktops.
-
Bootloader Vulnerability Affects Nearly All Linux Distributions
The developers of shim have released a version to fix numerous security flaws, including one that could enable remote control execution of malicious code under certain circumstances.