Leading items and editorials: The 2.4.0 kernel is out, Linux,
PDAs and the consumer, The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard v2.2 is
coming and Berlios software repository.
“The 2.4.0 kernel is out, finally. In a move timed to conflict
badly with LWN’s weekly edition publication cycle, Linus Torvalds
announced the release of the 2.4.0 kernel on January 4. It has been
a long wait, but the end product was well worth it. Much has been
said about what’s in this release: fine-grained locking (and thus
better SMP scalability), Itanium support, 64GB memory support,
devfs, completely rewritten firewalling, raw I/O, greatly increased
device support, etc. Those looking for a comprehensive list of new
features may want to have a look at Joseph Pranevich’s Wonderful
World of Linux 2.4 document….”
“Linux, PDAs and the consumer. The Personal Digital Assistant –
PDA – has become the indispensable device for the new millennium
that the Apple II was to the spike haired world of the 1980’s.
Linux users are constantly on the prowl for ways to use their
favorite OS with the latest portable device, from the popular Palm
Pilot to the Compaq iPAQ handheld to the G.Mate Yopy. All of these
devices come with standard notepads, address books, and calendaring
tools. Some, like the iPAQ and Yopy, run either with Linux as their
OS or can be installed with Linux while others, like the Palm,
simply have various Linux-based tools for syncing data between the
device and a Linux PC….”
“The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard v2.2 is coming. The FHS is
part of the the Linux Standard Base project; its purpose is to
define the proper locations for files in the system. Application
writers need to know where to find (and put) things if they are to
write programs which work on multiple distributions, so this effort
is important….”