“There’s no such thing as a slow news day in the world of
Linux anymore. Blink, and you might miss something cool, useful, or
mind-blowing. In late March, while Judge Jackson was putting
the finishing touches on the verdict that was to bring jubilation
to many throughout the land, a couple of news items surfaced that
carry the promise of enhanced Linux functionality in two entirely
separate spheres of use.”
“InterVideo — maker of popular software DVD player/decoders for
Windows — announced on March 31 that it is developing LinDVD, a
player/decoder for Linux. For $29, Intel-based Linux users with a
DVD drive will be able to play back DVD movies, interactive DVD
titles, MPEG video contents, and video CDs — without a pricey
hardware decoder card (only a few of which actually support Linux
now). The multitudes who have been dual-booting Windows with Linux
purely for the sake of watching movies will be able to boot that
shady alter ego right out the door….”
“XFS is a 64-bit filesystem (also usable on 32-bit systems) and
therefore supports huge files (up to 9 million terabytes),
filesystems (up to 19 million terabytes), and numbers of files (“a
million per directory”). This makes Linux scalable to degrees
barely conceivable in the past.”