Red Hat rolled out its Enterprise Linux 5.4 today.
Touting features such as
New enterprise KVM included alongside XEN virtualization technologies,
Clustering updates,
Support for XFS filesystem,
Updated userspace tools for EXT4 filesystem,
etc
Much to linux users’ frustrations, many hardware and its specification’s labels do not endorse any support for linux.
While the folks at Kernel.org tries their best to include common and popular hardware drivers into the kernel, there are bound to be some left out. One of these hardware is wireless 802.11 wifi adapters. Due the various chipsets used by different vendors and manufacturers, some of them may not be supported by current kernels and thus causing distress to linux users whom have purchased these wifi cards and usb adapters.
There is a tool available that can make use of the Windows drivers that come with the wifi adapter and make the wireless adapter work in linux.
Enter NDISWRAPPER
This tool is present on most popular linux distro repositories. Some distros even have a graphical user interface for this tool.
More info here
Using Ubuntu NDISGTK GUI to activate wireless cards : Kimbriggs.com
SGLNX recommends noobs to learn how to use ndiswrapper.
The kernel is the core of the linux operating system.
Most linux distros come with prebuilt kernel that aims to support as much hardware as possible and kernels are constantly evolving and upgraded with new inclusions to support for latest hardware.
The updated linux kernel sources are kept and maintained by www.kernel.org.
Though most distros include a prebuilt kernel to support most desktops, laptops and servers, there are ways whereby the kernel can be optimized by tuning it only to support the hardware that the linux OS will be installed in. This will increase performance and boot time of the system.
To learn more about configuring and building the kernel, there is a very good book about linux kernels and it is published by O’Reilly. The title of the book is “Linux Kernel in a Nutshell” by author Greg Kroah-Hartman. And in line with the idea of opensource and GPL, the author has made his book to be free for downloading online and has declared it under the Creative Commons license such that anyone can download and redistribute it. For those whom still prefer to hold a physical book in their hands, they can still purchase it from their local bookstores.
To configure and build kernels more easily, SGLNX recommends Kernelcheck, which is an automated script with an easy user interface. “Linux in a Nutshell” can be used to compliment Kernelcheck when configuring and understanding the kernel parameters and options.
Wikipedia’s entry on Kernel(Computing)
Ubuntuforums Kernelcheck HOWTO thread
Kernelcheck’s blog
It’s been a few months since the release of Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) Alpha 3. Announced by Canonical’s Steve Langasek, the latest alpha release contains package updates and the it is based on Linux 2.6.31-rc5 kernel. Some notable features this current Karmic Koala alpha release:
1) Ubuntu One integration
2) Gnome 2.2.74
3) IM client Pidgin is out, and replaced by Empathy
4) Intel UXA acceleration method instead of EXA
5) GCC 4.4 instead of GCC4.3 as compiler
6) GRUB2 as default boot loader
Full list of Alpha 4 release features/changelog here
One of Karmic Koala’s goal is to achieve a boot time of less than 10 seconds, if so, then it is a serious contender in comparison to the upcoming Windows 7, which aims to boot in less than 15 seconds.
Try it today. Download it here!
Source : Phoronix
In the past 2 months, there has been much hype over Kernel Mode Settings (KMS) and Rootless X-Server. The inclusion of KMS into kernel version 2.6.29 is one of the major move towards KMS for enabling Rootless X-Server with various graphics hardware.
So what is KMS and Rootless X-Server and why the average linux user should be concerned?
KMS addresses the handling of video hardware which in turn displays the nice graphical user interface to the user. As its name suggests, means the kernel will set up the display’s resolution and depth mode (eg 800×600x32bits).
Bill’s company in Redmond, Washington stunned the opensource community when they shared driver source code to the linux kernel on 20th July 2009.
Microsoft submitted source code for 4 drivers which allows linux to run Microsoft’s Hyper-V hypervisor technology. Up to 22,000 lines of code has been submitted and will likely be included in the next linux kernel version 2.6.30.1.
A tsunamic surprise, for the opensource community, to see Microsoft, whom have fought so many civil public cases to protect its own interests, is bending and contributing source code out of its own free will. This act validates the rise of open source linux operating systems and shows that linux is recognized as an worthy adversary to commercial software giants such as Microsoft.
It was also added that “Microsoft’s goal is to become a platform linux users could turn to“
It is irony when 10 years ago, the exact opposite can be said about linux vs Microsoft.
Source : Network World
