I also noticed KGDB (kernel debugger) supports x86 and SPARC right now – SPARC? Hmm…

You can read more about the new kernel features here: http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_26

And you can get the latest Gentoo LiveCD over here: http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/where.xml

Initial figures from the 2007 Linux Foundation Desktop survey are coming out. In this article, two items caught my eye:

1) SMB

The majority, 68.4 per cent, of Linux desktops are in small and home office set-ups or small businesses with less than 100 machines. Medium businesses of between 101 and 500 PCs account for 9.7 per cent and companies with between 1,001 and 5,000 account for 6.2 per cent of Linux desktops.

2) Ubuntu, Ubuntu, Ubuntu

In terms of flavours of Linux the “Ubuntu family” accounts for 54.1 per cent followed by Red Hat versions with 50.2 per cent, while Novell SUSE picks up 35.2 per cent. (Eagle-eyed readers may notice this adds up to more than 100 per cent because many groups have not settled on just one Linux version in their office or organisation.)

• # eselect profile list
• # eselect profile set (pick one from the list)

The Handbook has already been updated for 2007.0 

Also I hadn’t noticed Sven Wegener had taken over maintaining systemtap for Gentoo. Nice to see the mainstreaming support in Gentoo! Quite a few updates since he took over.

Anyway, here’s a great site that shows how to add startup services to most distributions. (and the old, manual way)

BaseGUI should be interesting… one issue I’ve always had is by the time you’ve installed Gentoo… you tend to know where all the configs are…. but for new users, I can see the value. Also looks like GNAP support is a big play with two SoC projects.

http://enterpriselinuxlog.blogs.techtarget.com/files/2007/04/44218-linuxdistrotimeline-72.png

Preview:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9400 

The Gentoo wiki has a relatively *sparse* HOW-TO entry :-) But that really does just show how easy it is to use ecryptfs. It’s fantastically simple for basic tasks – they just added key support which will need some documentation.

The documentation page for the project is probably the best place to start if you don’t have Linux Journal access.

Gentoo used to be the bleading edge distro, but I’m not sure things have ‘kept up’ with the pace. The brilliance of Portage can keep you up to date, but there’s less innovation in Gentoo these days it seems. Of course, the forums are still hands down the #1 Linux user support community out there.

It seems we’ll watch how this all shakes out publicly, but for now I hope the Gentoo community of developers takes an honest look at where things have worked / or not worked and bounce back providing their users the ultimate distribution they’re so well known for. There are too many involved with Gentoo that have the best interests at heart to see this developer community fall down b/c of a few. I’m not sure if a new code of conduct will fix everything, but maybe it’s the tipping point back towards the Gentoo that fired on all cylinders.

Apparently the ntfs3g package is already loaded into the Gentoo tree.

KVM (Kernel Virtual Machines) could topple the Xen-frenzy. It’s gaining momentum out of nowhere similar to how Ubuntu came out of nowhere.

And running Linux on a PS3 with support built into the kernel shows just how extensible Linux is – no other OS on the planet (no matter how “open” in theory) can claim the support for multiple platforms that Linux can.

And wouldn’t you know it, the new kernel hit the Gentoo mirrors already (x86 and AMD64). I can’t wait to try out KVM.

I saw /. picked this up today and it’s somewhat of a shame b/c there’s some great news to publish around this new development and to be quite frank I found the article to be a bit lacking. I have a strong feeling we’ll be seeing more about this quite soon.  Don’t read this and think “that’s it?”…. it’s better.

This is a cool video about the Cell BE in the PS3… I need to get one of these. I can’t wait for a Gentoo support on this. (although… I guess I just assume someone in Gentoo is going to do it… they’re all crafty like that) If not there’s always Yellow Dog’s PS3 release.
http://www.us.playstation.com/Media/default.aspx?id=15500 

This survey is also interesting b/c they ran a similar one in 2004. That survey had 3,800 voters – this years had over 15,000. That’s quite an increase… is the user base growing?

I have to completely disagree with SVN’s interpretation of Gentoo. Yes, it took 4th place and kudos to the Gentoo squad. However, being described as a platform “almost no one who uses it as their first choice for day-to-day work” is like picking something to say just to say something – and it’s a very poor description. I would agree it is a “Linux experts Linux” but I’d also say for those curious that Gentoo now has a GUI installer and has made great strides to be more accessible to beginners. And besides, the Gentoo forums are quite possibly the greatest helpdesk you will ever find compared to corporate enterprise helpdesks… and it’s no different from other distributions for day-to-day usage… what gives?
Anyway, without further ramblings, here is the article I referenced.

And here is the actual page with the survey’s results.

** RSVP Closes at 4:15pm the day of the meeting (sharp!) ***
You must R.S.V.P. for *EVERY* meeting.
Register at http://rsvp.nylug.org/
Check in with photo ID at the lobby for badge and room number.

Thanks to Henry Chin for making this meeting possible!

The original notice said Ajai was speaking on Ruby on Rails. While
that was an editing error, Ajai probably wouldn’t mind a few more Ruby
on Rails questions either.

Ajai Khattri
-on-
Gentoo Linux

“Use the source, Luke.” In 2002, Daniel Robbins released Gentoo Linux,
based on his belief in using source code to achieve maximum
customization and flexibity. The defining characteristic of Gentoo
is Portage, a package management and software distribution system,
somewhat similar to the BSD ports system. As the most popular
source-based distro, Gentoo has spawned intense feelings in both its
users and about its users. This month is your chance to get some
answers about the distro whose users spawn more conversation than its
code, and find out the truth about Gentoo. As a bonus, we’ll have some
Gentoo LiveCDs to take home so you can play with it yourself.

Please join us on Wednesday August 30 at 6:30pm, as Ajai Khattri gives
us a test drive of Gentoo, and answers your questions about Gentoo,
Portage, and the benefits of a source-based distro.

Please also join us on September 27, 2006 at IBM for next month’s
meeting. (topic to be announced)

About Ajai Khattri
Ajai Khattri was born in the United Kingdom, and after obtaining a
degree in computer science in London, came to the US in 1994 and lives
in Manhattan. He has come a long way since tinkering with his Sinclair
ZX80 at age 8, and now works as a web developer and sysadmin for local
ISP, bway.net after having previously been a developer, test engineer,
systems administrator, helpdesk technician and IT consultant.

When Ajai isn’t banging out code, he enjoys reading and photography.
He can be seen regularly at nycruby meetings, and is about to be the
only person ever to present to NYLUG two months in a row.

Swag (Give Away) – After the meeting… unusually terrific swag may be
given away.

Stammtisch
After the meeting … Join us around 8:30pm or so at TGI Friday’s,
located at 677 Lexington Avenue and 56th Street, second floor.
Northeast corner.

Please see our home page at http://www.nylug.org for the HTMLized
version of this announcement, our archives, and a lot of other good
stuff.

SLED 10 is by far the easiest to get XGL up and running. First, just open the menu, go to “Install Software” then install either your ATI or nVidia driver. Then open up the menu, go to “Control Panel” and under Look and Feel you will see “Desktop Effects” which is basically an XGL utility. Click “Enable Desktop Effects” and you’re all set. Novell even logs you out and restarts everything necessary to use XGL right away – no reboots. In that XGL utility you can also modify settings for XGL including setting it up to have 100 faces on the cube – what you’d want that for I don’t know, but you can set it to whatever you want.

My only real suggestion thus far in the user process is for Novell to get some agreement with ATI and nVidia to install the drivers during setup… not sure why they didn’t especially when you can access their repositories during install….

Beagle integration is very cool. However, I’ve noticed the scope of Beagle is only for searching files you have rights to – i.e. normal users can’t find ifconfig. Kindof annoying if you want that “one place to search” euphoria, but I understand clearly the security issues.

The new menu under “Computer” at first gives you the reaction of “oh no… they didn’t” and you get a sick feeling and pictures of Windows float through your head. Then you see… no, this is actually logical – this is more like Mac OS X.

Here’s my bold statement about SLED 10: This is the FIRST challenger to Windows. I feel qualified to say this b/c within the last 5 months I’ve used Fedora 5, OpenSUSE 10, Ubuntu 6.0.6.0, Gentoo 2006.0, SLES 9, Kororaa, Xandros, and RHEL 4 WS.

I’ve always been reluctant to suggest switching normal users from Windows to Linux – that’s changed. I’ve long felt engineers and “techies” should be using Linux – it’s easy for them to learn. However, there is undoubtedly a segment of everyday users perfectly ready for something like SLED 10. Novell’s right – “Your Linux is Ready”.

The time is now for desktop Linux to get started – I can feel it. SLED 10 may one day be called “the shot heard round the world”.
My sister asked me to find her a laptop before she goes to college – I think I’ll try an experiment – load SLES 10 and see what happens :)

http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/userrel/adopt-a-dev/Â

Setting up a central GEMS master machine allows administrators to download a main Gentoo software image to networked machines, and track all software, configurations and packages installed on Gentoo machines across the LAN. The software also ties into Gentoo Linux Security Advisory notices, and can alert administrators if packages deployed on network machines are associated with any warnings.