Open Source > Linux > LQ
August 10, 2010 Leave a comment
I’m in Boston at Linuxcon and while I usually liveblog the events I attend, I’m going to try something new this time. While I may blog some of the event, I’ll be tweeting much more heavily than I have at past events. Check my twitter page if you’re interesting in following my coverage at Linuxcon.
On the topic of blogging, it’s been a bit quiet here lately. I’m hoping to resume regular blogging when I return from Linuxcon. Stay tuned.
–jeremy
September 23, 2009 1 Comment
Keynote – Mark Shuttleworth
* Open Source has the power to “end up defining the experience that the average person has when they turn on their computer”
* For every 1 Ubuntu alpha user there are about 10 beta users and then about 100 final release users.
* There’s a disdain about marketing for some in Open Source… but if you’re doing it right, it shouldn’t be seen as “marketing”, but talking about something you’re passionate about.
* We’ve seen many high profile projects move to time based releases – Mark calls this project cadence.
* For an enterprise Linux distro, Ubuntu research seems to indicate that a 2 year release cycle makes the most people happy.
* It turns out that for the most part, distro’s do not compete on which has the latest version of product $X. I can see some major exceptions here though.
* Automated testing should be seen as critical. Mark sees a clear difference in projects that fully support a make check and those that don’t.
* There are at times a huge chasm in Open Source projects between in the inside “cabal” of trusted contributors and people who are new and interesting in contributing code. Mark sees automated test suites as a potential way to mitigate this.
* As Open Source becomes more mainstream, the gap between “users” and “developers” is going to continually widen. Automated crash reporting integrated into source management can help here.
* We have to ensure the software we create can compete with the best of breed solutions, proprietary or otherwise.
* Note: The Linux sound subsystem has really been taken a beating at LinuxCon
* Cadence, Quality and Design are the points Mark wanted to drive home.
This keynote wraps up the event. I’ve really enjoyed LinuxCon and look forward to attending the event again next year (in Boston). Kudos to the Linux Foundation.
–jeremy
September 22, 2009 Leave a comment
Moderator: Matt Asay
Panel: Noah Broadwater (Sesame Workshop), David Buckholtz (Sony Pictures), Anthony Roby (Accenture)
* Open Source was the number one answer for what kind of software executives are planning to implement in the next year
* roughly 4 of every 5 programmers have used some kind of Open Source. Even for .NET programmers, the number is 3 of every 5.
* Forrester has seen multiple demonstrable million plus dollar savings via Open Source implementations, including a 100M savings by Sabre.
* Accenture: Open Source allows you to tackle problems that were previously economically just not viable.
* Sesame moved to Open Source to reduce licensing costs and allow them to compete with companies like Disney while being a non-profit. They only have two developers since moving to Open Source; they previously had 10.
* Mid-sized shops that don’t look at development as a core competency is currently a place where Open Source is perceived as weak and can improve its uptake and success rates moving forward.
–jeremy
September 21, 2009 1 Comment
I’ll be liveblogging from LinuxCon here in Portland. I have not been posting as many traditional blog posts recently, something I’d like to remedy after LinuxCon. Stay tuned.
Panel: Bottomley (moderator), Jonathan Corbet, Greg KH, Linus Torvalds, Arjan van de Ven (detained in Holland – NP), Ted T’so and Chris Wright
Opinion on what’s the most innovative recent kernel feature:
Chris – virtualization
Jon – ftrace and performance counter framework
Greg – USB 3.0 (best thing to come out of staging: a working laptop for Linus)
Ted – expanded on Jon’s performance counters answer and then added kernel mode switching
Linus: his job has gotten much easier in the last 3 months. He really likes this… (added: “Xen will have a difficult time merging their tree into mainline as-is”)
Linus: Over the last 18 years, what has been the most inspiring or motivational aspect of the Linux kernel?
* started out being all about the technology, then become more about community and even the “fame”; these days it’s “all about the Linux kernel community”. “I really enjoy arguing”
* “The Linux kernel is a life-long calling for me”
Bottomley added: “Interestingly, the average age of kernel maintainers is continuing to rise. How do we guarantee kernel development continuity long term.
* Linus: There continues to be young people getting involved.
* Greg notes that in many cases, they don’t even know the age of maintainers
* Jon: “I don’t think we’ll lack for talent”
* Ted: roughly 50-60% of people going to the kernel summit are first timers. At the very top, however, people have remained fairly constant over time
* Chris: as we add more subsystem maintainers, people are getting more niche. It takes a fairly motivated person to get involved as a maintainer.
As the rate of kernel contributions increase and as the kernel becomes higher profile, is it getting more difficult to keep out malicious code?
* Greg: We do currently track regressions
* Linus: Our issues have never been intentionally malicious, they’ve been unintentional bugs. The only worry he’s had about malicious people, he addressed in git by cryptographically signing the public repos. This was a result of someone breaking into the bitkeeper repo years ago and being caught.
Follow up by Bottomly: as we add more code more quickly, performance has been going down 1-2% a release, with a 12% degradation in the recent past. How do we address this?
* Linus: “I’d like to tell you I had a plan”. Admits there is some bloat but says part of the issue is possibly unavoidable.
question about the state of the current sound subsystem
* Linus: “The sound subsystem isn’t as bad as some people make it out to be – don’t listen to the crazies on slashdot”.
* No sound maintainers on the panel. Dave Phillips would be a good person to ask.
* Jon: “Sound is a mess in a lot of ways. A lot of flux and professionals don’t like Pulseaudio. latency is an issue.” “I do think things are starting to get better”
* Greg: A lot of new mixing boards and actually now running embedded Linux
What would you like to see in the Linux kernel, but feel may not be feasible?
* Linus: “We’ve never hit a problem that we felt was impossible to implement and generally useful”
* Ted: “Speaking with the Microsoft NTFS team at Redmond, they have actually come up with a system remarkably close to the Linux kernel development model”
Note: 2 out of 5 of the panelists read “almost every message on LKML”. Linus was not one of them (Greg KH and Jon)
Will next year be the year of the Linux desktop?
* Ted: “Next year will be the year of the Linux desktop because ‘next year’ is always the year of the Linux desktop.”
–jeremy
Jeremy's Blog 