Kernel, Games, KDE, Red Hat

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 28, 2024

• GNU/Linux

  • VORAGO and Collabora Join Forces to Advance Linux-Based Innovation Beyond Earth's Orbit

    VORAGO Technologies and Collabora announced they are partnering to advance the use of open source to realize flexibility for mission critical applications outside of earth’s orbit.

  • Kernel Space

    • The New Stack ☛ Beyond Upstream First: The Linux Kernel Contribution Maturity Model

      Theodore “Ted” Ts’o knows a thing or two about the Linux kernel. After all, he was the first North American Linux kernel developer. On his personal desktop, Ts’o also ran the first FTP server to host the Linux kernel, which is where I downloaded my first copy of Linux back in 1992. So, when he shared his insights on the Linux Kernel Contribution Maturity Model (CMM) in a thought-provoking talk at the 2024 Linux Foundation Members Summit, you should pay attention.

      Ts’o began by explaining that since day one, Linux kernel development has always been about “upstream first.” This means when you’re developing a new software feature, you add it to Linux upstream. “Counter-intuitively, T’so said, “This is more efficient than doing the engineering work against your product kernel, which might lag Linux upstream by years. This approach avoids rebasing out-of-tree patches and changing userspace interfaces when the functionality finally makes it upstream.”

      While some companies, such as Google with Android, have adopted the upstream-first approach, many others haven’t. To encourage them to get on the upstream-first bandwagon and to help Linux development, T’so pointed out, “Contributing upstream is important because it allows companies to influence the direction of kernel development.” He explained that this influence is not just about pushing a company’s agenda but about shaping the kernel to better serve diverse needs across the industry.

      [...]

      I think he’s right. Ts’o’s talk is a compelling call to action for companies to reassess their approach to upstream kernel development and open source development. By moving to organizational-wide upstream, which I propose we call “universal upstream,” everyone in the open source software chain, from developer to end user, will mutually benefit.

  • Games

    • GamingOnLinux ☛ Steam Autumn Sale is live for you to empty your wallets, Steam Awards open for nominations

      Another year coming to a close and so the Steam Autumn Sale is live again until December 4. Time to find where your wallet is hiding.

    • GamingOnLinux ☛ New Steam Controller 2 and VR controller designs got leaked

      Valve did a bit of a woops here, as they recently accidentally leaked the designs for what looks like their upcoming Steam Controller 2 and a new VR controller that is likely to come with the long leaked Deckard VR headset.

  • Desktop Environments/WMs

    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

      • Ruqola 2.3.2

        Ruqola 2.3.2 is a feature and bugfix release of the Rocket.chat app.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Red Hat / IBM

    • Red Hat ☛ Dynamic Kafka controller quorum

      Scalability is the measure of a system's ability to increase or decrease in performance, cost, and availability in response to changes in application and system processing demands. In distributed systems, this can be done by scaling up/down existing server resources (vertical scaling), or scaling out/in entire servers (horizontal scaling). The former is much simpler but limited, while the latter is more expensive but enables very large scaling. 

      Dynamic scalability means that scaling can be done without requiring system downtime. In some environments, these systems can also scale autonomously based on the actual load. In this article, we're looking at the new dynamic quorum configuration and use cases.

      Controllers in KRaft are Kafka nodes that use the Raft consensus algorithm to elect a leader (active controller), and replicate the cluster metadata. Before Kafka v3.9.0, KRaft based clusters only allowed static quorum configurations, where the set of controller nodes (a.k.a., voters) is fixed and cannot be changed without a restart.

  • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

    • CNX Software ☛ GEEKOM Mini Air12 Lite Review – Part 3: Ubuntu 24.04 on a low-cost mini PC

      We have already checked the hardware of the GEEKOM Mini Air12 Lite mini PC in the first part of the review, before testing the low-cost defective chip maker Intel Processor N100 mini PC with its 8GB RAM and 256GB SATA SSD running backdoored Windows 11 Pro in detail in the second part. We’ve now had time to test the GEEKOM Mini Air12 Lite with Ubuntu 24.04 in the third and final part of the review.