The open-source community's long-simmering identity crisis over artificial intelligence just got a much-needed dose of pragmatism. This week, the Linux kernel project finally established a formal, project-wide policy explicitly allowing AI-assisted code contributions provided that developers follow strict new disclosure rules. The new guidelines mandate that AI agents cannot use the legally binding "Signed-off-by" tag, requiring instead a new "Assisted-by" tag for transparency. Ultimately, the policy legally anchors every single line of AI-generated code and any resulting bugs or security flaws firmly onto the shoulders of the human submitting it.

The move comes after a chaotic few months in the open-source world, resolving a fierce debate that peaked in January when Intel's Dave Hansen and Oracle's Lorenzo Stoakes clashed over how aggressively the kernel should police AI tools. Linus Torvalds, in his trademark blunt fashion, ultimately shut the argument down, calling the debate over outright bans "pointless posturing."

Torvalds' stance, which forms the philosophical backbone of this new policy, is remarkably straightforward: AI is just another tool. Bad actors submitting garbage code aren't going to read the documentation anyway, so the kernel should focus on holding human developers accountable rather than trying to police the software they run on their local machines. It's a highly reasonable, pragmatic approach, especially when contrasted with the panic that has gripped other corners of the open-source ecosystem.

Until now, major projects have taken wildly different approaches to the AI question. Over the last two years, prominent Linux distributions like Gentoo, as well as venerable Unix distribution NetBSD, moved to outright ban AI-generated submissions. NetBSD maintainers famously described LLM outputs as legally "tainted" due to the murky copyright status of the models' training data.

The core of this panic revolves around the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO). As Red Hat pointed out in a thorough analysis late last year, the DCO requires humans to legally certify they have the right to submit their code. Because LLMs are trained on massive datasets of open-source code that often carries restrictive licenses like the GNU General Public License, developers using Copilot or ChatGPT can't genuinely guarantee the provenance of what they are submitting. Red Hat warned this could inadvertently violate open-source licenses and shatter the DCO framework entirely.

Legal headaches aside, project maintainers have also been fighting a losing battle against sheer volume. The open-source world is currently drowning in what the community has dubbed "AI slop." The creator of cURL had to close bug bounties after being flooded with hallucinated code, whiteboard tool tldraw began auto-closing external PRs in self-defense, and projects like Node.js and OCaml have seen massive, >10,000-line AI-generated patches spark existential debates among maintainers.

The cultural friction of undisclosed AI code has been even more volatile. Late last year, NVIDIA engineer and kernel maintainer Sasha Levin faced massive community backlash after it was revealed he submitted a patch to kernel 6.15 entirely written by an LLM without disclosing it, including the changelog. While the code was functional, it include a performance regression despite being reviewed and tested. The community pushed back hard against the idea of developers slapping their names on complex code they didn't actually write, and even Torvalds admitted the patch was not properly reviewed, partially because it was not labeled as AI-generated.

The Linux kernel isn't the only community dealing with the fallout of undisclosed AI assistance. Over in the gaming sphere, the legendary (and still quite-alive) Doom modding community was cleaved in two last year as Christoph "Graf Zahl" Oelckers, the longtime lead developer of the mega-popular GZDoom source port, was caught using undisclosed AI-generated patches. When community members called him out on the lack of transparency, Oelckers took a remarkably cavalier attitude, essentially telling his critics to "feel free to fork the project." The community called his bluff, resulting in the birth of the new UZDoom source port as the overwhelming majority of contributors to GZDoom fled to the new fork.

The GZDoom incident and the Sasha Levin backlash highlight exactly why the Linux kernel's new policy is so vital. Most of the developer community is less angry about the use of AI and more frustrated about the dishonesty surrounding it. By demanding an Assisted-by tag and enforcing strict human liability, the Linux kernel is attempting to strip the emotion out of the debate. Torvalds and the maintainers are acknowledging reality: developers are going to use AI tools to code faster, and trying to ban them is like trying to ban a specific brand of keyboard.

The bottom line is, if the code is good, then it's good. If it's hallucinatory AI slop that breaks the kernel, the human who clicked "submit" is the one who will have to answer to Linus Torvalds. In the open-source world, that's about as strong a deterrent as you can get.

Perhaps it is time to send your 37-year-old Intel 486 system into retirement, as far as modern Linux goes, as OS kernel developers appear to have started to dismantle support for this legendary CPU. Phoronix reports that the change seems to have been confirmed in patches destined for the Linux 7.1 kernel. So, those still cherishing their 486 PCs and using them to run a modern version of Linux should probably now make sure they run one of the existing Linux LTS kernels to squeeze a few more years from the platform. Alternatively, they could upgrade to a Pentium or even one of the best CPUs available in 2026.

The patching out of 486 support isn’t really a surprise. Firstly, it is ancient, with the first examples released in 1989, and modern Linux distros continue to grow more resource-hungry. Secondly, Linux creator Linus Torvalds hinted not long ago that 486 support may get the axe. The Linux mogul said that there was “zero real reason” to continue support for the 486 CPU. In fact, he indicated that continuing support for it was detrimental to upstream Linux kernel development efforts.

Developer Ingo Molnar will probably go down in history as the gallowsman, though. Molnar has authored a patch “that initially gets rid of the CONFIG_M486SX, CONFIG_M486, and CONFIG_MELAN Kconfig build option,” says Phoronix. Which is basically signaling in code that the 486 is on borrowed time.

“In the x86 architecture we have various complicated hardware emulation facilities on x86-32 to support ancient 32-bit CPUs that very very few people are using with modern kernels,” commented Molnar in a note accompanying the patch. “This compatibility glue is sometimes even causing problems that people spend time to resolve, which time could be spent on other things.” Then he repeated some of Torvald’s remarks to remind readers of who signed the 486's death warrant.

Phronix notes that the patch should be merged in Linux 7.1, meaning users won’t be able to build an i486 kernel image. Then, barring an unexpected level of public uproar, the rest of the 486 support can be safely gutted.

We are sure that this isn’t the end of having fun or even being productive with old Intel 486 systems. For example, earlier this year, we covered the news of an open-source 486 motherboard being built from scratch and passing Linux, DOS, and Doom compatibility tests (and more).

Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, has been its lead maintainer since its inception in 1991. That's a long way back now, and in the man's own words, the kernel community is "getting grey and old." Interestingly enough, though, it was only few days ago that a formal plan was drawn to replace Torvalds, should he wish to retire or something happens to him, or whoever else may be in charge.

The contingency plan now in place is fairly simple, and only triggered if there's not a graceful transition when the occasion arises. Should there be a need for it, the kernel community will first find an Organizer, who is the last Maintainer Summit organizer, or the current Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board Chair (TAB).

The Organizer has 72 hours to kick off discussions with the invitees of the most recent Maintainers Summit. Should 15 months have elapsed since the last Maintainers Summit, then it's up to the TAB to determine the invitees, who may bring other maintainers in as they see fit. This collective then presents its decision in two weeks' time and communicates to the community via mailing list.

If push came to shove, even without this official plan, it's likely that the kernel community would easily reach an agreement. After all, as Torvalds himself remarked in the past, there are not a lot of open-source projects that "have maintainers that have literally been around for over three decades".

Despite expressing some concern about the number of maintainers earlier in the decade, he's not currently concerned about the technical acumen of the talent pool, either, going as far as saying that "it's not instant, but there are new people who come in, and three years later they are a main developer."

This scenario should be familiar to any software project manager, as it illustrates the key concept of "bus factor," or the number of people that can get hit by a bus before your project is in trouble. Right now, that figure is a nice round zero for the Linux kernel, despite the community being good at self-management. For the time being, Linus Torvalds hasn't expressed any desire to stop being the Linux kernel head, but any increase in the bus factor is welcome, especially coming from nil.

On this day 34 years ago, an unknown computer science student from Finland announced that a new free operating system project was “starting to get ready.” Linus Benedict Torvalds elaborated by explaining that the OS was “just a hobby, [it] won’t be big and professional like GNU.” Of course, this was the first public outing for the colossal collaborative project that is now known as Linux.

Happy 34th birthday Linux! from r/linux

The meek geek shall inherit the earth, and then stop being meek

Above, you can see Torvalds’ first posting regarding Linux to the comp.os.minix newsgroup. The now famously caustic, cantankerous, curmudgeon seemed relatively mild, meek, and malleable in this historic Linux milestone posting.

Torvalds asked the Minix community about their thoughts on a free new OS being prepared for Intel 386 and 486 clones. He explained that he’d been brewing the project since April (a few months prior), and asked for direction. Specifically, he sought input about other Minix users’ likes and dislikes of that OS, in order to differentiate Linux. The now renowned developer then provided a rough summary of the development so far.

Some features of Linux that Torvalds thought were important, or that he was particularly proud of, were then highlighted in the newsgroup posting. For example, the Linux chief mentioned his OS’s multithreaded file system, and its absence of any Minix code. However, he humbly admitted the code as it stood was Intel x86 specific, and thus “is not portable.”

The year of Freax?

Linus Torvalds, the creator and lead developer of Linux, has publicly dismissed a RISC-V code contribution from a Google engineer as “garbage.” The code was sent as a pull request for inclusion in the Linux 6.17 kernel on Friday, but has been roundly rejected by Torvalds for both its poor quality and for being late. Those are two cardinal sins in pull requests, and misdemeanors that have clearly ignited the Linux creator’s infamously short fuse.

In response to the RISC-V Patches for the 6.17 Merge Window, Part 1, from Google’s Android team member Palmer Dabbelt, Torvalds didn’t pull any punches. “No. This is garbage and it came in too late. I asked for early pull requests because I'm traveling, and if you can't follow that rule, at least make the pull requests *good*,” insisted Torvalds. “This adds various garbage that isn't RISC-V specific to generic header files. And by "garbage" I really mean it. This is stuff that nobody should ever send me, never mind late in a merge window,” he brusquely elaborated.

The comment from Torvalds wasn't just bile. He went on to give some examples of where the RISC-V pull request went astray. But even in this mostly reasoned response, Torvalds couldn’t resist adding a few more barbs.

'You're on notice'

Despite the rapid pace of GPU evolution and the hype around AI hardware, Linus Torvalds — the father of Linux — is still using a 2017-era AMD Radeon RX 580 as his main desktop GPU here in 2025. The Polaris-based graphics may be almost a decade old, but it’s aged remarkably well in Linux circles thanks to robust and mature open-source driver support. Torvalds' continued use of the RX 580, therefore, isn’t just boomer nostalgia. It's a statement of practicality, long-term support, and his disdain for unnecessary complexity.

Spotted by Phoronix, this revelation came during a bug report around AMD’s Display Stream Compression (DSC), which was causing black screen issues in Linux 6.17. Torvalds bisected the regression himself, eventually reverting a patch to maintain kernel progress. Ironically, DSC is what allows his Radeon RX 580 to comfortably drive his modern 5K ASUS ProArt monitor, a testament to how far open-source drivers have come.

“... same old boring Radeon RX 580,” Torvalds wrote in an email to the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), reverting the patch for now so development can continue uninterrupted. That one line from the man himself speaks volumes about his preference for stability over novelty.

An extraordinary image has been shared on LinkedIn, capturing the first meeting between two legends of the tech world. In the center of the group photo, you can see Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds standing shoulder-to-shoulder - or actually they look more friendly than that. The happy pair, well known for their contrasting philosophies on the business of software, were enjoying the company of Microsoft Fellows Mark Russinovich (left) and David Cutler (right).

It is rather surprising that the kingpins behind Windows and Linux had never met previously, but we will take the host’s, Russinovich’s, word for it. Time usually mellows a man, and perhaps putting these two together at the same table would have been a recipe for trouble in decades past.

“I had the thrill of a lifetime, hosting dinner for Bill Gates, Linus Torvalds and David Cutler,” wrote Russinovich on LinkedIn. “Linus had never met Bill, and Dave had never met Linus. No major kernel decisions were made, but maybe next dinner ;)”

Many social media commenters were also taken aback by the mass of computer technology talent squeezed into one frame. The concentration of power, influence, and legacies might be off the scale for one photo. Some also pondered over what the tech world would be like now, if not for these men.

It would have been fascinating to be a fly on the wall at the dinner. Did the collected tech titans analyze and dissect matters in the field of tech? Or perhaps they went down the light and trivial conversational route, with tech topics sidelined by an unspoken consensus? We can only speculate.

Two worlds collide, a potted history

Firebrand Linux creator and kernel maintainer Linus Torvalds has returned to using a mechanical keyboard packing his preferred Cherry MX Blue (clicky, tactile) keyswitches. In a post about the latest Linux 6.15-rc6 on LKML.org (h/t The Register), the developer admitted he had been "using a quieter low-profile keyboard" for the last six months. However, the unnamed 'board has now been consigned to the spare parts bin in favor of an input peripheral boasting a "noisy clackety-clack" character. Perhaps Torvalds just isn't old enough yet for the keyboard warriors' equivalent of a quiet life with pipe and slippers.

Torvalds can't actually remember why he switched to a quieter, low profile keyboard. He isn't based in a shared office space, where a noisy mech keyboard would potentially disturb others, he muses. Nevertheless, he'd decided to give the switch half a year to stick, but has now judged the endeavor to be a failure.

Too many typos

The main reason for his return to the noisy side, other than some emotional preference, appears to be based upon a perceived increase in the amount of typos his prose was afflicted with. "It seems I need the audible (or perhaps tactile) feedback to avoid the typing mistakes that I just kept doing," pondered the Linux creator. Humorously, Torvalds says that he has for the last six months been able to blame the switch of keyboard for his typos. "Anyway, going forward, I will now conveniently blame autocorrect since I can't blame the keyboard," was the punch line.

The choice of keyboard is certainly an individual one, and beyond the basic mass market devices you will find in non-specialist stores there are now significant businesses devoted to custom, esoteric, and even artisan input devices and accessories.

Even if you have got to the stage where you have found your favorite keyswitch from the host of linear, tactile, clicky alternatives and based on different technologies, there remains the question of your favorite keyboard layout and size. That's not to mention all the kinds of extras that now get added to a humble keyboard, such as OLED displays, touchscreens, knobs, wheels, selectors, sliders, and so on.

If you've ever used Linux software before, odds are you've come across Git. Over the years, this system has become a staple for delivering open-source tools and applications to PCs across the world. Today, April 7th, 2025, Git turns 20 years old. It was created in just a few days by Linus Torvalds and developer Junio Hamano. The official announcement came out on April 6th, 2005, and it was launched to the public the very next day.

One of the most unique aspects of Git's design is that it does not rely on a centralized server to operate, but rather is regarded as a "distributed control system." It's compatible with a variety of operating systems, including (of course) Linux, but also Windows, Android, Solaris, and many more.

You might be wondering where Git gets its name. At the very least, we were for sure. As it turns out, it has nothing to do with its similarity to the word "get" although that does help commit it to memory for new users. According to Linus on the official Git FAQ page, the project was named after himself. It's derived from the British slang term "git," which refers to someone who "thinks they are always correct" and is "argumentative."

Although Linus Torvalds is often credited with the creation of Git, he hasn't been heavily involved in the project since June of 2005. For the last 20 years, Junio Hamano has held the reins and helped Git maintain its relevance, with regular updates and maintenance. In fact, the most recent update, 2.49, debuted just last month.

We're no strangers to Git here at Tom's Hardware. If you peruse enough of our guides, tutorials, and projects, you're sure to find numerous references to Git as it's a critical tool for installing libraries, applications, and much more. This goes doubly for Linux-based projects and microelectronics like the Raspberry Pi.

It's exciting to see Git reach this milestone as it's become such a widely recognized staple in the PC community. Open-source tools make for an insanely creative community, and Git bridges the gap for many developers and their users to interact with creations that take an immense amount of work. Git has earned our respect over the decades, and we hope to see it last for decades more.

Linus Torvalds is back at his explosively scatological best in some recent comments about a Linux 6.15-rc1 pull request (h/t Phoronix). The target of the Linux creator and lead developer’s ire was “the disgusting ‘hdrtest’ crap,” which he accused of slowing down software builds and leaving “random ‘hdrtest’ turds around.” Torvald’s full post concerning the hdrtest issue registered a six on the turd-o-meter.

While Torvalds was disturbed by the code that was impacting the latest Linux kernel, beginning his post with a “Grr,” he remained precise in his objections to it. “I did the pull, resolved the (trivial) conflicts, but I notice that this ended up containing the disgusting ‘hdrtest’ crap that (a) slows down the build because it's done for a regular allmodconfig build rather than be some simple thing that you guys can run as needed (b) also leaves random ‘hdrtest’ turds around in the include directories,” he wrote.

“This thing needs to *die*”

Torvalds went on to state that he had previously complained about this issue, and inquired why the hdr testing is being done as a regular part of the build. Moreover, he highlighted that the resulting ‘turds’ were breaking filename completion. Torvalds underlined this point - and his disgust - by stating, “this thing needs to *die*.”

In a shot of advice to fellow Linux developers, Toralds said, “If you want to do that hdrtest thing, do it as part of your *own* checks. Don't make everybody else see that disgusting thing and have those turds in their trees.” He then noted that he had decided to mark hdrtest as broken for now, to prevent its inclusion in regular builds.

So, what is ‘hdrtest’ and why has it brought Torvalds' frustration levels to boiling point? According to Phoronix, the Linux developer team has recently merged a large collection of open-source graphics card driver updates. Alongside this is ‘hdrtest’ code for the Intel Xe kernel driver, which includes code to test DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) header files.

To avoid any confusion, DRM in this instance isn’t Digital Rights Management; instead, it refers to the Direct Rendering Manager. On a similar note, hdrtest isn’t anything to do with High Dynamic Range (HDR) graphics, but is used by devs for verifying the integrity and self-containment of DRM header files.

The Russian Ministry of Digital Development has sprung into action with plans to create its own Linux community. Admitting that the decision was precipitated by the recent expelling of 11 Russian developers involved in the development of the Linux kernel, the Ministry slammed the “act of discrimination” against Russians and underlined the need to “build our own alternative structure,” in a statement given to RBC.ru.

Linus Torvalds was very forthright in his explanation for the dismissal of the dozen or so Russian kernel driver maintainers last month. In brief, the creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel stated that the dismissals were simply made in line with the policy of sanctions on the Russian aggressors in the Ukraine war.

Moreover, Torvalds didn’t pull any punches when he said “lots of Russian trolls” were working to make the recent decision look unpopular. Torvalds directly accused Russia of wielding its army of social media bots in an attempt to fake a grassroots campaign and reverse the Russian maintainer cull.

The Russian Ministry of Digital Development's decision may look like a knee-jerk reaction, as it has come so quickly in the wake of the maintainer expulsion, and specific details and implementation plans are thin on the ground. However, some think the new community of Linux developers in Russia could take cues from the recently established alliance of RISC-V developers in the country.

The source report also pondered over the impacts of the suspension of Russian contributions to the Linux kernel, with quotes from various Russian tech luminaries.

One notable software business professional interviewed by RBC thought that the West’s decision would “adversely affect the life of the developer community, mutual trust within it, and therefore the quality of the product.” However, the same person also reasoned that “nothing critical will happen,” as Russian patches will continue to be accepted and Russian forks may arise.

Another Russian expert pondered over the potential increased difficulty in tracking updates in the repositories of other projects to port them to domestic distributions.

Probably the next important step for the Ministry is to create a fork of the Linux kernel, as there “cannot be a community without a product,” it was reasoned. The problem with this, admitted another Russian tech exec, was that such a task may be too ambitious for the country. However, some help to establish a new Russian Linux community could come from devs from “countries that are ready to work with us,” mused the Ministry representative. So, let’s wait and see how this develops, and see whether talk of a sovereign Linux community in Russia is just hot air.

As covered by Phoronix earlier today, the latest AMDGPU driver fully supports DRM_Panic error screens, which should see it merged into the mainline Linux kernel soon—perhaps even on time for the following Linux release merge window. Linux kernel version 6.13 is set for a November release, so this could make the cut, though it is a bit last-minute.

In the past year, there have been ongoing efforts to improve Blue Screen of Death-styled crashing error messages on Linux operating systems, culminating in two solutions: a "systemd-bsod" error screen functionality covering user space errors added in December and a new "DRM_Panic" functionality added in April for kernel panics and other errors that otherwise crash user space and render systemd-bsod effectively useless. Support for DRM_Panic error screens (DRM stands for Direct Rendering Manager in this context, not Digital Rights Management) is, unfortunately, driver-dependent, but it's now supported on AMD GPUs.

Work on this AMDGPU driver support for DRM_Panic on recent AMD GPUs has been ongoing since the beginning of October, so seeing it finished before the end of the month is a considerable achievement on the part of AMDGPU maintainer Alex Deucher. That said, Deucher is also one of the most prominent open-source AMD GPU driver developers, so it's not surprising that he managed to pull this off.

Suppose you're a purely Windows-focused user or have never encountered one of Linux's two BSOD equivalents. In that case, you may be surprised that this functionality is still being actively developed for the Linux kernel. To be fair, Linux has long been considered the purview of enthusiasts and is remarkably stable, so skimping crashing diagnostics for an audience expected to know what it's doing makes sense.

But even Linux developers like some ease of use and troubleshooting, and as Linux becomes a more mainstream platform, support for features like this will become extra important so as not to disillusion consumers who almost certainly need functioning crash screen diagnostics.

Overall, this bodes well for the continued growth of the Linux development scene. With some Linux distributions now able to beat Windows 11's gaming performance outright and Linux's desktop market share expected to reach 5% by the first quarter of 2025, things haven't looked better for FOSS in a long while, particularly not in the face of constant Windows 11 update problems.

Linus Torvalds recently offered his opinions on the merits of artificial intelligence (AI) as we know it. The creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel didn’t disappoint with his characteristic cynicism regarding the substance of the AI industry in 2024. Famous for his highly informed yet unvarnished opinions on all things tech, Torvalds grimaced as he summarized the state of the AI biz as “90% marketing and 10% reality.” Torvalds spoke at the Open Source Summit in Vienna earlier this month, where TFiR interviewed him. Tsathustra highlighted this interesting AI segment.

During the highlighted interview segment, Torvalds attempted to see the potential in AI, but relentless industry hype is taking its toll. “I think AI is really interesting, and I think it is going to change the world. And, at the same time, I hate the hype cycle so much that I really don’t want to go there,” said the tech icon.

The Linux pioneer outlined his AI hype coping mechanism: "So my approach to AI right now is I will basically ignore it because I think the whole tech industry around AI is in a very bad position (grimaces)...” However, it seems like there is almost too much AI BS around for the Fin to tolerate, and it is currently “90% marketing and 10% reality.” That’s quite a ratio.

On a more positive note, Torvalds reckons there is change afoot. “In five years, things will change, and at that point we’ll see what AI is getting used every day for real workloads.” But it now seems fitting to remind readers that this isn’t the first instance of an IT industry heavyweight asking about the validity of the AI industry. Just a week ago, we reported on the CEO of Baidu voicing an even more pessimistic opinion – that the AI bubble would burst and that just 1% of companies would continue to pick up the pieces after the predicted ‘pop.’

The Linux godfather ended the highlighted video segment by mentioning what he believes to be the current strengths of AI. “Chat GPT makes great demonstrations (rubs forehead), and it's obviously being used in many areas, but especially in graphic design, things like that.” However, Torvalds couldn’t resist a last dig, reminding us “But, I really hate the hype cycle.”

Sadly, it is challenging to be a tech enthusiast and ignore pervasive trends in the industry, which often can frustrate as they seem to be marketing bandwagon-led. However, individuals are probably best advised to follow in Torvalds’ footsteps and “basically ignore” things they don’t like, concentrating instead on the abundant enthralling aspects and potential modern technology delivers.

Although Nvidia's GPUs rely on proprietary CUDA cores that feature their instruction set architecture and support for various data formats, these cores are controlled by custom cores that rely on the industry-standard RISC-V ISA, albeit with some extensions, the company revealed at the RISC-V Summit this month (via NickBrownHPC).

Modern GPUs are highly complex system-on-chips with a massive number of functions and resources — starting from compute resources and power management and all the way to display engines and security — that must be managed.

These things are now managed by 10 to 40 custom RISC-V cores developed by Nvidia, depending on chip complexity. Nvidia started to replace its proprietary microcontrollers with RISC-V-based microcontroller cores in 2015, and by now, virtually all of its MCU cores are RISC-V-based, according to an Nvidia slide demonstrated at the RISC-V Summit.

By now, Nvidia has developed at least three RISC-V microcontroller cores: NV-RISCV32 (RV32I-MU, in-order single-issue core), NV-RISCV64 (RV64I-MSU, out-of-order dual-issue core), and NV-RVV (RV32I-MU, NVRISCV32 + 1024-bit vector extension). These cores (and perhaps others) replaced the proprietary Falcon microcontroller unit based on a different instruction set architecture. In addition, Nvidia has developed 20+ custom RISC-V extensions for extra performance, functionality, and security.

Perhaps the most important RISC-V-based part of Nvidia GPUs is its embedded GPU System Processor (GSP). According to Nvidia's website, the first GPUs to use RISC-V-based GSP were based on the Turing architecture. This GSP offloads Kernel Driver functions, reduces GPU MIMO exposure to the CPU, and manages how the GPU is used.

Since MCU cores are universal, they can be used across Nvidia's products. As a result, in 2024, Nvidia is expected to ship around a billion RISC-V cores built into its GPUs, CPUs, SoCs, and other products, according to one of the demonstrated slights, which highlights the ubiquity of custom RISC-V cores in Nvidia's hardware.

Nvidia ships millions of GPUs every year. In 2023 alone, Nvidia shipped 31 million desktop discrete GPUs (according to Jon Peddie Research), around the same number of standalone GPUs for laptops, several millions of data center GPUs, and plenty of other types of hardware. That said, multiple RISC-V cores exist in all of Nvidia's chips.

Linus Torvalds has dismissed those concerned about the recent dismissal of Russian kernel driver maintainers as trolls. The notoriously candid software engineer was reacting to complaints about the dismissal of a dozen maintainers who, it emerged, all had some kind of Russian connection. Phoronix notes that Torvalds, the creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel, added his potentially incendiary comments to a Linux mailing list thread.

On Monday, Linux devotees started to become aware that a patch merged into the Linux 6.12-rc4 kernel had removed the maintainers of the Acer Aspire 1 EC driver, Cirrus Logic CLPS711X Arm architecture, Baikal-T1 PVT hardware monitor driver, Libata PATA drivers, Libata SATA AHCI Synopsys DWC controller drivers... and several more patches.

While mention of the maintainers had vanished, the drivers remained for now. It didn’t take long to discover a commonality among the removed maintainers—some association with Russia. Most of them had a .ru email address.

It was presumed that there must be a war in Ukraine linked to the dozen maintainers being dropped, and indeed, Linus Torvalds confirmed this in no uncertain terms on Wednesday.

Before discussing the reasons behind the maintainer delistings, Torvalds seemed keen to blast “lots of Russian trolls out,” whom he claimed to be obvious random bots who were attempting to fake a grassroots campaign to reverse the maintainer cull.

Torvalds continued, with his rage dial turned to 11, explaining the meaning of sanctions to those that weren’t clear. “If you haven't heard of Russian sanctions yet, you should try to read the news someday. And by "news," I don't mean Russian state-sponsored spam.”

Towards the end of his tirade, the Linux godfather reminded mailing list readers that he is a proud Fin before rhetorically asking, “Did you think I'd be *supporting* Russian aggression?” Then he told readers his critics didn’t need to brush up on their history and real news. It seems fair to assume that Torvald’s decision regarding Russian contributors will not be reversed soon.

Earlier this week, we reported that Torvalds was "fed up with buggy hardware and completely theoretical attacks." We understand that particular outburst was prompted by some proposed code for linear address masking (LAM) for Intel Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake CPUs.

Linux creator and kernel maintainer Linus Torvalds recently made outspoken comments on the Linux kernel mailing list thread criticizing changes made to the kernel purely to account for buggy hardware and theoretical attacks, per Phoronix. This was prompted by proposed code that Torvalds pointed out likely wouldn't work with Intel Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake CPUs due to their use of Linear Address Masking (LAM), an Intel feature allowing software to use untranslated address bits for metadata within 64-bit linear addresses.

"Honestly," Linus Torvalds starts his reply, "I'm pretty damn fed up with buggy hardware and completely theoretical attacks that have never actually shown themselves to be used in practice."

He continues, "So I think this time we push back on the hardware people and tell them it's *THEIR* damn problem, and if they can't even be bothered to say yay-or-nay, we just sit tight."

Finally, Torvalds declares angrily, "Because dammit, let's put the onus on where the blame lies, and not just take any random shit from bad hardware and say 'oh, but it *might* be a problem.'"

Yesterday morning, Intel engineer Kirill Shitemov also commented on that thread, clarifying that "LAM brings own speculation issues that is going to be addressed by LASS. There was a patch to disable LAM until LASS is landed, but it never got applied for some reason." Per Phoronix, "LASS is the Linear Space Separation Support as a new security feature to prevent malicious virtual address space accesses across user/kernel mode."

This seems to address Linus' concerns at least somewhat, but of course, we'll need long-term hindsight to determine how much this actually changes Linux kernel maintenance moving forward.

Torvalds' comments do add some additional Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)-centric context to the widespread controversies around Intel's 13th and 14th Gen CPU failures and widespread. Performance-impacting CPU security mitigations, though. Unlike these giant tech companies that are at least being paid to deal with these things, FOSS developers are under constant pressure to update projects to be compatible with hardware that is sometimes genuinely defective in its design.

Global analytics company StatCounter shows that the Linux market share of desktop operating systems has hit an all-time high of 4.44%, up from 3.12% a year ago, and it was just 2.76% in July 2022. While this might look like a small amount, this is a massive jump in terms of real numbers, especially as most Linux distributions are essentially free and have no marketing teams behind them.

The Linux operating system first breached the 4% mark in February 2024 but slumped back down to less than 3.9% in April and May. It recovered to 4.05% in June before hitting its record high of 4.44% this July. But if we look at Linux’s previous numbers, the operating system is on track to hit a 5% market share by February 2025, if the trend continues.

Many consumers may not have seriously considered using Linux as their daily driver operating system. However, this OS is widely used in many corporate IT systems because of its flexibility, openness, and affordability, with a wide range of general-purpose and specialized distros available for free. Aside from that, Microsoft is making it harder to install Windows 11 with a local account and you can no longer bypass the Windows 11 TPM 2.0 requirement,  thus potentially turning off users who are considering upgrading from Windows 10 but do not have compatible hardware.

Since macOS is a rather expensive alternative to Windows, especially as you need the corresponding hardware to use it, many are discovering the joy of using Linux. This is especially true as Linux has been around for several decades already, and that it has received continuous improvements from a dedicated and passionate fan base. In fact, the operating system recently received a one-line kernel patch that sped up boot time by 0.035 seconds. Because of this, you can find several free but user-friendly distros.

Steam’s investment in the Linux operating system for the Steam Deck handheld is also driving the growth of this operating system in the gaming space. In fact, the Steam Survey report for June 2024 showed that Linux finally broke above the 2% market share. This is significant as Steam Survey is more likely to focus on consumer (gaming) PCs, as you’re unlikely to put Steam in a corporate PC.

With some users unhappy with how Microsoft is slowly turning Windows from an operating system into a software-as-a-service product and can’t stomach Apple’s walled garden approach, more and more are turning to Linux to serve as their primary operating system. As we get more apps working with it, we might someday see the operating system capture a significant chunk of the market and have widespread consumer use. 

There's a vast difference between hardware and software developers, which opens up pitfalls for those trying to coordinate the two teams. Arm and x86 researchers encountered it years ago -- and Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, fears RISC-V development may fall into the same chasm again.

“Even when you do hardware design in a more open manner, hardware people are different enough from software people [that] there’s a fairly big gulf between the Verilog and even the kernel, much less higher up the stack where you are working in what [is] so far away from the hardware that you really have no idea how the hardware works,” he said (video embedded below).

“So, it’s really hard to kind of work across this very wide gulf of things and I suspect the hardware designers, some of them have some overlap, but they will learn by doing mistakes — all the same mistakes that have been done before.”

RISC-V is an open-standard ISA for processors that is slowly gaining traction, especially in China, where some tech companies are using it to bypass America’s sanctions on the country. Companies like DeepComputing and Framework have started developing, building, and selling consumer laptops powered by these new processors.

But even though RISC-V is slowly being built up, it’s still not at the performance level that it could compete against current generation x86 and Arm processors. It would still take several years or decades of development to play AAA games on a RISC-V chip. But even though Arm, which also uses a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture, has already undergone intensive development, Linus fears RISC-V will still make the same mistakes.

“They’ll have all the same issues we have on the Arm side and that x86 had before them,” he says. “It will take a few generations for them to say, ‘Oh, we didn’t think about that,’ because they have new people involved.”

But even if RISC-V development is still expected to make many mistakes, he also said it will be much easier to develop the hardware now. Linus says, “It took a few decades to really get to the point where Arm and x86 are competing on fairly equal ground because there was al this software that was fairly PC-centric and that has passed. That will make it easier for new architectures like RISC-V to then come in.”

Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds has recently upped his game in testing Arm64 Linux. He initially began Arm64 Linux builds on an Apple Silicon MacBook Air, but now, thanks to a more powerful Ampere AArch64 system, he’s doing even more Arm64 testing.

Torvalds, known for creating not just the Linux kernel but also Git, worked exclusively on Intel hardware for years. Then, he switched to an AMD Ryzen Threadripper workstation for his main system. When he got his hands on his MacBook, he routinely used it to compile new Arm64 kernel builds.

Beginning with Linux kernel 5.19, Torvalds was compiling Arm64 builds on a 2022 MacBook Air with Apple’s M2 System-on-a-Chip (SoC). That model only includes 8 CPU cores, though. When Linux 5.19 was released, Torvalds wrote that he was “trying to make sure that the next time I travel, I can travel with this as a laptop and finally dogfooding the Arm64 side, too.”

In his release notes for the Linux 6.9 build, Torvalds explained that since he has “a more powerful arm64 machine (thanks to Ampere),” he’s now doing “almost as many arm64 builds as I have x86-64.” 

The developer now has an Ampere workstation/server with a high number of Armv8 cores. Torvalds doesn’t specify which Ampere system he has, but some believe it to probably be some variant of the Ampere Altra family.

Yes, the AmpereOne supports more CPU cores, but Altra workstations are more readily available. With support for up to 128 cores, the Ampere Altra is certainly robust enough for heavy-duty Arm64 Linux testing.

Torvalds explained that he expects he will continue doing quite a few Arm64 Linux builds going forward. He’s still using the M2 MacBook but explained that it’s more for weekly test builds than a daily driver. The daily driver is, presumably, the Ampere system he cited in the release notes.

We’ve contacted Torvalds to ask which Ampere workstation or server he’s using and will update you with any response.

The creator of the Linux OS, Linus Torvalds, vented his frustration with AMD's fTPM implementation (h/t Phoronix). Tersely characterizing the AMD fTPM as "crud," the outspoken Finnish developer appeared to suggest the best thing to do with this motherboard flash-based TPM solution would be to disable it, at least as far as using it for hardware random number generation is concerned. Torvalds noted that the CPU RDRAND instruction for the same task doesn't cause stuttering, so it could be used instead.

We have previously covered news of AMD's fTPM (firmware trusted platform module) implementation causing stuttering in Windows apps and games, and the official purported fix/workaround. Please carefully heed AMD's warning about the workaround of switching an active system from fTPM to dTPM. However, it seems like AMD's BIOS patches haven't managed to iron out all the fTPM stuttering behavior on Windows or Linux.

We wrote our last article about AMD fTPM-induced stuttering on Windows in March 2022. However, subsequently launched AMD CPUs and platforms appear to have inherited the same or similar issues. People with the newest AM5 systems in 2023 are still complaining about stuttering, though without further investigation, we can't be sure whether there is some other root cause. System stuttering can be a huge problem when working with media files since it can interrupt video conferencing and infuriate gamers (among other things).

Circling back to the Linux creator's diatribe concerning AMD's fTPM, he began with his conclusion: "Let's just disable the stupid fTPM HWRND thing," was his opening assertion. Various reasons were put forward to this end, but the crux of the issue seems to be that the fixes we have seen and reported upon "apparently didn't turn out to be true."

In a further lengthy comment on the state of the AMD fTPM, Torvalds appeared to throw shade at motherboard BIOS coders before putting forward a key observation about the CPU-based RDRAND vs. the fTPM-based HWRND. "So RDRAND (and RDSEED in particular) can be rather slow, but I think we're talking hundreds of CPU cycles (maybe low thousands)," wrote Torvalds. "Nothing like the stuttering reports we've seen from fTPM."

It would be interesting to hear from readers with AMD CPU-based systems about whether the official fixes or workarounds helped or the extent of any stuttering issues still present (Windows & Linux users).

Fedora, the Red Hat spin-off favored by Linus Torvalds, has reached version 37, with its latest official release. It brings good news for Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 400 owners, as their machines are now catered for by a new operating system, but bad news if you’re hoping to upgrade on a 32-bit Arm device.

First, the bad news. The Arm v7 architecture is no longer supported, meaning that 32-bit Arm processors won’t be able to upgrade to this edition. All Arm v8 chips support 64-bit operating systems, however, and accessing all the RAM on a Raspberry Pi 4 with 8GB of memory requires this support.

The kernel at work underneath it all is 5.19, the last version of the 5-series kernels before the jump to kernel 6 and the same one found in Ubuntu 22.10. The two systems also have Gnome 43 in common, the desktop environment bringing its quick toggle and Nautilus 43 file manager to the latest OS versions. The difference is that while Ubuntu has a customized version of Gnome, the Fedora installation is more traditional, and there are also Fedora spins using the KDE Plasma, XFCE and Cinnamon desktops, among others. Fedora also doesn’t use Ubuntu’s maligned Snap system for installing new apps, preferring the Flatpak package manager.

The OS comes with updated versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice and the GCC compiler. The OS benefits from improved driver support for certain Realtek wireless cards, new wake-on-LAN capabilities, increased support for the TrackPoints on Lenovo laptops, and BIG TCP, which allows larger packets on IPV6 networks and can increase transfer speeds.

Rather than release an LTS version like Ubuntu, which receives updates for many years and makes a good choice for first-timers looking for a place to start in the Linux world, Fedora puts out a new edition every six months, each of which is typically supported for a year. That’s not to say it’s not beginner-friendly - we installed it as a virtual machine and found the process straightforward, though it required a complete shutdown of the VM after installation, a reset wasn’t enough - but anyone installing this will be looking to upgrade much sooner than they would with Canonical’s OS. 

Fedora is also slightly less approachable than Ubuntu, as it presents the user with a bare desktop upon first starting, with no favorites bar, no icons, and just the Activities button in the top left for company. It does, however, have a nice default desktop wallpaper, depicting tall buildings in countryside split by a river - perfect if you find Ubuntu's orange and purple color scheme a bit much.

Fedora Workstation 37 with Gnome can be downloaded in X64 and Arm64 flavors from getfedora.org, while the spins that use different desktops can be found at spins.fedoraproject.org. Server and IoT editions are also available, along with minimal systems for cloud and containerized workloads.

The 486 CPU is somewhat of a relic these days, but its legacy in the Linux kernel has lived on. The i486 has been the de facto minimum for decades.  Even Linux, that long-term supporter of outdated architectures, is considering giving up on the chip and removing support for the 486 processors, just like it did for the 386 back in 2012.

The news comes via a post on the Linux Kernel Mailing List from Linus Torvalds himself. Recently keen on adding things like the Rust programming language and support for Intel Arc GPUs and Loongson CPUs to the Linux kernel, Torvalds is now considering removing the venerable 486, writing: “We got rid of i386 support back in 2012. Maybe it's time to get rid of i486 support in 2022?”

The idea, which seems so obvious in these days of Raptor Lake and Ryzen 7000, received a certain amount of pushback, with the claim from some users that new hardware based on the superannuated silicon was still being shipped. When the same plan was raised a year ago, one user said they were still using a 486, and wanted to continue doing so.

The 486, which dates back to 1989, is currently the minimum possible spec for running Linux, and works best with lightweight distros such as Tiny Core Linux.

It all comes down to cmpxchg8b, an instruction that compares then exchanges eight bytes (or 64 bits) of information in the computer’s memory. Mailing list member Peter Zijlstra suggested Linux should only support processors capable of carrying this out, leaving the 32-bit 486 behind and meaning new Linux kernels would run on P5-class hardware or newer. The cmpxchg8b instruction is the culprit behind the original Pentium’s ‘F00F’ bug, which saw an affected CPU without operating system mitigations in place cease to function until it was rebooted when asked to execute the instruction.

Kernel 6.1, out this year, will be a Long Term Support kernel, but with Torvalds’ backing to the idea it could be the last one that will run on the 486, with 6.2 removing the ability to run Linux on ancient beige 486 towers.

In a recent post on the Linux Kernel Mailing List, Linus Torvalds promised “a number of fairly core new things” in Linux kernel 6.1, and the first one seems to have appeared: as reported by The Register, the Rust programming language will be directly supported in the OS.

The news isn't exactly unexpected as patches to add Rust to Linux go back for some time, with version 9 appearing in August 2022. At the recent Open Source Summit Torvalds' keynote indicated that we should expect Rust to appear in 6.1. Right now, Rust has a group of developers working on support for the Linux Kernel and in a pull request made by Kees Cook on October 1, accepted by Torvalds, we see the first steps towards its inevitable arrival in 6.1.

Adding support for Rust adds about 12,500 lines of code to the Linux kernel, which is itself written in C, with which Rust has a certain amount of interoperability. However, GCC, the Gnu Compiler Collection, cannot compile the new language, and Clang, which can, has its own shortcomings if you want to write code for architectures other than x86 and Arm. With Rust set to receive official Linux support, and an eager community of kernel hackers, it can only be a matter of time before Rust is available to more architectures. The new kernel is expected to be available from December this year.

Some developers have already begun showing what can be done with Rust on Linux, with Western Digital’s principal engineer Andreas Hindborg showing off an NVMe SSD driver for Linux written in Rust at the 2022 Linux Plumbers Summit, which had a whole micro conference dedicated to Rust in Linux.

Rust is a general-purpose programming language influenced by C++ that was created in 2006 and hit version 1.0 in 2015. It grew out of a personal project by Mozilla employee Graydon Hoare, and was sponsored by Mozilla until 2020, when corporate restructuring caused by the Covid pandemic caused the Rust Foundation to be founded in 2021. Amazon Web Services, Huawei, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla now support the foundation, and Google supports Rust in its Android Open Source Project. The language is notable for its elegance, its zero-tolerance approach to memory safety, and the speed of its growth in popularity.

It’s also known as a high-performance language, created with the intention of marrying the flexible syntax of a high-level language with the hardware control and speed of a low-level one. Parallelism is also one of its fortes, and its strong memory safety - it notably doesn’t incorporate a garbage collector to return memory that’s no longer being referenced by a program to the system, as C# and Java do. The memory errors introduced by C programmers could be a thing of the past with Rust’s memory-safe features.

Raspberry Pi owners who want to use the surprisingly versatile SBC as an everyday computer rejoice - again! - as yet another new operating system drops. Unsurprisingly, as reported by Phoronix, it’s another flavor of Linux: Fedora, one of the biggest names in free operating systems. It's also, supposedly, the distro Linus Torvalds himself uses. Fedora has signed off on support for the Raspberry Pi 4, as well as the Pi 400, and the Compute Module 4.

Fedora comes in three different versions, and it’s the Workstation release (which uses Gnome as its default environment) that’s being aimed in the Pi 4’s direction. The change proposal for the OS to support the Pi went through about a month ago, with the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee signing it off at the beginning of August. This means it should come together for inclusion in the upcoming Fedora 37 release, expected in October.

Graphics drivers seem to be behind the move, with open source OpenGL drivers, and the recent certification of the Pi 4’s GPU for Vulkan, makes the board more suitable for Fedora Workstation. There seems to be one caveat, however: Wi-Fi support on the Pi 400 is seen as out-of-scope due to the chip’s creator, Synaptics, not providing upstream generic firmware. Support for the CM4 is being tested with the official I/O board in place.

“The work around Raspberry Pi 4 has been on going [sic] for a number of years, but we've never officially supported it due to lack of accelerated graphics and other key features. With Fedora 37, Raspberry Pi 4 is now officially supported, including accelerated graphics using the V3D GPU,” reads the Fedora Wiki entry on the subject.

Fedora joins Debian (the basis of the official Raspberry Pi OS), Ubuntu (and its many derivatives including Pop!_OS), Manjaro and Gentoo (based on Arch), plus the various media center distributions in bringing Linux to the Pi. It’s starting to look like Windows needs a dedicated Pi build, just to provide an alternative to the growing march of penguins to Pi.

Linux founder Linus Torvalds recently posted an update on the Linux Kernel Mailing List announcing the arrival of Linux kernel version 5.14. Perhaps the biggest change is the removal of legacy support for Parallel ATA (PATA), also referred to as ATAm or IDE.

IDE is a connector that has long served as a base for IBM computers, which turned into PCs later. It is a type of connector that is used to connect hard disk drives, floppy disk drives, and optical disc drives in computers. As more advanced protocols appeared, IDE has become irrelevant to most PC builders in recent years, having been replaced by the SATA connector in modern PCs.

As the Linux kernel continues to advance, supporting code for legacy devices becomes increasingly difficult, while the need becomes less and less. That is why the Linux kernel is officially dumping support and removing the IDE code from its repositories.

From now on, all IDE support will be based on libATA, a library used for providing support for ATA host controllers and devices. This change will shift away from in-kernel support, to a library that is implemented only when it's needed.

According to Torvalds, the removal of IDE from the Linux kernel was long overdue. "What's slightly less usual is how there's a lot of line _removals_ in there, with the old IDE layer finally having met its long-overdue demise, and all our IDE support is now based on libata," says Mr. Torvals, continuing that "Of course, the fact that we removed all that legacy IDE code doesn't mean that we had a reduction in lines over-all: a few tens of thousands of lines of legacy code is nowhere near enough to balance out the usual kernel growth. But it's still a nice thing to see the cleanup."

The researchers who got the University of Minnesota (UMN) banned from contributing to the Linux kernel are going to have to do more than apologize for their actions. ZDNet reported that the Linux Foundation’s Technical Advisory board sent a list of demands the university will have to meet before it can seek forgiveness.

A quick recap: UMN researchers contributed intentionally flawed code to the Linux kernel in August 2020 for a paper on these so-called “hypocrite commits” that was published in February. A separate project meant to “automatically identify bugs introduced by other patches” then drew the ire of Greg Kroah-Hartman, the developer who oversees the Linux kernel’s stable release channel last week.

Kroah-Hartman banned the entire UMN system from contributing to the Linux kernel as a result of the research projects. That decision was followed by an apology from the UMN Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), a significant amount of discussion amongst the Linux community, and then a separate apology from the faculty and students who actually conducted the controversial research.

ZDNet reported that the Linux Foundation’s Technical Advisory Board contacted UMN Friday—a day before the researchers issued their apology—with a list of demands. (And, of course, additional criticism regarding the amount of work the research projects created for other developers.) The letter was officially penned by Linux Foundation senior VP and general manager of projects Mike Dolan.

To quote:

“Please provide to the public, in an expedited manner, all information necessary to identify all proposals of known-vulnerable code from any U of MN experiment. The information should include the name of each targeted software, the commit information, purported name of the proposer, email address, date/time, subject, and/or code, so that all software developers can quickly identify such proposals and potentially take remedial action for such experiments.”

Dolan also pushed for the UMN researchers to withdraw ”from formal publication and formal presentation all research work based on this or similar research where people appear to have been experimented on without their prior consent.” He said “there should be no research credit“ for information that’s already online, too.

ZDNet reported that the final condition was to “ensure that all future IRB reviews of proposed experiments on people will normally ensure the consent of those being experimented on, per usual research norms and laws," as Dolan put it. He also made it clear that the Linux Foundation (and presumably the developer community as a whole) wants UMN to respond to this list of demands as quickly as possible.

Kroah-Hartman issued a response to the UMN researchers Sunday. “Thank you for your response. […] As you know, the Linux Foundation and the Linux Foundation's Technical Advisory Board submitted a letter on Friday to your University outlining the specific actions which need to happen in order for your group, and your University, to be able to work to regain the trust of the Linux kernel community.

“Until those actions are taken, we do not have anything further to discuss about this issue.”

We doubt that will be the final word on the subject—the UMN CSE still has to complete its investigation into these projects, decide if the researchers are going to be punished, provide the information requested by the Linux Foundation’s Technical Advisory Board, and then publicly respond to the controversy as it continues to develop, all while the rest of the Linux community looks into the problem as well.

University of Minnesota (UMN) assistant professor Kangjie Lu, along with graduate students Qiushi Wu and Aditya Pakki, apologized to the Linux community on Saturday for the controversial research into "hypocrite commits" that got the entire university system banned from contributing to the Linux kernel.

In an email to the Linux kernel mailing list, the trio said that the research in question, which sought to highlight one of the ways open source projects such as Linux can be undermined, was carried out in August 2020. The findings were published to GitHub on February 10; they didn't appear to attract much attention for several months.

Then last week, Greg Kroah-Hartman, the Linux developer who oversees the stable release channel, banned UMN from contributing to the Linux kernel. He also said in an email to Pakki that he'd have to "rip out your previous contributions, as they were obviously submitted in bad-faith with the intent to cause problems."

This quickly became a hot-button issue among the Linux developer community, and the UMN Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) apologized for the incident a day later. But the need to double-check all of the university's contributions to the Linux kernel still raised the ire of many already-quite-busy Linux developers.

Lu, Wu, and Pakki remained silent—it seems Linux creator Linus Torvalds publicly responded to the controversy before the UMN trio did. That changed with the email to the Linux kernel mailing list on Saturday, in which the researchers attempted to explain the situation while simultaneously apologizing for the trouble it's caused.

"This current incident has caused a great deal of anger in the Linux community toward us, the research group, and the University of Minnesota," they said. "We apologize unconditionally for what we now recognize was a breach of the shared trust in the open source community and seek forgiveness for our missteps."

The UMN researchers also clarified that the "hypocrite commits" research didn't introduce vulnerabilities to the Linux kernel, said "all the other 190 patches being reverted and re-evaluated were submitted as part of other projects and as a service to the community," and offered more details about the commits made in early April.

"We had been conducting a new project that aims to automatically identify bugs introduced by other patches (not from us)," they said. "Our patches were prepared and submitted to fix the identified bugs to follow the rules of Responsible Disclosure, and we are happy to share details of this newer project with the Linux community."

The researchers ended their message with another apology and a promise that they've learned from the incident. "We can and will do better," they said, "and we believe we have much to contribute in the future, and will work hard to regain your trust." Whether or not they'll be afforded the chance to do so will likely depend on both the Linux community and the results of the UMN CSE's investigation.

Saying the University of Minnesota's ban from contributing to the Linux kernel has been a popular topic of conversation among the open source community would be an understatement. Now,  Linux creator Linus Torvalds has weighed in on the issue, and his response was milder than one might expect.

Whatever he did seems to have worked. Torvalds reportedly told iTWire that "I don't really know what to say" about the University of Minnesota ban. "I think the email thread is likely the most relevant information. [...] I don't think it has been a huge deal _technically_, but people are pissed off, and it's obviously a breach of trust."

Interestingly enough, Torvalds, according to The New Yorker, stepped aside from Linux in 2018 because he was seeking help "after years of verbally abusing programmers" who contributed to the Linux kernel.

Linux developers are still looking through code submitted as part of the college's research project, as well as other contributions associated with the University of Minnesota. Right now it seems like this was a one-off issue, as Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board member Kees Cook said in an email to the Linux kernel mailing list.

"The LF Technical Advisory Board is taking a look at the history of UMN's contributions and their associated research projects," Cook said in the email that was sent on Thursday. "At present, it seems the vast majority of patches have been in good faith, but we're continuing to review the work."

Cook added that "several public conversations have already started around our expectations of contributors." That's one way to put it—developers have gone back-and-forth on the issue on Twitter, GitHub and other social platforms since the ban was announced on Wednesday. (It's probably even reached TikTok by now.)

For its part, the University of Minnesota Department of Computer Science and Engineering said Wednesday that it was looking into " the research method and the process by which this research method was approved" and would "determine appropriate remedial action and safeguard against future issues, if needed."

In a recent forum post discussing error correction code (ECC) memory, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, openly criticized Intel for not making ECC RAM mainstream on consumer platforms while praising AMD for supporting it on Ryzen platforms.

"ECC absolutely matters.

ECC availability matters a lot - exactly because Intel has been instrumental in killing the whole ECC industry with it's horribly bad market segmentation.

Go out and search for ECC DIMMs - it's really hard to find. Yes - probably entirely thanks to AMD - it may have been gotten slightly better lately, but that's exactly my point.

Intel has been detrimental to the whole industry and to users because of their bad and misguided policies wrt ECC. Seriously.

And if you don't believe me, then just look at multiple generations of rowhammer, where each time Intel and memory manufacturers bleated about how it's going to be fixed next time."

Torvald's post continues with very colorful language (which you can see here), specifically calling out Intel for the lack of widespread ECC adoption in the consumer space. Torvalds says this is due to Intel's complete lockdown of ECC support on its consumer chipsets and processors, claiming that this alone has killed any incentive for memory manufacturers to create desktop ECC memory for consumers.

Linus also decries the Rowhammer issues that could be easily fixed with ECC memory. DRAM memory cells can leak their own charges into other memory cells. Usually, it's just a defect in system RAM that can cause memory errors, but Rowhammer attacks use that tendency as a mechanism to gain elevated system rights.

Torvalds also says that standard memory is a nightmare to deal with when developing code for the kernel of an operating system. Linus outlines the headaches of trying to find where an unexplainable kernel error happened, claiming that the errors could often be a result of a hardware issue and not a code issue – all of which could have been fixed with ECC.

Torvalds also praised AMD for unofficially supporting ECC. Even though it is unofficial support, Linus is still very happy that AMD even extends the option on mainstream consumer Ryzen platforms, giving consumers an option to use ECC without paying ridiculous amounts of money for server-class hardware. Whether or not 'unofficial support' is the best tactic to increase ECC adoption is up for debate (it often doesn't work correctly), but Torvalds obviously thinks it's a step in the right direction.  

Torvalds hits on many good points  – we wish ECC memory could at least be an option for all DIY PCs and pre-builts, especially for professionals that prize system stability. Memory can be critical for computer stability, as even the slightest number of errors can result in crashes or data loss. Unfortunately, standard non-ECC memory is always at risk for errors and is never 100% stable, even if that risk is often incredibly low. Hopefully, we'll see a push for ECC RAM to become a more viable option in the consumer landscape.           

According to a mailing list post spotted by Phoronix, Linux creator Linus Torvalds has shared his strong views on the AVX-512 instruction set. The discussion arose as a result of recent news that Intel's upcoming Alder Lake processors reportedly lack support for AVX-512.

Torvalds' advice to Intel is to focus on things that matter instead of wasting resources on new instruction sets, like AVX-512, that he feels aren't beneficial outside the HPC market.

AVX-512 support debuted in Intel's Xeon Phi x200 (codename Knights Landing) processor in 2016. However, the instruction set later made its way into the chipmaker's other offerings, such as Skylake-SP, Skylake-X, Cannon Lake and Cascade Lake. Currently, Intel's both Cooper Lake and Ice Lake processors support certain AVX-512 subsets. While Alder Lake seemingly lacks AVX-512, the chipmaker has confirmed that Tiger Lake will exploit the instruction set.

We've included a copy of Linus Torvalds' opinion on AVX-512 below:

I hope AVX512 dies a painful death, and that Intel starts fixing real problems instead of trying to create magic instructions to then create benchmarks that they can look good on.

I hope Intel gets back to basics: gets their process working again, and concentrate more on regular code that isn't HPC or some other pointless special case.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: in the heyday of x86, when Intel was laughing all the way to the bank and killing all their competition, absolutely everybody else did better than Intel on FP loads. Intel's FP performance sucked (relatively speaking), and it matter not one iota.

Because absolutely nobody cares outside of benchmarks.

The same is largely true of AVX512 now - and in the future. Yes, you can find things that care. No, those things don't sell machines in the big picture.

And AVX512 has real downsides. I'd much rather see that transistor budget used on other things that are much more relevant. Even if it's still FP math (in the GPU, rather than AVX512). Or just give me more cores (with good single-thread performance, but without the garbage like AVX512) like AMD did.

I want my power limits to be reached with regular integer code, not with some AVX512 power virus that takes away top frequency (because people ended up using it for memcpy!) and takes away cores (because those useless garbage units take up space).

Yes, yes, I'm biased. I absolutely destest FP benchmarks, and I realize other people care deeply. I just think AVX512 is exactly the wrong thing to do. It's a pet peeve of mine. It's a prime example of something Intel has done wrong, partly by just increasing the fragmentation of the market.

Stop with the special-case garbage, and make all the core common stuff that everybody cares about run as well as you humanly can. Then do a FPU that is barely good enough on the side, and people will be happy. AVX2 is much more than enough.

Yeah, I'm grumpy.

Linus

Torvalds, who was once an Intel user, recently saw the light and crossed over to the Red Team. His Ryzen Threadripper 3970X accelerated his workloads by threefold.

Linus Torvalds, the founding father of Linux, is officially a member of Team Red. Torvalds announced the Linux Kernel 5.7 RC7 yesterday and also mentioned an exciting upgrade to his desktop PC.

Changes in life are hard to accept, especially when you've used the same brand of processor for 15 years. However, that didn't prevent Torvarlds from switching from his Intel processor to AMD's core-heavy Ryzen Threadripper 3970X. The creator of Linux didn't mention what processor he used previously, but his 'allmodconfig' test systems now rock 32 cores of Zen 2 firepower. 

For a bit of background information, the Ryzen Threadripper 3970X is built with TSMC's 7nm FinFET manufacturing process. The 32-core, 64-thread part ticks with a 3.7 GHz base clock and a 4.5 GHz boost clock. The processor offers 128MB of L3 cache and up to 64 lightning-fast PCIe 4.0 lanes.

In comparison to his previous (undisclosed) Intel processor, Trovalds says the Ryzen Threadripper 3970X represents a night and day upgrade and runs up to three times faster. Although he did admit that he won't take advantage of the full processing power right away, he expects the Ryzen Threadripper 3970X's prowess to come in handy during the next merge window.

AMD does offer more cores than Intel on all fronts, so Torvalds' transition to Team Red seems like a no-brainer. However, it did come as a surprise that the Linux guru would stop at 32 cores when AMD offers up to 64 cores in form of the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X. Regardless, we're just happy that Torvalds is enjoying his new system, and AMD probably couldn't be happier to show off the fact that the most high-profile figure in the Linux world is using one of its chips.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds has drawn ire for advising people not to use the ZFS file system until Oracle, which inherited the technology when it acquired Sun Microsystems in 2009, changes the licensing used to cover the project's codebase.

Torvalds made his remarks on the Real World Technologies forum on January 6. Phoronix was the first to report on the comment, and Ars Technica followed up on Tuesday to criticize Torvalds's argument, saying in the article's subhed that "Linus should avoid authoritative statements about projects he's unfamiliar with."

A back-and-forth led to Torvalds's comment. At issue was a change to the Linux kernel made in January 2019 that prohibited the export of certain kernel signs to non-GPL modules. That didn't prevent the modules from working, but it did force them to build an alternative tool.

Here's the bit from Torvalds's comment this month that reignited this year-old controversy:

"Don't use ZFS. It's that simple. It was always more of a buzzword than anything else, I feel, and the licensing issues just make it a non-starter for me. ... The benchmarks I've seen do not make ZFS look all that great. And as far as I can tell, it has no real maintenance behind it either any more. So from a long-term stability standpoint, why would you ever want to use it in the first place?"

The problem was that both Oracle ZFS and OpenZFS have been actively developed for some time. (Some also took issue with his claim about the benchmarks, although that appears to be a more nuanced discussion.) 

When asked why he called ZFS a buzzword, though, Torvalds clarified his thinking in a comment posted January 10:

"I'm talking about small details like the fact that Oracle owns the copyrights but turned things closed-source, so the 'other' ZFS project is a fork of an old code base.

"If you are talking about ZFS, you're talking about the Oracle version. Do you think it has a lot of development going on? I don't know.

"And if you're talking about OpenZFS, then yes, there's clearly maintenance there, but it has all the questions about what happens if Oracle ever decides - again - that 'copyright' means something different than anybody else thinks it means."

Does this directly affect most Linux users? Not quite, but it does offer a peek inside the mind of the kernel's creator and primary maintainer. We'd probably see the same articles if Bill Gates decided to spend the day responding to questions on forums and made similarly provocative statements while doing so.

Saying that Nvidia's relationship with Linux users has been less-than-friendly would be an understatement. (Remember when Linux creator Linus Torvalds flipped off the company in 2012?) But now it seems like Nvidia is ready to make friends, because it's publishing some of its GPU hardware documentation with the MIT license to make it more accessible to the public, according to a Phoronix report yesterday.

Linux was created specifically because Torvalds believed there needed to be an open-source alternative to Windows. Many Windows users prefer to use open source tools, which they can examine and modify themselves, instead of proprietary software over which they have limited control. Nvidia's reliance on proprietary drivers doesn't align with that ethos.

Other developers have stepped in to create open-source Linux drivers for Nvidia hardware. Those efforts have been stymied by a lack of documentation for the company's GPUs, however, which is what makes yesterday's revelation such a big deal. Nvidia's decision to make a fair amount of its hardware interface documentation publicly available should make it much easier for devs to work on these drivers.

The company told Phoronix that this open source documentation is "a work in progress" several years in the making and that "not all hardware interfaces have been published." Right now, much of the documentation is said to cover the Maxwell, Pascal, Volta and Kepler architectures; Phoronix reported that open-source documentation for the Turing architecture is also on its way but didn't specify when it'd arrive.

This is an important gesture from Nvidia. Many gamers rely on Windows even if they'd prefer to use Linux simply because the former plays nicer with Nvidia hardware. If this documentation leads to better Linux drivers, it could easily complement other efforts to improve gaming on the platform, such as Valve's ongoing commitment to improving Linux support for games sold via its Steam marketplace.

Nvidia made the documentation referenced in Phoronix's report available via GitHub. Hopefully, this signals the start of improved Linux support from the manufacturer, rather than a random gesture of goodwill, because a lone olive branch extended seven years after being called "the single worst company" the Linux community has tried to work with probably isn't going to be enough for Nvidia to make a new friend.

Linux users can rejoice: work-in-progress changes to the Linux 4.20 kernel's implementation of the Single Thread Indirect Branch Predictors (STIBP) mitigation appear to restore performance on Intel systems. Now instead of taking up to a 50% performance hit in some benchmarks when updating to the latest kernel release, Linux users can expect their systems to perform about as well as they did before while also enjoying better security.

STIBP is supposed to defend against Spectre v2 exploits, which rely on a vulnerability in CPUs with simultaneous multithreading (SMT), such as Intel processors with Hyper-Threading enabled. That should be a good thing--nobody wants their system to be affected by a known vulnerability. Yet the nature of the vulnerability combined with the dramatic effect this release had on performance led many to question the benefits of using STIBP.

Those questions eventually reached Linus Torvalds, who said that "when performance goes down by 50% on some loads, people need to start asking themselves whether it was worth it," and that "I think we should use the same logic as for L1TF: we default to something that doesn't kill performance." He also noted that truly security-conscious people are more likely to disable SMT entirely than to rely on STIBP mitigations.

Phoronix benchmarked some preliminary changes to Linux 4.20's implementation of STIBP to see what kind of effect it could have on performance. Many of the results are favorable: the updates bring the Linux 4.20 WIP Conditional STIBP release in line with Linux 4.19.0 in many benchmarks. This release still performs worse in some benchmarks, but it's also notably better than 4.20, so it should appease most people affected by the hit.

All this because the Linux 4.20 WIP Conditional STIBP release changes the mitigation implementation to only run when processes ask it to or for SECCOMP threads. That actually brings the kernel's implementation more in line with AMD and Intel's recommendations, which is to use the tools "surgically" instead of enabling it by default, as Intel Fellow Arjan van de Ven said in reply to Torvalds' email about the STIBP performance issue.

How far are you willing to go to make your PC more secure? Most security conscious people understand that mitigating their risk involves some kind of trade-off, whether it's sacrificing convenience, spending more money, or compromising their system's performance. Yet many Linux users weren't prepared for a patch for the Spectre v2 vulnerability to incur up to a 50% performance penalty on Intel processors.

The patch in question was released with the Linux 4.20 kernel. It bears the Single Thread Indirect Branch Predictors (STIBP) mitigation for CPUs with simultaneous multithreading (SMT). This is supposed to prevent attacks based on the Spectre v2 vulnerability, but as a result, it also hurts performance on Intel processors with Hyper-Threading enabled, provided those CPUs are running the latest microcode updates as well.

It was clear that STIBP would impact performance. Yet according to a message posted by Linus Torvalds, who is back at the helm after a brief hiatus in September, "nowhere in the discussion did I see any mention of just *how* bad the performance impact of this [patch] was." He added that "when performance goes down by 50% on some loads, people need to start asking themselves whether it was worth it" to use the mitigation.

Torvalds also said that people truly concerned about their security just disable SMT entirely. That means a mitigation enabled by default with the latest Linux kernel incurs up to a 50% performance overhead even though most people either won't benefit from it or have taken other precautions. That led Torvalds to propose the following solution for the next release of Linux for Intel systems, which should appease most users:

"I think we should use the same logic as for L1TF: we default to something that doesn't kill performance. Warn once about it, and let the crazy people say, 'I'd rather take a 50% performance hit than worry about a theoretical issue'."

Besides, Torvalds isn't the only one surprised by this implementation of STIBP. Intel Fellow Arjan van de Ven said in a reply that "in the documentation, AMD officially recommends against this by default, and I can speak for Intel that our position is that as well: this really must not be on by default." He added that using the tools "surgically" is fine, but the idea of having it always on elicited a one-word reaction--"Yikes."

Linux creator Linus Torvalds announced Sunday that he's taking a break from developing the world's most popular operating system to work on his "unprofessional" behavior. The news seems unlikely to affect Linux's release schedule: it was made as part of Torvalds' notes for 4.19-rc4, Torvalds said he's asked Greg Kroah-Hartman to "finish up" 4.19 proper, and Torvalds still plans to appear at the Linux Kernel Maintainer Summit.

Torvalds has a history of inappropriate behavior. He infamously said "f*** you" to Nvidia in 2012 because of the graphics company's disinterest in properly supporting Linux with its GPUs--Nvidia responded with the grace you'd expect of a large company that can't afford profanity-laced public spats--and later dropped a "Christmas f-bomb" on a kernel developer  who blamed user programs for breakage. Those events aren't outliers.

These outbursts can be entertaining when they're witness from the outside. Who doesn't like a little trash talk every now and then? And show us the person who's never wanted to swear at a co-worker, employee, or boss and we'll show you the next candidate for sainthood. The fun stops when you're targeted by those vicious emails, though, or when you feel like you have to walk on egg shells every time you email someone.

Torvalds acknowledged this problem with his behavior in a message titled "Linux 4.19-rc4 released, an apology, and a maintainership note":

"This week people in our community confronted me about my lifetime of not understanding emotions. My flippant attacks in emails have been both unprofessional and uncalled for. Especially at times when I made it personal. In my quest for a better patch, this made sense to me. I know now this was not OK and I am truly sorry. [...] The above is basically a long-winded way to get to the somewhat painful personal admission that hey, I need to change some of my behavior, and I want to apologize to the people that my personal behavior hurt and possibly drove away from kernel development entirely."

Addressing these problems will apparently involve a mix of developing new tools--Torvalds proposed an email filter that stopped any message featuring profanity from being sent--and introspection. (The latter seems like a more sincere effort, but anyone who's had to address similar problems in their own life probably knows it's nice to have a fail-safe in place, which is where something like the former comes in.)

Torvalds was also careful to note that his decision to take a break isn't a sign that he wants to stop working on Linux. "Quite the reverse," he said. "I very much *do* want to continue to do this project that I've been working on for almost three decades." Stepping away for a while can help make sure Torvalds has another decade of development ahead, hopefully with fewer expletives and interpersonal issues along the way.

Microsoft pushed an unscheduled update to its Windows customers that will disable the patch that was supposed to mitigate the Spectre variant 2 (CVE 2017-5715 Branch Target Injection) CPU flaw.

Intel’s “Garbage” Patches

Although Intel was in a hurry to deliver its patches to “90% of Intel CPUs introduced in the past five years,” Linus Torvalds, the creator and principal developer of the Linux kernel, recently called the company’s patches “complete and utter garbage.” because they were doing things that were "not sane."

At least some of that criticism seems to have been validated, as Intel started pulling its Spectre v2 microcode patches last week because it was causing “higher than expected reboots and other unpredictable system behavior” on users’ machines.

Microsoft Disables Its Own Spectre V2 Patch

Now Microsoft is following suit and has issued an unscheduled update (KB4078130) that disables the OS-level patch that was supposed to work with Intel’s microcode update to mitigate Spectre v2. In Microsoft’s testing, this new update should fix the reboot issues for users, but for moment it also means that these users will remain vulnerable to Spectre v2.

Microsoft’s update covers Windows 7 (SP1), Windows 8.1, and all versions of Windows 10, for client and server. If you’re using Windows 7, you will need to download the new update from Microsoft’s Update Catalog website (which doesn't seem to work with Chrome or Firefox) as Microsoft stopped delivering automatic updates to Windows 7 a while ago. Users of Windows 8.1 and later will receive the update via the automatic update system.

Microsoft is also offering users a way to manually disable the previous error-causing Spectre patch via registry settings, found in the following two Knowledge Base articles:

• KB4073119: IT Pro Guidance
• KB4072698: Server Guidance

The company added that so far there have been no reports of attacks exploiting the Spectre v2 CPU flaw, but it recommends its customers to re-enable the mitigation when Intel reports that the rebooting issues have been solved for your particular devices.

Torvalds chimed in just before Christmas with expletives and a public reprimand that Linux never blames user programs for breakage. "How hard can this be to understand?" Torvalds wrote.

In a response to a note of Chehab, which suggested that "pulseaudio/tumbleweed has some serious  bugs and/or regressions", Torvalds wrote: "Shut up, Mauro. And I don't _ever_ want to hear that kind of obvious garbage and idiocy from a kernel maintainer again. Seriously."

Another taste from his post: "We particularly don't break user space with TOTAL CRAP. I'm angry, because your whole email was so _horribly_ wrong, and the patch that broke things was so obviously crap. The whole patch is incredibly broken shit. It adds an insane error code (ENOENT), and then because it's so insane, it adds a few places to fix it up ("ret == -ENOENT ? -EINVAL : ret"). The fact that you then try to make *excuses* for breaking user space, and blaming some external program that *used* to work, is just shameful. It's not how we work. Fix your f*cking "compliance tool", because it is obviously broken. And fix your approach to kernel programming."

In a follow up post, Torvalds said that he was "upset" and "very upset".

You can read Torvald's post in its entirety here, including the parts we could not print here.

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Nvidia's public relations department has issued a response of rather diplomatic nature and surely does not indicate that the graphics company is changing direction. The lengthy answer is an explanation of what Nvidia is attempting to achieve with its Linux driver support (or lack thereof) along with a friendly, corporate version of Torvalds' choice of words to express his dissatisfaction with the company.

"At the end of the day, providing a consistent GPU experience across multiple platforms for all of our customers continues to be one of our key goals," the answer states in its last sentence and pretty much sums up Nvidia's intent, while the company says it understands that "there are people who are as passionate about Linux as an open source platform." In more detail:

"While we understand that some people would prefer us to provide detailed documentation on all of our GPU internals, or be more active in Linux kernel community development discussions, we have made a decision to support Linux on our GPUs by leveraging NVIDIA common code, rather than the Linux common infrastructure. While this may not please everyone, it does allow us to provide the most consistent GPU experience to our customers, regardless of platform or operating system."

Additionally, Nvidia stated that it is heavily involved in the Linux community in various ways, including the ARM Linux kernel team. The note also stressed that Nvidia "ranks second in terms of total lines changed and fourth in terms of number of changesets for all employers or organizations" for the latest 3.4 ARM kernel.

Below is the full response:

Supporting Linux is important to NVIDIA, and we understand that there are people who are as passionate about Linux as an open source platform as we are passionate about delivering an awesome GPU experience. Recently, there have been some questions raised about our lack of support for our Optimus notebook technology. When we launched our Optimus notebook technology, it was with support for Windows 7 only. The open source community rallied to work around this with support from the Bumblebee Open Source Project http://bumblebee-project.org/. And as a result, we've recently made Installer and readme changes in our R295 drivers that were designed to make interaction with Bumblebee easier. While we understand that some people would prefer us to provide detailed documentation on all of our GPU internals, or be more active in Linux kernel community development discussions, we have made a decision to support Linux on our GPUs by leveraging NVIDIA common code, rather than the Linux common infrastructure. While this may not please everyone, it does allow us to provide the most consistent GPU experience to our customers, regardless of platform or operating system. As a result: 1) Linux end users benefit from same-day support for new GPUs , OpenGL version and extension parity between NVIDIA Windows and NVIDIA Linux support, and OpenGL performance parity between NVIDIA Windows and NVIDIA Linux. 2) We support a wide variety of GPUs on Linux, including our latest GeForce, Quadro, and Tesla-class GPUs, for both desktop and notebook platforms. Our drivers for these platforms are updated regularly, with seven updates released so far this year for Linux alone. The latest Linux drivers can be downloaded from www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html. 3) We are a very active participant in the ARM Linux kernel. For the latest 3.4 ARM kernel – the next-gen kernel to be used on future Linux, Android, and Chrome distributions – NVIDIA ranks second in terms of total lines changed and fourth in terms of number of changesets for all employers or organizations. At the end of the day, providing a consistent GPU experience across multiple platforms for all of our customers continues to be one of our key goals.

The award is presented every other year by the by the Technology Academy Finland, which is maintained by the Finnish industry and the government in Finland.

Introduced in 2004, the Millennium Technology Prize is the largest technology award in existence and some say it is the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for certain technological achievements. The total award is about $1.3 million, which is divided between the laureates.

Torvalds is honored for creating the Linux operating systems and making it available free of charge. In a statement the Technology Academy Finland said that development of Linux to date is equal to the investment of 73,000 man-years and has touched the lives of "millions, if not billions" of people.

Next to Torvalds, Shinya Yamanaka will be awarded with the Prize for his achievement to develop an induced pluripotent stem cells for medical research that do not rely on the use of embryonic stem cells.

The award ceremony will take place in Helsinki, Finland, on June 13.

I take a guess and predict that many of us mortals would have taken a chance. Linux Torvalds did not, according to a Wired article. Apparently, Torvalds received a personal job offer from Steve Jobs more than a decade ago. He was offered to work on Unix for MacOS, but the offer came with the condition that he would have to drop all work on Linux.

“Unix for the biggest user base: that was the pitch,” Torvalds told Wired. “He wanted me to work at Apple doing non-Linux things. ... I said no.”

Perhaps, the offer was not enticing enough anyway and most obviously pitched to the wrong person. In 2000 when the conversation reportedly happened, there was no iPod, there was no iPhone and no iPad. Instead, Apple had a Bondi Blue iMac and was prepared for the release of Mac OS X (March 2001), which is based on technologies by NeXT. Torvalds was not a fan of Mac OS and it may have been an easy decision at the time - all open source ideals aside - to decline any job.

According to the Wired article, Torvalds and Jobs were not so different because of their attention to detail and they probably would have made a good fit from that perspective. However, both had very different views on the computer industry and given their passion, a work relationship would most likely not have lasted. There are those who say that Torvalds was dumb not to accept Jobs offer, but in that case, you would have to ask the question: Would Jobs have accepted a job offer at the Linux Foundation with the condition to give up everything Apple?

Ubuntu 11.10 'Oneiric Ocelot', Reviewed

Ubuntu 11.10, code-named 'Oneiric Ocelot', launched last October. Although this is the second version of Ubuntu to employ the Unity graphical user interface (GUI), it is the first that does away with the optional GNOME 2 GUI. Unity was developed in-house by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu. While we welcomed a change from the aging GNOME 2 desktop, Unity was not without its kinks.

How tepid was the reception? According to DistroWatch's page hit ranking, Linux Mint, a Ubuntu-derivative distribution, has surpassed the popularity of Ubuntu for more than 12 months. This is largely attributed to backlash from users unhappy with Unity.

Merriam-Webster's definition oneiric is “of or relating to dreams”. Today, we see whether the first Unity-only version of Ubuntu is a reimagined dream or a nightmare to be avoided.

First, let's get up to speed on the latest Ubuntu-related news.

Between the complaints about Unity and tablet-oriented speculation, Ubuntu has made some serious waves over the past few months. Canonical even had a presence at CES this year, where it announced Ubuntu TV.

More recently, Ubuntu's founder, Mark Shuttleworth, announced yet another extreme departure from standard UI conventions. While we don't care for Unity's Mac OS X-style global menu in place of the standard menu bar, we're not sure this is the solution:

But all of this is in the future, and some of it may never even happen. Remember Ubuntu Light and “windicators”?

So, we're back to a verdict on where Ubuntu stands today. Is Unity any better than it was in Natty? How is touch input progressing? How does this latest distribution perform? We have another dissection of the user interface, and we also go hands-on with Oneiric using a touchscreen tablet. And while we typically benchmark the previous release and most recent LTS our Ubuntu reviews, this time, we're going to hold Ubuntu 11.10 up against its competition: Microsoft Windows.

All of our Linux benchmarks are also Windows benchmarks. So, for the first time, we get to see how Ubuntu compares to Windows 7. As an added bonus, at the request of our readers, we threw an Nvidia-based graphics card into the gaming tests for comparison to AMD's hardware. Before we get to the benchmarks, though, let's take a look at what makes this version of Ubuntu different from 11.04. We have a lot to cover: Wubi, Unity, the Ubuntu Software Center, Ubuntu One, uTouch, and a slew of new default applications all play a part in our review of Ubuntu 11.10.

New Kernel, Login, Email, Backup, And More

Linux Kernel 3.0

Oneiric Ocelot comes with version 3.0 of the Linux kernel. It is, in fact, the first version of Ubuntu to utilize the 3.x series. Linus Torvalds decided to skip what should have been kernel 2.8, signaling big-enough changes to merit a major dot-oh release.

Mozilla Thunderbird

Ubuntu drops GNOME's default email application, Evolution, for Mozilla Thunderbird. Mozilla even polished up its email app specifically for Unity. Thunderbird looks like a hybrid between the simple two-paned email apps found on tablets, complete with large finger-friendly buttons, and a full desktop client with its traditional list view. Through the use of tabs, multiple accounts and folders can be quickly viewed in the same window.

DejaDup

DejaDup is an automatic backup utility included in Ubuntu for the first time with Oneiric Ocelot. While DejaDup is not activated by default, the application occasionally appears in the Launcher to remind you that it's there.

The DejaDup settings screen has a left-hand sidebar to navigate between different options, including: Overview, Storage, Folders, and Schedule. The Overview screen is where automatic backups are enabled or disabled, and where backups can be restored or updated.

The Storage screen is where the location for backups is chosen. While the default repository for backups is the Ubuntu One folder, you can also use a local folder, an FTP site, SSH, WebDAV, Windows Share, or a custom networked location.

The Folder screen has two panes, the first one is for folders to include in the backup. The second is for folders to ignore within the included folders. By default, your Home directory gets backed up, while the Trash and Downloads folder are ignored by default.

There are options for how often to create backups on the Schedule pane, as well as how long to keep the latest backup. The available intervals are Daily, Weekly, Every 2 Weeks, and Monthly. The available durations are: At least a week, month, two months, three months, six months, year, and forever.

Other Default Applications

LightDM

Along with the GNOME Shell, Ubuntu 11.10 drops GDM (GNOME Display Manager) in favor of LightDM (Light Display Manager). The log-in screen is now both faster and better-looking than GDM.

Speed comes into play because, unlike GDM, GNOME libraries aren't required by LightDM. The better-looking part is due to the fact that LightDM interfaces are created with HTML, which also means that LightDM login screens have nearly limitless customization.

CD And USB Installation Guide

The installation procedure is mostly the same as it was in Ubuntu 11.04 'Natty Narwhal', with just a few changes to the graphics, an accessibility menu, and one new optional step. However, these articles attract a lot of new faces, so we can't everyone already has experience installing Ubuntu every six months. So, let's quickly recap the installation procedure.

First, choose which installation method you want to use: CD, USB stick, or Windows installer (we'll go into more depth on the Windows installer on the next page).

If you choose the CD or USB-based flash drive method, decide between the 32-bit or 64-bit versions. Let your hardware dictate this one. In other words, grab a 64-bit copy if you have more than three gigabytes of system memory.

Once the ISO file is done downloading, burn it to a CD using your favorite CD burning software or create a bootable flash drive. While there are multiple methods for getting an ISO file to boot from a USB stick, we prefer UNetbootin. This application works for most Linux distributions, is free and open source software (FOSS), and runs on all three major PC platforms (Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux).

Regardless of whether you burn a CD or create a bootable USB stick, the next step is to make sure your BIOS is set to boot from the right input device. If you burned a CD, you'll be greeted with the option to Try Ubuntu or Install Ubuntu.

Choosing Install Ubuntu begins the installation wizard. Choosing Try Ubuntu takes you to the live desktop environment. If, on the other hand, you went with UNetbootin and the USB-based media, you're automatically sent to the live desktop.

From there, you can start the installation wizard at any time from either the desktop or Launcher shortcuts labeled Install Ubuntu 11.10.

After language selection, the next step is to make sure your system has at least 4.5 GB of hard drive space and an active Internet connection. You may also choose to Download updates while installing Ubuntu and Install third-party software on this screen.

The updates are going to happen one way or another, either now or after the installation, so unless your Internet connection is tiered, taxed, or throttled, there's no reason not to get them out of the way. We highly recommend checking the box for third-party software as well. This includes codecs for MP3 and DVD playback, as well as Flash and other non-FOSS modern day necessities.

The next step is to determine how Ubuntu is installed. This page will be different depending on the what is currently on the drive targeted for installation. If the target drive is blank, the options will be to Erase disk and install Ubuntu or Something Else. If the drive has a copy of Windows (XP, Vista, or 7) installed on it, the options will be Install Ubuntu alongside Windows, Replace Windows with Ubuntu, or Something Else. If the drive already has an older version of Ubuntu installed (for instance, the most recent LTS release), the options will be Install Ubuntu 11.10 alongside Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS, Upgrade Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS to 11.10, Erase Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS and reinstall, or Something Else.

These options are pretty self-explanatory. Choosing any of them except for Something Else results in a slider on the next screen that lets you decide how much space to allocate for the new Ubuntu installation.

Choosing Something Else opens the advanced partitioner.

From here, you can manually partition the drive, choose the file system, and assign mount points.

Next is the obligatory timezone selection, followed by keyboard layout.

Now it's time to fill out personal information. Inputting your full, real name in the Your name: field automatically populates the Your computer's name: field with the first name given and the motherboard or system model number of your PC. Likewise, the Pick a username: field defaults to the first name you entered in the Your name: field. However, all of these fields are independently configurable. A password must be chosen and confirmed (the strength of the password appears to the right of the Choose a password: field). Towards the bottom of the screen, there is the choice to Log in automatically or Require my password to login, as well as the option to Encrypt my home folder.

If your system has an integrated or plugged-in webcam, a new extra step appears during installation. Here you can choose to take a photo of yourself using the device. This photo is used as your avatar throughout your newly-installed copy of Ubuntu 11.10. Alternatively, you can simply pick one of the pre-existing avatars. The selection here is the usual offerings: astronaut, butterfly, cat, dog, chess pieces, and so on.

All there is left to do now is watch the installation slideshow and learn a little bit about Oneiric Ocelot in the process. The screenshot below contains all ten of the updated installation slides for anyone interested.

Upon completion, the installer either forces you to restart or gives you the option to Continue testing in the live environment.

If you do not want to go over the procedure for the Windows installer, feel free to skip the next page.

Wubi Installation Guide

For the past couple of releases, Canonical has supported the Windows installer for Ubuntu (Wubi), along with the usual CD and USB stick methods. Ease-of-use is certainly the biggest advantage to installing Ubuntu from inside Windows. Installation through Wubi makes the process of installing Ubuntu just like loading any other Windows-based application. Better still, using Wubi allows Ubuntu to be uninstalled just like any other Windows-based application. But first, let's go over the installation process.

Installing Wubi

Unlike the CD and USB installation method, Wubi is a small initial download of the executable installer, the actual Ubuntu installation files are downloaded after Wubi is launched. Wubi also makes the choice between 32-bit and 64-bit for you. This is determined based on your existing copy of Windows.

To begin installing Ubuntu from Windows, download and double-click the Wubi installer. The first page of the Wubi wizard contains all of the necessary options, instead of spreading them out over multiple pages like the standard installation.

First, choose the target installation drive, then the desired size of the Ubuntu installation. The next choice determines your desktop environment: regular Ubuntu with Unity, Kubuntu with KDE, Xubuntu with XFCE, or Mythbuntu. Language, user name, and password round out the choices you need to make. Click Install to immediately begin the download and installation process.

Once finished, you are prompted to reboot, either now or later.

When the PC reboots, you see the Windows boot loader screen, which should be familiar to anyone who's ever booted into Safe Mode. A new option for Ubuntu 11.10 now appears below the regular Windows options.

If you don't make any choices in the boot loader, Windows automatically boots after 10 seconds. Selecting Ubuntu boots into the Ubuntu 11.10 desktop.

Un-Installing Wubi

The procedure for un-installing Wubi and your Ubuntu partition is no different than un-installing anything else in Windows. First, boot into the Windows 7 installation. Click the Start menu and choose Control Panel. Under the Programs listing, select Uninstall a program. Scroll down the list until you see the entry for Ubuntu, select it, and then click the button for Uninstall/Change.

A window will open asking you to confirm the un-installation. Select Uninstall. In just a split-second the un-installation is completed. Then, click Finish.

The Windows 7 bootloader won't appear once you restart, and Windows will boot normally.

Unity 4.0 Overview

Oneiric Ocelot heralds the second incarnation of the Unity GUI in the desktop edition of Ubuntu, but it's actually version 4.0. Version 3.0 shipped with last April's Natty Narwhal, version 2.0 was included in the Netbook Edition of Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, and version 1.0 appeared in Ubuntu Light, the OEM-only instant-on companion OS.

While no functionality was lost between Natty's version of Unity and now, several features shifted to other areas of the UI. The three main elements of Unity are the Panel, Launcher, and Dash. This trinity make up the bones of Ubuntu's Unity GUI. The image below is a desktop map of Ubuntu 11.10.

Panel

The Unity Panel takes up two dozen pixels at the top of the screen. This Panel is akin to the upper panel from the GNOME 2 desktop, which was the default GUI in versions of Ubuntu before Natty Narwhal, along with countless other Linux distributions. This is where the System Tray is housed and Notifications appear.

Launcher

The Unity Launcher is the taskbar/dock that takes up the left side of the screen. To make the Windows analogy, the Launcher houses Start menu, the window list, and Quick Launch functionality.

Dash

Dash is essentially the Ubuntu Start menu. It houses shortcuts to everything from applications to operating system utilities to files and folders.

Each of these three elements and the features that comprise them are detailed on the next three pages.

The Unity Panel

The Panel resides along the upper edge of the screen, much like the top panel of pre-Natty Ubuntu and Mac OS X. The Ocelot Panel differs slightly from the Narwhal Panel, as it is no longer made up of three elements, but just two: the global menu and indicators.

First and foremost, the Panel lost the Dash button to the Launcher. This is not that big of a move. The Dash button is now just a dozen or so pixels lower than before. The only difference is blindly jamming the mouse to the upper-left corner of the screen and clicking no longer works for launching Dash. Anyone who has grown used to doing that needs some new habits.

While Oneiric retains Natty's controversial global menu, it shifts to the far-left edge of the Panel due to the missing Dash button. This places the window controls (specifically the close button) in the top-left corner of the screen. So, if you're in that aforementioned camp of cursor-jammers, you'll find yourself closing the foreground application instead.

Mail/Messaging

The mail/messaging indicator's position changes from being the last indicator before the time to being the first indicator in the strip. The contents of the mail/messaging indicator menu also change.

Mail and Broadcast accounts switched spots, with the entry for email now placed higher than social media. And there is no longer any Set Up before the entry for Chat. Messaging status can also be changed directly from this menu. This was previously part of the User indicator.

A new entry marked Clear is appended to the bottom of the messaging menu. Clicking on Clear removes the new item status from the indicator. However, new messages are still shown when the menu is opened.

Connection

The Connection indicator is represented by either up/down arrows or Wi-Fi bars, depending on whether you're using a wired or wireless connection. The menu has options for Wired/Wireless Network, the name of the connection, the option to Disconnect, a sub-menu for VPN Connections, a check box to Enable Networking, Connection Information, and an entry to Edit Connections.

Volume

The Volume indicator is only slightly changed in Ubuntu 11.10 in that it loses its orange color. We're not entirely sure why this was done; the orange slider made it really easy to see the volume level. Now you have to focus on the position of the slider handle. The handle also lost the three little grips, yielding a smoother look.

Clock/Calendar

The Clock indicator remains mostly the same. However, the Calendar lost its orange highlighting. Notably, the weather option is still absent in Oneiric.

User

The User indicator is now represented by your full name as opposed to your username. Now that all communications tools are moved to the Mail/Messaging indicator, the User menu is now solely for manipulating user accounts.

The User menu lists Switch User Account, Guest Session, each individual user account, Online Accounts, and User Accounts. The first three are self-explanatory, though we don't see the need for Switch User Account, since all users can be switched to directly. User Accounts opens the system settings dialog for user configuration.

The one entirely new entry, Online Accounts, is somewhat of a mystery. It only appears to accept Google accounts for now, and we're not sure how entering your Google account affects anything. Google+ does not appear in Gwibber, GMail is not in Thunderbird, Google Calendar doesn't add anything to the Calendar, and GoogleTalk doesn't show up in Empathy.

Logout/Settings

Because this menu now holds more than just logout features, the circular portion of the logout icon is now a gear.

System Settings was added to the bottom of the logout menu in Natty Narwhal, but in Oneiric it moves to the top. Below System Settings is an entry for Display, which handles screen resolution and other display options.

Below Display is an entry for Startup Applications, which allows you to add or remove the applications that launch at boot.

While the next entry is for the Update Manager, it is either labeled Software Up to Date or Updates Available, depending on current update status.

The Unity Launcher

First introduced with Natty Narwhal, the Launcher is Ubuntu's new left-hand taskbar/dock. This is one of Unity's most controversial UI elements due to its lack of customization options. However, the fundamentals are solid. The Launcher has all of the basics found in other taskbars and window lists. Moving from a worded task list to icons is nothing the top two proprietary OSes haven't already done. And, with the move toward widescreen aspect ratios, a vertical taskbar is appropriate for the modern desktop.

By default the Oneiric Ocelot Launcher holds shortcuts to Dash, the Home directory (via the Nautilus file manager), Mozilla Firefox, LibreOffice Writer, Calc, and Presenter, the Ubuntu Software Center, Ubuntu One, System Settings, Workspace Switcher, and the Trash. Let's go over the changes seen since the Natty Narwhal incarnation.

Dash

In Ubuntu 11.10, the Launcher now holds the button to activate Dash, whereas in Ubuntu 11.04 it was located in the Panel just above the Launcher. Aesthetically, this change is a plus. The bigger button is more evocative of a Start Menu, and it simply has more detail than it could in the Panel.

Ubuntu Software Center

The Ubuntu Software Center icon underwent a makeover. Strange as it may seem, this change also stirred some controversy. While we see nothing wrong with the icon itself, the predominantly orange color causes the Launcher button's background to become orange as well, completely obscuring a highly-detailed icon.

System Settings

Ubuntu 11.04 incorporated a unified System Settings menu, akin to the Windows Control Panel, Mac OS X System Preferences, and KDE's System Settings. In 11.04 the menu was found in the Panel's logout menu. In 11.10, it also receives a Launcher icon.

The categorical nature of the Natty System Settings menu remains, but the layout is now simpler.

There is no longer any need for a left-hand pane to navigate between categories. Some settings entries now open in the System Settings menu itself. Selecting All Settings in the window's navigation bar navigates back to the main System Settings menu. Other settings tools still open in new windows.

No More Lenses

While the Launcher has two new additions (Dash and System Settings), it also has two omissions: the Applications and Places Lenses.

Just like the Dash button was displaced from the Panel to the Launcher, Lenses have moved from the Launcher to Dash.

The Unity Dash

In Natty Narwhal, we felt that Dash was one of the weakest parts of Unity. Luckily, Dash received the most amount of work in Oneiric Ocelot.

Aesthetically, Ocelot's reconfigured Dash is a net gain. Instead of a simple dark transparency as the backdrop, Dash now obfuscates the underlying workspace.

Icons in Dash are now larger than in Natty Narwhal, showing off the Ubuntu icon set nicely. The larger icon size only decreases the amount of blank space, not the number of shortcuts that can be on-screen at once.

In Ubuntu 11.10, Dash has window controls. Close, minimize, and maximize buttons now reside in the upper left-hand corner when Dash is active. The close button is redundant, as clicking the Dash button once more still serves to close Dash as well. The min/max buttons let you change Dash from menu-style to fullscreen and vice versa, whereas going fullscreen in Natty was permanent until Dash was reopened.

The home screen still contains the same items: a semantic search bar powered by Zeitgeist, menu shortcuts to Media Apps, Internet Apps, More Apps, and Find Files, and application shortcuts for the default Web browser, photo manager, email client, and music manager.

Lenses

Instead of being accessed via the Launcher (like in Ubuntu 11.04), Lenses are now found within Dash. Below the menu and application shortcuts are icons for the the Home, Applications, Places, and Music Lens.

The addition of the Home Lens means you can now navigate back to the home screen. Leaving the home screen for another category in Ubuntu 11.04 meant having to close and reopen Dash, making it another of Natty's one-way trips.

The Application Lens opens the same screen as the More Apps menu shortcut from the home screen, and the old Applications Lens in Natty's Launcher. Apps are still grouped into three sections: MostFrequentlyUsed, Installed, and Apps Available for Download.

Filtering between app categories in Ubuntu 11.04 was done via an easily-overlooked drop-down menu on the far right edge of the search box. In 11.10 the drop-down has become large on-screen buttons along the right side of Dash. This change makes menu navigation more obvious to new users, reduces the amount of mouse clicks, and makes touch input much less error-prone than the drop-down. A good move all around. Also new to the Applications Lens is the ability to sort Apps Available for Download by star rating, using the same rating information from Ubuntu Software Center.

The Places Lens still has three sections: Recently Used, Downloads, and Folders. The Downloads section lists the contents of the Downloads folder, while Folders lists the contents of the Home directory. The Places Lens gains the ability to filter files by date Last modified and Size.

Finally, there is a new Music Lens which lists music files on your system by Song and Album. Selecting any of the songs listed in the Music Lens automatically opens Banshee to play the track. Keywords entered in the search box narrow down your music collection, and populate a third section: Available for Purchase. Clicking on an Available for Purchase track will open the Ubuntu One Music Store in Banshee. All results can be further filtered by decade and/or genre.

Ubuntu Software Center

New Look

The Ubuntu Software Center, underwent the most drastic interface change since its inception in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala (see our review here).

Like much of Ubuntu, the Software Center continues to evolve toward a Mac OS X-like clone.

While we don't necessarily disapprove of the OS X mimicry that has gone on in Ubuntu, this is one area we don't understand. FOSS projects like Ubuntu are often playing catch-up to the proprietary solutions like Windows and OS X. However, the Software Center is one area where Ubuntu was actually first.

New Options

Ubuntu 11.10 now has the ability to sync installed applications amongst multiple computers. This essentially lets you reinstall previously purchased software and previously installed free applications.

New Content

The Ubuntu 11.10 Software Center puts high-quality applications front and center. At the time of release, a massive banner for the award-winning arcade platformer Braid was displayed on the home screen. There is also a box for Top Rated software, which contains VLC, Blender, FileZilla, 7-Zip, and Hedgewars, among others.

The list of For Purchase software has also increased. It now includes a number of games, such as the aforementioned Braid, Crossover (which allows you to run certain Windows titles on Linux), and even OilRush (the newly-released naval RTS/tower defense game powered by the Unigine engine).

Also new to the Software Center are digital magazines. Ubuntu User, Linux Pro, Linux Magazine, and ADMIN are now available in digital form.

Ubuntu One

Ubuntu One first launched as a beta product available for Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackelope) in April of '09. Ever since, Canonical's cloud sync and storage service has improved with each subsequent release. There are a handful of new features in the Oneiric iteration of Ubuntu One, all of which coalesce to make the service a truly compelling solution.

The basic file sync plan for Ubuntu One is free of charge, providing 5 GB of cloud storage. Optional contact and note sync is also available in the basic free package. An additional 20 GB of online storage can be purchased at a cost of $2.99 per month, or $29.99 per year.

While users have always been able to store and sync their music (just like any other type of file), Ubuntu One now offers music streaming. Music files contained in the Ubuntu One folder can be streamed for playback on other systems connected to Ubuntu One (PC or Android/iOS devices). The new music streaming package comes with an extra 20 GB of storage and costs $3.99 on a monthly basis, or $39.99 for a year of service.

The most complete way to interact with Ubuntu One is via the website. Because the Web interface is platform-independent and provides full control of all Ubuntu One features, let's go over the Web client before getting into the Ubuntu, Windows, and mobile clients.

Dashboard

Upon logging in to the Ubuntu One website, the Dashboard tab appears. From the Dashboard, you can quickly see the amount of storage currently being used, the number of contacts and notes, service plan options, and help topics.

Files

From the Files tab of the Ubuntu One website, files can be uploaded or deleted, new folders can be created, and folders can be shared with other users. Certain files can even be published online. Images, for instance, receive a URL that can be given out to others.

Music

The Music tab only contains information and controls if you are a paying subscriber of the Music service. We're not, so we can't tell you how well (or poorly) the service works.

Contacts

The Contacts tab of the Ubuntu One website has the option to edit contacts, add new contacts, and merge duplicates. Contacts are automatically filed alphabetically. The alphabet strips along the top and bottom of the Contacts tab allows you to browse through your contacts. Contacts can also be imported and synchronized from supported email clients (Evolution and Thunderbird), mobile devices (Android and iOS), and even Facebook (via Facebook Connect).

Notes

The Notes tab of the Ubuntu One website allows notes to be created, viewed, trashed, or edited.

Any changes to files, music, contacts, and notes are reflected throughout all connected systems, both on the Ubuntu One Web site as well as other clients and supported applications.

Along with a local control panel, which mirrors much of the functionality found on the Ubuntu One website, Ubuntu users have access to local file manager, music manager, email client, and desktop notes integration.

Ubuntu One Control Panel

The Ubuntu One control panel displays the amount of storage space associated with your account (and how much of it is being used), sync status, and the option to connect or disconnect the current system. Below is a screenshot collage showing each of the four tabs in the Ubuntu One control panel.

The Account tab holds links to manage account settings, modify the service plan, and get support.

Folder sync is managed via the Cloud Folders tab of the Ubuntu One control panel. Folders other than the Ubuntu One folder, which have been synced on other machines, can be downloaded to the current machine. Local copies then automatically stay synchronized, just like the Ubuntu One folder.

The Devices tab lists all of the devices associated with the Ubuntu One account, and it houses the options to show notifications, limit bandwidth, and remove each device.

The Services tab is where file and contact synchronization service is enabled or disabled on the current system.

Nautilus

An Ubuntu One folder is created in the user home directory. This folder is synchronized to the cloud, and changes are reflected on all other devices running Ubuntu One clients. Other folders on a connected PC can also be synced to the cloud via a right-click menu option in the Nautilus file manager.

Banshee

Banshee, the default music manager of Ubuntu 11.10, contains an entry for the Ubuntu One Music Store in the Online Media sidebar. You can search for, preview, and buy music. Tracks purchased through the Ubuntu One Music Store are automatically stored in the Ubuntu One directory and synced to other Ubuntu One-connected devices. Optional streaming requires an Ubuntu One Music subscription.

Thunderbird

While contact sync has been available for the Evolution personal information manager for some time, Oneiric adds contact sync to the new default email client, Mozilla Thunderbird. Contacts already in Thunderbird can be exported to Ubuntu One, and contacts from Ubuntu One can be imported to Thunderbird. In our testing, we were unable to configure contact sync with Thunderbird even after installing the required packages. The necessary options to engage cloud sync in Thunderbird never appeared.

Tomboy

Ubuntu comes pre-loaded with the Tomboy Notes application, which has the capability to synchronize notes via Ubuntu One. To enable note sync, open Tomboy, open the Edit menu, select Preferences, and switch to the Synchronization tab. Under the Service drop-down menu, select Tomboy Web. Firefox may open the Ubuntu One website if the local Ubuntu One client isn't already logged in. Notes will automatically sync to other versions of Tomboy on Ubuntu One-enabled PCs as well as the website.

Now out of beta, the Ubuntu One Windows client mirrors its native Ubuntu counterpart. Just like in Ubuntu, Ubuntu One for Windows creates an Ubuntu One folder inside the user directory. All files and folders inside the Ubuntu One folder are synced across all other machines running Ubuntu One. Also like the Ubuntu client, other folders can be syncronized with Ubuntu One, but unlike in Ubuntu, there is no right-click option in Windows Explorer. Additional folders can be synced via the Folders tab of the Ubuntu One control panel.

Also just like the Ubuntu client, an Ubuntu One icon now appears in the system tray. It provides access to various Ubuntu One controls and notifications regarding file sync status.

Ubuntu One apps are available for mobile devices running Android version 2.1 and up, or iOS version 3.1 and up. There are separate apps for the standard file syncing features, and another for the paid music streaming service. The apps can be found in the Android Market or App Store under the names Ubuntu One Files and Ubuntu One Music.

Although the Ubuntu One website only mentions iPhone and iPad, we tested the Ubuntu One Files app for iOS on a current-generation iPod Touch. Everything worked as stated. As soon as the app was installed, we were asked to automatically upload the contents of the Camera Roll to Ubuntu One. After a few minutes, my test files were available on the iPod Touch, and my Camera Roll photos were on Ubuntu One.

Contrasted to its biggest competitor, Dropbox only offers two gigabytes of free storage and charges ten bucks a month for 50 GB of extra space. So far, though, Ubuntu One leaves Mac and Blackberry users out in the cold, whereas Dropbox includes these folks. Dropbox lacks the complimentary features like contact and note sync, though, as well as optional music streaming.

Due to equal control panels for the Ubuntu and Windows clients, mobile integration, and the platform-agnostic website, Ubuntu One is a great option for people seeking a good cloud storage option. If you completely divorce Ubuntu One from Ubuntu, it's still a solid service in its own right. If Canonical would support Mac users, Ubuntu One (as a standalone product) would be the best cloud service option in existence today.

uTouch

uTouch is Unity's multi-touch gesture language. The gestures haven't changed since Ubuntu 11.04. So, for a complete explanation of uTouch gestures, see our Natty review. In that article we used an Apple Magic Trackpad to give uTouch a spin. For this review, we switch to an actual touchscreen.

The Fujitsu T580 convertible tablet PC packs an Ubuntu-friendly N-Trig DuoSense touchscreen, making it perfect for going hands-on with uTouch, though the setup was not without its quirks.

As a convertible tablet PC, the T580 has traditional keyboard/mouse inputs, but we went about this part of the review completely in tablet mode. In order to expose any touch-only shortcomings in Unity, we interacted with Ubuntu 11.10 as is if there was no mouse, keyboard, or even stylus.

LightDM Login

Our first concern was logging in. Luckily, LightDM holds accessibility options in the upper right-hand corner, including the all-important on-screen keyboard.

Unfortunately, the lock screen does not.

Planning on using Ubuntu on a slate? Deactivate the screen lock (via Screen in System Settings) or plan on a hard reset every time the unit goes idle.

Unity Panel

Tapping the small Panel indicators and dropdown menu items requires an extra bit of concentration. You need to be ultra aware of what pixel your fingertip actually touches. This makes interacting with the Panel indicators a frustrating affair.

Using the global menu with only touch input isn't impossible like we initially thought in our review of Ubuntu 11.04. Since the Fujitsu T580 is a tablet PC, there is an on-screen cursor. Tapping an empty area of the Panel places the cursor on the Panel, thus executing a hover to expose the foreground application's global menu. However, as with the indicator menus, global menu dropdowns also require extra care to avoid mis-taps.

But the worst Panel element for touchscreens only appears on maximized applications. The tiny round window controls in the top-left corner of the Panel are nearly impossible to use properly. Because the new placement is in the corner where the Panel meets the Dash button in the Launcher, accidents are irritating and plentiful.

Unity Launcher

Moving the Dash button from the Panel to the Launcher was definitely a good move for touchscreens. The Launcher Dash button is significantly larger than the old Panel Dash button, which essentially eliminates tapping accidents. However, the uTouch gesture for right click is a two-finger tap, and Launcher entries are much too small for two fingers. This essentially makes all the Launcher menus unavailable on touch-only input devices.

Unity Dash

Although Lenses appear larger than the Panel indicators, they prove to be as difficult to select. Likewise, the collapsible menus to See more/fewer results can be difficult to tap. Simply placing these items inside buttons, instead of relying on tapping the actual icons/words, would make this issue go away.

When the number of app icons outgrow the amount of screen space, an extremely thin scrollbar appears for scrolling through apps. Unfortunately, actually grabbing the scrollbar is difficult (close to impossible when Dash is maximized). Worse, Dash does not seem to recognize the uTouch gesture for two-finger scrolling. This makes using Dash as a start menu nearly impossible with finger input alone.

Windows

As mentioned previously, the window controls don't do well with finger taps in the global menu, and they're no better in the window title bar. But instead of being too close to the global menu entires and Dash button, they are simply too close to each other. To further illustrate the issue, the screenshot to the right shows how large the actual active area around the close button is within a yellow square. That square is 18 pixels high by 20 pixels wide. We contrasted this versus Apple's iOS spec and Windows Phone 7's recommended range for button size.

These window controls are designed for the mouse, not touchscreens, plain and simple.

One nice change to uTouch since Natty is in Window Manipulation Mode (activated by a three-finger tap on a window). It now recognizes screen edges, which allows you to snap windows from Window Manipulation Mode.

Applications

Some applications, such as the redesigned Nautilus file manager, System Settings, Thunderbird email client, and Ubuntu Software Center all make using finger input slightly easier. However, most other applications have not been modified for Unity, and are no better (or worse) on a touchscreen than your random Windows application.

The hidden scrollbars are again a source of frustration. It's bad enough that they rely on hover to reveal the pill-shaped scrollbar, but since they occupy only a few pixels on the edge of a window, tapping them is a ridiculous challenge. It's essentially impossible when windows are maximized, with the scroll strip on the very edge of the screen. While traditional scrollbars are no picnic either, at least they are technically usable.

Overall, using your own hands as the primary input for Ubuntu 11.10 is not realistic. When using an actual touchscreen as the input instead of a multi-touch clickpad, we were able to expose a few serious issues in uTouch, and expanded upon some of the predicted issues with the Unity interface. Between Dash not recognizing the two-finger scroll gesture and the two-finger tap not working for the Launcher, the uTouch gesture language has a couple of rough edges that we could not have seen using the Apple Magic Trackpad. The small size of the Panel, including the global menu, makes that entire component of Unity a hassle for tap navigation. The window controls exemplify the sizing and spacing issues. While the hidden scrollbars and lack of a pervasive on-screen keyboard round out why Ubuntu is far from ready for use on slates.

Oneiric: The Dreamy

Unity Panel: Indicators

The indicators and their menus are cleaner and better organized than in any other previous version of Ubuntu. While it's a small change, logically grouped and labeled menus cut down on the learning curve.

Unity Launcher: Icons

Launcher icons can now display information about the application. Examples include the Software Update icon showing the number of available updates, and the Thunderbird icon showing the number of unread emails in your inbox.

Dynamic icons are also not confined to the Launcher. When installing applications in the Ubuntu Software Center, a Progress button appears in the toolbar. This button shows how many applications are currently being installed, and the icon rotates when installations are in progress.

Unity Dash

The inability to move back and forth between Dash screens was one of our biggest complaints about the Natty Narwhal Dash. Luckily, backwards navigation is now possible in the Oneiric Ocelot Dash. The integration of Lenses into Dash also helps to clean up the Launcher.

Ubuntu Software Center

The new focus on popular applications (FOSS or otherwise) is a step in the right direction for Ubuntu. While long-time Linux users and free software advocates may scoff at the appearance of proprietary commercial software, the goal of this distribution is mainstream end-user adoption, and the masses flock to the platform offering the titles they want.

Ubuntu One

Ubuntu One is a fantastic cloud storage service, whether you use Ubuntu or not. If you're going to use Ubuntu you would be nuts to not take advantage of Ubuntu One.

Details

Sometimes it's the small stuff that makes a difference. In Ubuntu 11.10, there are many little details that serve to enhance the Unity experience that launched in Ubuntu 11.04.

The transparency of Dash, and obfuscation of anything behind it are a plus for the overall look of Unity.

Another little tweak that has gone mostly unnoticed is the addition of a camera shutter sound and flash when taking a screenshot, much like on a smartphone.

Oneiric: The Nightmarish

Unity Panel: Global Menu

When Unity debuted in April's Ubuntu 11.04, it came with a controversial Mac OS X-style global menu to replace the traditional menu bar. While the global menu's behavior changes slightly, it is not for the better. In Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal), Reviewed In Depth, we used the screenshot below to demonstrate how a global menu can cause confusion when using multiple instances of the same application.

Notice that the window controls for the currently-focused window are highlighted while the others go dark. Although we felt this wasn't a good enough solution, it was something. Unfortunately, in Ubuntu 11.10 all window controls are highlighted. The screenshot below depicts the same situation as the one above, but in Oneiric:

Now there is no way to tell which window is active, and which global menu is being manipulated. In order to use the correct menus, you first have to click on the window you wish manipulate just to be sure you're on the right one.

Unity Dash

While the appearance and navigation of Dash are improved since Ubuntu 11.04, there is still no meaningful way of customizing it. What we want to see in future versions on Unity is a customizable home screen of user-defined shortcuts and applications, or simply a Favorites Lens. A way to add custom launchers, which was present in GNOME 2, is also remarkably missing from Unity.

uTouch

Two uTouch gestures fail to work in the real world: two-finger scroll in Dash and two-finger tap in the Launcher. The sizing of menus in the Panel and the window controls are insufficient for touchscreen-only control.

Even though we exposed the global menu's reliance on hover as Unity's Achilles heel on slates in our last review, it still exists, hover-reliance and all. In a purely touch environment, there would be no cursor to position over on-screen elements, therefore, no hover.

Details

While there are many positives in the attention to detail in Oneiric, there are just as many negatives for the lack of it.

While the obfuscation transparency of the new Dash is certainly pretty, look closer at Dash's outline.

What's going on with all these lines? Don't they seem overly intricate, and just unnecessary? Now look at the Dash window controls:

Speaking of choppy on-screen elements, take a look at some of the application icons in Dash and the new Ubuntu Software Center:

The larger icon size in Dash and the Ubuntu Software Center emphasize some of the downright ghastly third-party app icons.

Alright, so that's Ubuntu 11.10. Now let's see how it performs versus Windows 7.

Test System Setup And Methodology

Benchmark Test System

X-Plat (cross-platform) Benchmark Suite v1.0

Methodology

Specific information on individual benchmark settings, setup, and methodology can be found above the corresponding benchmark on the following pages. Both operating systems were installed and fully updated on January 20^th, 2012.

uTouch Review System

Benchmark Results: Start And Stop Times

Boot, Shut Down, Hibernate, And Wake Times

This test is timed using a stopwatch that measures in milliseconds. We ran five iterations of each action in the following sequence: boot, hibernate, wake, shut down. The clock for boot and wake times starts when the OS bootloader takes over from BIOS operations. Boot timing ends when the operating system desktop appears, while wake timing ends when prompted to log in. Hibernate timing begins when the hibernate command is issued, and shut down timing begins when the shut down command is issued. Both hibernate and shut down timing ends when the test system powers off.

Ubuntu beats Windows 7 in boot time by about one second, but Microsoft doubles that lead over Linux in wake time. Ubuntu enters hibernation a fraction of a second before Windows 7, but Windows shuts down more than two seconds before Ubuntu. The overall winner here is Windows, though not by a noticeable margin.  

Benchmark Results: File Copy Time

The file copy tests are initiated and timed via the OS command line interface (CLI). In order to get a realistic measurement, a reboot is necessary between each iteration. The test files include the ISO image of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and a folder containing 275 high-def wallpapers.

HDD to HDD

The HDD to HDD test is run five times.

Ubuntu and its default ext4 filesystem manage to copy the test files from one location on the hard disk to another three seconds faster than Window 7 and the NTFS filesystem.

HDD to USB

An 8 GB Kingston DataTraveler 100 G2 USB thumb drive was used in a USB 2.0 port on the front panel of our test system for the USB tests. The thumb drive is formatted with the FAT32 filesystem. Due to close scores between iterations and the long duration of this test, we only need to run two iterations for the HDD to USB times.

When copying from the hard drive to an USB thumb drive, Windows takes the lead by over a minute.

USB to HDD

USB to HDD is performed three times.

The results of USB to HDD file copy operations are a draw between Ubuntu and Windows, with Ubuntu 11.10 technically holding an insignificant 300 millisecond lead.

The most significant benchmark on this page is the hard drive to hard drive test, since this action happens constantly during real-world use. The lead goes to Ubuntu.

Benchmark Results: Archiving

Like the file copy times, archiving is also timed using the operating system CLI. Both OSes are using the latest stable 7-Zip libraries for the archiving tests. The test folder contains 15 files totalling 334.6 MB. All archiving tests are run five times.

Windows compresses our test folder into a .zip archive in six and a half seconds, while Ubuntu takes eleven. Windows also extracts zipped files about one-half second faster than Ubuntu, 2.3 seconds to 1.8.

The winners are reversed when using the preferred archive format of the Linux world: tar.gz. Ubuntu beats Windows in compression by nine seconds (12.5 versus 21.5). Oneiric Ocelot also extracts tar.gz archives faster than Windows, 2.2 seconds to three (respectively).

The archiving tests result in a stalemate. Both operating systems excel with their respective default archive format, and both formats have different user bases. Developers might run into tar.gz files often, while most regular folks more commonly encounter ZIP files.

Benchmark Results: Multimedia

We used the CLI edition of HandBrake version 0.9.5 on both operating systems. We only need to run two iterations of HandBrake due to the long duration and close results between runs.

Ubuntu 11.10 destroys Windows 7 at multi-threaded video transcoding in HandBrake. Ubuntu does the job in just under six minutes, while Windows takes just over seven.

The 64-bit version of LAME 3.99.3 was used for both OSes. This test is also run from the CLI. The input test file is a 542.1 MB wav, and the output bitrate of the MP3 is set to 160. Only two iterations of LAME are needed.

Windows 7 makes a comeback in audio encoding, beating Ubuntu by the same margins that Linux achieved in HandBrake.

RawTherapee

We use the 64-bit version of RawTherapee 3.0.0 for Linux and 3.0.1 for Windows. We use ten image files of various raw formats as the test files for this benchmark. Both 8-bit JPEG and 16-bit PNG output is tested. Timing begins when the start command is pressed on the process queue, and ends when the process queue is cleared. RawTherapee is timed using a stopwatch that measures in milliseconds, and three iterations are performed.

Oneiric Ocelot shows significant gains over Windows 7 in raw image processing. The Linux distro is able to convert the test files to 8-bit JPEGs over ten seconds faster than Windows. Ubuntu's lead almost doubles for 16-bit PNG output.

Benchmark Results: System

The 32-bit version of GeekBench 2.2.3 is used to evaluate both operating systems. GeekBench tests CPU and memory performance to produce a composite performance score.

Ubuntu 11.04 slams Windows 7 in the GeekBench scores, beating the proprietary operating system by nearly 1700 points.

POV-Ray

POV-Ray version 2.6 is used in Ubuntu, while we benchmark with version 2.62 in Windows. We only need two runs of POV-Ray's built-in benchmark to generate these numbers.

Windows 7 takes the lead in the POV-Ray benchmark, beating Ubuntu 11.10 by nearly three and a half minutes.

Blender

The 64-bit version of Blender 2.61 is used on both operating systems. The test file is the Blender Render Benchmark v0.2. Full-sample 16x anti-aliasing is enabled, and testing is performed using one, two, and four threads. We run two iterations of the Blender benchmark per thread.

Ubuntu has a slight (but noticeable) lead over Windows in all three variations: four seconds using a single thread, three seconds with two threads, and two seconds with four threads.

Benchmark Results: Unigine, AMD And Nvidia

The Unigine benchmarks are run with full detail settings at a resolution of 1920x1080, with anti-aliasing and sound disabled. We added a comparable Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 to our regular AMD Radeon HD 4870 to reflect the relative state of both vendor-supplied Linux drivers. The Unigine benchmarks are run in Windows with both OpenGL and DirectX. The 64-bit version of Heaven is used. Ambient occlusion and tessellation are both disabled in Heaven. Two iterations of each Unigine benchmark are run.

AMD

Windows with DirectX tops the Sanctuary benchmarks, achieving 44 FPS, but the Windows OpenGL-based score is significantly lower at 35 FPS. Ubuntu lands right in the middle, hitting 40 FPS.

OpenGL for Windows and Ubuntu practically tie for first in Tropics at 42 FPS, while DirectX only achieves 33 FPS. Windows with OpenGL pulls ahead in Heaven with nearly 47 FPS. Ubuntu places second at 40 FPS, with Windows' DirectX score pulling in less than 37 FPS.

Nvidia

The FPS scores are all lower with the Nvidia card on both operating systems, though the placing order remains much more uniform. Windows with DirectX takes the lead by a few frames per second over OpenGL in each benchmark, followed by a few frames less in Ubuntu.

Windows 7 is the clear winner of the Unigine benchmarks, with DirectX winning it for Nvidia and OpenGL showing surprisingly well on the AMD solution.

Benchmark Results: Games, AMD And Nvidia

All games are run three times with full details enabled at a resolution of 1920x1080.

AMD

The performance of Doom 3 in Ubuntu 11.10 is significantly higher than Windows 7. The placing is reversed in Prey, as Windows establishes a 14-frame lead over Oneiric Ocelot. Ubuntu fights back in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars with a 30 FPS advantage.

Nvidia

With the Nvidia card installed, Windows outperforms Ubuntu in Doom 3 by about 35 FPS. The frame rates are higher in Prey compared to AMD's board, but Windows holds onto its lead over Ubuntu. Performance in Quake Wars drops with the GTX 260, but Ubuntu maintains its victory over Windows by roughly the same margins seen on AMD's Radeon HD 4870. 

The results in native commercial 3D games are a draw. Ubuntu takes Quake Wars, Windows takes Prey, and Dooms 3 hands Linux a win with the AMD card installed, while Windows 7 favors the Nvidia board. The big surprise is how much better Ubuntu scores with the Radeon.

Overall, though, the fact that we're using three relatively ancient titles to test both operating environments is most telling. Linux is still not a viable platform for gaming, even if we are able to convey a rough idea of 3D performance in it. As a result, our benchmarks are largely academic.

Benchmark Analysis: Windows Versus Linux

The following table groups the benchmarks into categories, lists the winner of each test, and indicates if the victory was by a significant margin or not.

Results

By category, Ubuntu leads with three wins (File Copy Times, Multimedia, and System), while Windows has the upper hand in none. On a per-test basis, Ubuntu wins 11 out of 19 tests and Windows wins eight. Of those, Ubuntu holds six significant victories over Windows' five. Any way you want to cut it, Ubuntu 11.10 beats Windows 7 in cross-platform performance testing.

Analysis

The speedier HDD to HDD file copy times are a major victory for Linux. Although the scale of scores in this test are fairly small, file copy operations from one section of the hard drive to another are very common, and Ubuntu displays a proportional advantage over Windows. Moreover, the notable win favoring Ubuntu over Windows in Geekbench was unexpected. The penguin's victory in gaming with an AMD graphics solution was surprising in two ways. First, Nvidia has long offered more frequently-updated Linux drivers. And second, using the AMD card allowed Ubuntu to actually beat Windows in gaming performance, albeit in very old games.

The Oneiric Ocelot Awakens

Oneiric In The Grand Scheme Of Things

Canonical may have played more fast and loose when it came to pushing features and breaking things in this release compared to others. After all, Oneiric Ocelot is the last stop before the very first LTS release with Unity.

Oneiric adds backwards navigation to Dash, which was one of four big negatives in Natty. The other three were a non-configurable Dash, auto-hide behavior of the Launcher, and the global menu. The Launcher will be configurable in the next release, and the global menu may be dealt with via the HUD. Unfortunately, we've seen no motion towards easily-configurable Lenses.

Although uTouch didn't work out when the proverbial rubber met the road, it still offers a pleasant set of gesture controls. The two-finger scroll in Dash can be fixed by simply adding a decent-sized scollbar to Dash, and the two-finger tap for right-click menus in the Launcher can be switched to a double-tap, or tap and hold.

Support services received the most significant improvements in this release. And that makes sense when we think about it. The Ubuntu Software Center's continued push to become a retail app store and the enhanced Ubuntu One cloud service are both direct revenue streams for Canonical.

GNOME Shell has yet to attract any competitive end-user distros, and Mint is in a transitional phase until version 13. Right now, Unity isn't any more disadvantaged than the other desktop Linux GUIs.

Benchmarks Versus Window

That Ubuntu beat Windows 7 in any of our performance benchmarks (especially when it came to 3D) was not expected, and we're happy to see just how much potential this free platform has in that regard. Unfortunately, it mostly remains just that: potential. While Ubuntu 11.10 has a slight lead over Windows 7 in a number of different tests, our suite is limited to what Ubuntu can run, which is indicative of the bigger picture.

Put it this way: Ubuntu can't play Crysis.

And it can't run Battlefield 3, Photoshop, or stream through Netflix, just to name a few examples. The fact remains that Linux loses because fewer people use it, and fewer people use it because everyone else already uses Windows. It's a vicious, if not ironic, circle.

Developers need to get paid, so developers tend to develop software for the platform with the highest number of potential customers. As far as the average computer user is concerned, Windows wins. It looks like Ballmer called it: “Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, develop...Yes!"

The Takeaway

Ubuntu 11.10 is a nice upgrade to Ubuntu 11.04, although the new interface has yet to achieve full feature parity with the classic GNOME 2 UI. Unity is better than it was in Natty. However, Oneiric is in no way ready for touchscreen devices. Technically, Ubuntu 11.10 tops Windows 7 in several areas of benchmark performance, but when it comes to the accessibility of more mainstream applications, don't give up your Windows installation just yet.

Ubuntu is a great fit for users who are only concerned with Web browsing. Netflix Instant junkies need not apply. Virtual immunity to viruses, free cloud storage, automatic updates, in-the-background backups, and social network integration on the desktop just sweeten the pot for this crowd. Casual indie games available in the Ubuntu Software Center, music from the Ubuntu One Music Store, and the Ubuntu One mobile clients serve to make Ubuntu more appealing to the growing demographic of smartphone users as well. A slick-looking interface and familiar Web applications like Firefox and Thunderbird also ease the transition from Windows.

Linus Torvalds, who will forever be known as the father of Linux, is set to become an American citizen.

The Finland-born programmer in the past has never expressed much enthusiasm for obtaining citizenship, despite living in the U.S. for at least a dozen years now and currently residing in Portland, Oregon with his family.

It seems the main thing that's driving Torvalds to grab that extra passport is so that he can play a part in the voting system. Without being a citizen, he's unable to vote – and that's one thing that he's always craved.

In a blog post he wrote almost two years ago, he said, "So I'm a stranger in a strange land, and seldom more so than when voting season is upon us.

"Most of the rest of the time I can kind of ignore it. … But being reminded about not being able to vote is actually the much smaller thing: much more than that, election season reminds you about what an odd place the US is."

Torvalds continued, "That's when you also notice that the whole US voting system is apparently expressly designed to be polarizing (winner-take-all electoral system etc). To somebody from Finland, that looks like a rather obvious and fundamental design flaw. In Finland, government is quite commonly a quilt-work of different parties, and the "rainbow coalition" of many many parties working together was the norm for a long time. And it seems to result in much more civilized political behaviour.

"So you couple a polarizing voting system with a campaign that has to make simplified black-and-white statements, and what do you get? Ugly, is what you get.

"Most of the time I really like living in the US. But voting season sometimes makes you wonder."

With his criticism out of the way, he's ready to take part and help make a difference. He clearly understands that every vote matters, and he's taking action. In a message to a mailing list, he revealed that he was undergoing voter registration and socsec updates, now that he's a U.S. citizen.

_{(Source: The Register.)}