OStatic

Today, the Linux Foundation released its updated study of mainline kernel development. The report examines the slight variations in release frequency, the lines of code submitted, deleted and modified since the April 2008 study, new trends in subsystem patch signoff, and the remarkable diversity (and, perhaps, adversity outside the realm of kernel development) of the companies contributing to the kernel.

While the study is obviously pertinent to those working in kernel development, it covers so many aspects of the development process that everyone working with open source software -- developers, community managers, and even non-IT managerial roles -- can find something directly related to their positions.

It's also (perhaps surprisingly) engaging reading for those interested in the Linux kernel but a little foggy on how the kernel relates to the rest of the operating environment or how changes are approved and applied to the kernel tree.

Video editing software for Linux is, to put it nicely, quirky. Some editors only work with specific file formats, some work nicely for basic video editing but can be wildly temperamental on seemingly identical machines, and some are powerful to the point of overkill for the average user.

PiTiVi is a non-linear video editor based on the GStreamer multimedia framework. After hearing some positive comments, and seeing development efforts really picking up on the project, I decided to take it for a spin. It is very much in development, but not in the traditional sense. It feels very stable, and the interface isn't confusing or a hindrance. It is, at the moment, very basic when it comes to functionality. There are not plugins or extensions currently available (though feature requests are welcome). However, the project has taken the time to plan its path forward -- and with the basics down, I can't see why real headway won't come quickly.

The Ubuntu Project may have just unleashed a legion of Jackalopes upon the world, but is well aware that time waits for no animal, real or cryptozoological. This is why the first alpha version of Ubuntu 9.10, the Karmic Koala, is now available for brave testers everywhere.

Keep in mind that this is the first alpha, just opened for development. This means not only that it should be kept far, far away from production machines, but that many of the nifty new features that will be in the final Karmic release aren't there at all yet, never mind perfected. Currently, however, there is a new kernel based on the 2.6.30 release, and the latest development version (2.27.1) of the GNOME desktop environment. Applications are being updated (and added) quickly, and there's definitely a wild ride (and a lot of bug-squashing fun) ahead for interested testers.

In my travels, I discovered David Zeuthen's informative peek at DeviceKit (and its use with and in lieu of HAL) in the upcoming release of Fedora 11.

Zeuthen says that while the new storage device handling stack is implemented in Fedora's GNOME 2.26 desktop configuration, it should be appearing in its entirety in the upstream GNOME 2.28 release. The DeviceKit daemon modernizes and adds to many of the features and functions of the tried and true HAL daemon.

I've noticed, as I get older, time seems to go exponentially faster. Unfortunately, this meant high school lasted an eternity, and I'm burning through my thirties at warp speed. Some events make me more aware of this than others -- it seems like it was only last week that Fedora 10 made its first mark upon the world.

But no, another release cycle has nearly come full circle, and today the Fedora Project announced the Preview Release of Fedora 11 (codenamed Leonidas). This preview will be followed by a release candidate (scheduled for a May 12 appearance), with the final version hitting the streets on May 26.

So what new features can we expect to see in Fedora 11?

Late yesterday afternoon, Canonical let loose the release candidate disk images for Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope). Canonical warns that while a release candidate is about as stable as one can get with a testing release, it is still a testing release, and users should hold off installing Jaunty on essential systems.

The good news, of course, is that those clamoring to install Jaunty on their essential systems haven't long to wait. The finalized, stable Jaunty release will appear on mirrors worldwide April 23rd.

Churning out an x.0 software release must be akin to becoming a new parent -- the event exudes promise, joy, and hope, yet is simultaneously humbling, exhausting, and terror-inducing. While it isn't realistically possible to plan out detailed roadmaps for your children's long-term future, it's crucial to do so for a software project. While whether the presence of a carefully planned roadmap makes progress more or less stressful depends largely on who you ask and at what point you're asking, a project with clearly outlined goals and direction has a much better shot at sustained developer interest and solid releases.

Many projects grapple with this, and as GNOME pushes towards its 3.0 milestone, the GNOME Release Team talks about the voyage to this point -- and how best to travel forward from where it currently stands.

Yesterday, the openSUSE Project announced that it will move to a fixed release schedule after November's release of openSUSE 11.2.

openSUSE developer Stephan Kulow said that the developers are considering an eight month release cycle at the moment, as they feel successfully producing an up-to-date and solid release in this time frame is more realistic than a six month cycle. However, the development team invites feedback on the openSUSE-Project mailing list.

I have a confession to make. Sometimes, even when you've been trained in the intricacies of searching every database known to man, you can still outright miss really obvious things in a simple Google search. When I was fresh out of library school, I resurrected one of the library's catalog terminals, an old Bondi Blue iMac, with Yellow Dog Linux and KDE. I spent days locking down the KDE desktop, so that if the browser displaying the catalog was somehow shut down (or crashed) it would automatically restart. I spent a few more days making sure that most patrons couldn't access anything but the browser (never underestimate the general public, or the havoc that stray keystrokes, however innocent, can bring).

It wasn't that the KDE Kiosk tool didn't exist at the time. I simply missed it. Yes, I was a bad systems librarian for missing it, and then spending days (happily, but still...) locking down the desktop and reinventing the wheel.

With the release of KDE 4, Kiosk sadly fell into a state of limbo. Now, however, KDE developer Ian Geiser wants to bring it back to life on KDE 4.

Every year or two, some hardware component comes down the line that truly takes my breath away. On the past few occasions, these bits of circuitry have all used open source software in some capacity, though whether that's due to my tendency to notice such things, or a measurable increase in hardware developments that feature open source technology is uncertain.

TMCnet introduced me to this year's take your breath away device, the Marvell SheevaPlug. This plug computer (it's designed to hang comfortably from a household wall socket) features a 1.22 GHz Kirkwood (Sheeva-based) processor, 512 MB DRAM, and a Gigabit ethernet connection. In addition to its onboard 512 MB Flash storage, the plug has a USB port for external storage. The hardware, the multiple Linux distributions it currently supports, and the API framework (called Raindrop ) that is currently being developed for running third party applications -- are all open source.

Why? Because, as Marvell's product manager, Raja Mukhopadhyay told TMCnet, ...[open source] is what we see going forward.