OStatic

The Linux Foundation recently posted a video interview with Linus Torvalds that took place at September's Linux Kernel Summit. Torvalds, the man behind the Linux kernel, and the project's chief coordinator, is always interesting to hear and the ten minute video is well worth watching.

Torvalds' insights range from disarmingly truthful (email is a fine method for communicating, but the Summit is needed because it's good to see people) to keenly introspective (kernel and userland issues are rough, because no one sees things in quite the same terms).

This week, the Linux kernel and Intel developer teams announced they had discovered the probable cause of the e1000e bug. This bug was particularly destructive, as it would corrupt the EEPROM/NVM of some Intel ethernet adapter chipsets, completely disabling them. Though this issue was patched to prevent damage to these components prior to the 2.6.27 kernel's final release, the actual reason for the corruption was unclear.

On Friday, Linux kernel 2.6.27 was released, introducing a number of new features and enhancements. Most notably, this release incorporates fully the (now infamous) patched Intel e1000e driver.

However, there are several other interesting and welcome additions to this kernel release.

A bug surfaced recently in the pre-release versions of the 2.6.27 Linux kernel (up to 2.6.27rc7). The bug affected the e1000e driver module, which supports a number of onboard Intel ethernet adapters. The driver would corrupt the EEPROM/NVM of adapters with ICH8 and ICH9 chipsets, rendering them useless.

The silver lining was that since the kernel is a pre-release, only distributions with releases in the alpha or beta stages, or custom compiled testing kernels, were affected. The Intel team released a patch Wednesday to prevent further damage.

The Linux Foundation's executive director, Jim Zemlin, pondered the idea that next year Linux may ship on more desktops than Windows or Mac. He cites a New York Times article on PC manufacturers reducing boot times with utilities such as SplashTop.

Even if the Linux shipments don't outpace Windows, Linux is being used increasingly on consumer machines. Zemlin says that though this isn't what was envisioned as the Linux desktop, it is a positive sign.

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In September, the openSUSE project urged its contributors and members to help choose a new board. The board was to consist of two Novell-affiliated and two non-Novell members chosen by the community, and chaired by a fifth Novell-appointed member.

Earlier this week, the results of the board election were announced. Community participation was impressive, with 178 of the 237 eligible voters casting at least one of the four votes (two for each category) they were allowed.

Ubuntu community manager Jono Bacon announced Wednesday the Ubuntu Open Week schedule for the Jaunty release. Ubuntu Open Weeks are routinely held right after a release to welcome and encourage new contributors to get involved in work on the next release.

The Open Week for Jaunty takes place next week (November 3rd through the 7th) on the #ubuntu-classroom channel on IRC.

The KDE project has announced the date and some detail regarding its first annual Camp KDE event. This developer conference was conceived at the KDE 4 Release Event that took place earlier this year in Mountain View, California, and aims to get developers all over the world more involved in the KDE project.