The Proliferation of Linux

Gentoo has apparently cancelled it’s 2008.1 release, making this the second time in 12 months that a release has been cancelled.  Instead of using the usual twice yearly release cycle that most other distributions have, Gentoo developers are opting for a continuous approach.

In place of fixed releases, Gentoo is promoting a live, continuously updating distribution.  In practice this emphasises the use of minimal installation images which are then supplemented with updated packages straight from Gentoo servers and mirrors.

“We need to work harder to communicate the relative irrelevance of releases in a live distribution like Gentoo,” Gentoo developer Donnie Berkholz explained to InternetNews.com. Releases “have an overly large impact on what non-Gentoo users think of the health of the distribution, so problems with a small team within Gentoo are magnified in their effect on public opinion.”

Having recently converted my laptop to Gentoo, I can attest that this system seems to work quite nicely.  Portage, Gentoo’s package management system, really does the job.  Dependencies are resolved correctly at least 99% of the time and updating the entire system is a breeze.

While installing large applications such as OpenOffice or Gnome might take some time (i.e. hours and hours as everything is compiled locally), things do largely work quite nicely once installed.

InternetNews [via Tectonic]

Canonical’s CEO and founder of Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth, recently announced on his blog that Canonical will be “hiring a team who will work on X, OpenGL, Gtk, Qt, GNOME and KDE, with a view to doing some of the heavy lifting required to turn those desktop experience ideas into reality.”

Hope fully this will result in a better and more consistent user experience in Linux. Mr. Shuttleworth also offered some other advice to free software projects:

1. Make your site visually appealing,
2. Do something different and do it very, very well,
3. Call users to action and give them an immediate, rewarding experience.

Computerworld [via Slashdot]

Linux.com has a great article covering some ways in which open source software can help students, whether they be in high school or university.  The article only covers math and chemistry tools, such as “TiLP, wxMaxima, Kalzium, Gnome Chemistry Utils, and OpenOffice.org Math,” but I think that there’s a lot more out there for students of all professions.

What student would not benefit from using OpenOffice.org instead of the (expensive) MS Office, not to mention free graphics tools such as Paint.NET, The GiMP, InkScape etc.  Of course everyone can save money by using a free OS such as Ubuntu, Fedora or any other flavour of Linux.

What are you’re favourite FOSS tools?  Any that are particularly well suited for students?

Linux.com

Free Software Magazine (FSM) has a list of 16 key free software heroes.  From Stallman to Google, these are folks who have really made an impact on the quality, perception and distribution of FOSS.
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In addition to the list of 84 free games covered on LinuxLinks.com, they also have a list of 42 commercial titles available on Linux.  In order for a game to qualify for this list it had to meet the following requirements:

• Released under a proprietary license with a fee required either to purchase the game, or a monthly charge
• Not require Wine to run. Wine is a compatibility layer for running Windows software

So if you really couldn’t find a game to suit you from the 84 titles previously mentioned and you are willing to pay, have a look at this list.

• 42 of the Best Commercial Linux Games

Update: LinuxLinks seems to be experiencing some problems and so it might be difficult to access the article.