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Submission + - It's Time To Split Linux In Two 7

Submitted by snydeq
snydeq writes: Desktop workloads and server workloads have different needs, and it's high time Linux consider a split to more adequately address them, writes Deep End's Paul Venezia. 'You can take a Linux installation of nearly any distribution and turn it into a server, then back into a workstation by installing and uninstalling various packages. The OS core remains the same, and the stability and performance will be roughly the same, assuming you tune they system along the way. Those two workloads are very different, however, and as computing power continues to increase, the workloads are diverging even more. Maybe it's time Linux is split in two. I suggested this possibility last week when discussing systemd (or that FreeBSD could see higher server adoption), but it's more than systemd coming into play here. It's from the bootloader all the way up. The more we see Linux distributions trying to offer chimera-like operating systems that can be a server or a desktop at a whim, the more we tend to see the dilution of both. You can run stock Debian Jessie on your laptop or on a 64-way server. Does it not make sense to concentrate all efforts on one or the other?'

Submission + - Ubuntu Update Breaks Some Optimus Laptops

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: According to a bug report, a recent Ubuntu 14.04 LTS update broke the desktop for some Nvidia Optimus users. Right now is known that a regression is introduced by either version 0.2.91.5 or 0.2.91.6 of package 'ubuntu-drivers-common'. Users of the Optimus platform might want to hold the package at 0.2.91.4 until the bug is fixed, especially if they are Lenovo ThinkPad users. The bug manifests itself as the desktop not being usable and the user is stuck at a purple screen.

Submission + - Finnair Pilots Report Dramatic Missile Near-miss Almost 30 Years On (yle.fi)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: It has come to light that a Finnair-owned McDonnell Douglas DC-10 passenger jet narrowly avoided being shot down by a missile while en route to Helsinki 27 years ago, claimed by the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat on Sunday. The two co-pilots, Esko Kaukiainen and Markku Soininen, describe how the event happened during a routine flight back to Helsinki from Japan in December 1987. When the plane was crossing the Arctic Ocean, a missile appeared in the distance. The crew thought it was a Russian weather rocket on its way into space, but the missile began heading straight towards the aircraft. Just 20 seconds away from a collision, the missile exploded. The captain, who was resting at the time of the incident, never officially reported the event. The question of who fired the missile has never been definitively answered. But the pilots believe it was launched from either the Soviet Union's Kola Peninsula or a submarine in the Barents Sea. They speculate that the missile could have been a misfire or that the plane was used as training target.

Submission + - GPL risk shown when popular Minecraft plugins shut down by DMCA.

Submitted by Maxo-Texas
Maxo-Texas writes: One of the primary programmers, Wesley Wolfe (Wolvereness), who contributed over 23,000 lines of code to the Bukkit project which enhances Minecraft server performance and allows others to write "mods" and "plugins" submitted a DMCA request September 5th, preventing use of his code in the popular Bukkit or Spigot (and numerous other Minecraft plugins, mods, and other open source enhancements that depend on them). This has the effect of freezing all further development for multi-player server Minecraft based on these addons until the issue is resolved.

The programmer says that Mojang must release the Minecraft server code to the public domain since decompiled, deobfuscated versions of the java code are included in the Bukkit project before he will withdraw the DMCA. Mojang has never released the real source code and has stated they will not opensource the server code to meet the GPL and LGPL licensing requirements.

Read more here:
http://www.spigotmc.org/thread...

This approach might be a risk for other GPL and LGPL projects out there which are derivative of or enhance non GPL programs or products.

Comment Re:At home too (Score 1) 185

by jones_supa (#47839525) Attached to: Why Munich Will Stick With Linux

I've never had any problems with touchpads.

I have had problems with the touchpad being extremely sensitive out of the box. Also Linux does not have a good graphical settings tool for touchpads. KDE's comes closest but still lacks the richness of the Windows counterparts.

Don't they just look like USB mice to the OS if you don't take advantage of Synaptics-specific features?

Basically yes, although they are PS/2 devices.

Submission + - Mushroom-Like Organism May Be New Branch of Life

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: During a scientific cruise in 1986, scientists collected organisms at water depths of 400m and 1,000m on the south-east Australian continental slope, near Tasmania. But the two types of mushroom-shaped organisms were recognized only recently, after sorting of the bulk samples collected during the expedition. A team of scientists at the University of Copenhagen says the tiny organism does not fit into any of the known subdivisions of the animal kingdom. The organisms are described in the academic journal Plos One. The authors of the paper recognise two new species of mushroom-shaped animal: Dendrogramma enigmatica and Dendrogramma discoides. Measuring only a few millimetres in size, the animals consist of a flattened disc and a stalk with a mouth on the end. One way to resolve the question surrounding Dendrogramma's affinities would be to examine its DNA, but new specimens will need to be found. The team's paper calls for researchers around the world to keep an eye out for other examples.

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