Author: Ian Palmer
It’s been another week, so it’s time for another update with the news, tips, and other tidbits from various open source mailing lists that we’ve been monitoring. While following the Linux Kernel, GNOME, KDE, and Mozilla circles, we’ve heard word of a new GNOME 2 Developer’s Guide, a handy Flash blocking utility for Mozilla-based browsers, thoughts of KDE & .NET, and the usual gathering of other useful miscellany.
Linux Kernel
- A new patch released to the Linux Kernel mailing list adds ethtool support to the RTL8169 devices.
- Matt Mackall has more ketchup to go with those fries. His automatic kernel patching utility is now up to
version 0.7. - Owners of a PCMCIA SCSI with the Symbios 53c500 controller, who are on the bleeding
edge with Linux 2.6.5, may want to try another attempt at a 2.6.x driver for their hardware. - Jeff Garzik posted some corrections which should help users of Serial ATA drives, who are currently having
problems with Linux 2.6.x not recognizing their drives during the initial hardware probes. That’s not all, of course. Since Intel was nice enough to create a SATA controller with an open AHCI specification, Jeff decided to write a driver for that, too! - Not long after the publication of an integer-overflow exploit against certain Linux kernels, a kernel hacker was able to create a
fix for the problem that won’t require you to reboot your machines. Even so, if you have an exploitable kernel, it might be best to upgrade to the latest fixed kernel (2.4.26 for the 2.4 series and 2.6.4+ for the 2.6 series), when the time allows. - Finally, this bit of Important News: There are binary kernel modules out there which are lying about their license, and this has sparked quite a bit of discussion as to what to do about them. For more coverage on this issue you can also read the opinions
from Slashdot.
GNOME
- GNOME developers may have a new friend for their bookshelves. The
GNOME 2 Developers Guide was released last week and is now translated into English
from its original German roots. This book looks to compile much of the data any developer will need to get up to speed with the GNOME internals. The book can be purchased from the Gnome Foundation and is published under the Creative Commons NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. - Suddenly missing your icons in Nautilus v2.6? Debian users might be able to fix this
problem by issuing a simple one-line command. If you know of ways to do similar for other distributions, please let us know. - Who says Open Source projects can’t be usable? Damien Sandras points us to an article that sites
GnomeMeeting as an example of usability. - Nautilus users who would prefer to use the keyboard, rather than the rodent, might
appreciate some changes from Padraig O’Briain which allows the use of the keyboard to deselect all icons. - Sawfish users who like the “tabs” metaphor may want to look into some enhancements currently under development from Scott Scriven.
- So GNOME 2.6 was just released, and I’m sure some of you are already looking forward
to 2.7 and 2.8. If so, then this proposed schedule from Jeff Waugh
may interest you. - The Binary Wizards conjured the following noteworthy spells, this week:
- GHex announced its 2.6.0 release on April 25. New enhancements to “the world’s greatest binary editor” include, among other things: a type conversion feature which allows you to look at the data “under the cursor” in a variety of different ways; improved searching and highlighting; and many bug fixes.
KDE
- KDE users who suddenly find Konqueror unwilling to open directories, may wish to follow these
step-by-step instructions which may potentially fix the problem. - Users with spam problems might find enlightenment in how Werner Joss has his mailing system set up. Some of the information found therein should apply for non-KDE users as well, but KMail users should be able to take full advantage of the it.
- People interested in adjusting KDE’s menu structure to their own needs should read KDE’s menu
specification document. It contains just about all of the details you need to create your own menus and modify the ones that come with KDE. Thanks to Waldo Bastian for providing the link. - The amaroK team announced the release of their second beta in their run up to version 1.0. Here’s hoping for a nice and clean 1.0 release, when its ready!
- Developers interested in a possible KDE implementation of .NET might be interested in this
thread on the subject.
Mozilla
- Users who use Mozilla Calendar should be aware that the nightly Mozilla 1.7 builds
post RC1 will break some of the calendar’s functionality. If you use the calendar heavily, you may want to hold off on those upgrades for a bit. - It seems the Mozilla Calendar is becoming quite the polyglot. Czech users will be happy to note that the Mozilla calendar now has a localization appropriate for your language from Pavel Cvrcek, while Hungarians should feel right at home with new translations from Tímár András, the new maintainer. If you are interested in the number of localizations currently supported by the Sunbird project, take a look at the current translator list. That’s quite a lot of languages!
- Javascript programmers may want to read up on the new
changes to the tree widget that are upcoming in the later versions of Mozilla. There
may be new features among these changes that you may want to make use of. - If you dislike Flash content popping up unexpectedly, then FlashBlock might be the thing for you. Thanks to John Thompson for the reference. Currently FlashBlock blocks all Flash content at page load times, replacing it with a tame placeholder that you can click on to view the content. New versions plan to implement a whitelist, so that clicking will be unnecessary on specific pages.
- Interested in adjusting the Mozilla splash screen to your tastes? If so, then
this
thread probably contains some valuable information.
