Cliff’s List Filter – March 27 – 30, 2004

Welcome once again to this helping of news and tidbits gathered from mailing lists of Unix and Linux related projects. While other sites may be inflicting (hopefully tasteful) April Fool’s pranks on you, we’re currently following happenings in the Linux Kernel, GNOME, KDE and Mozilla circles. If you’d like to see information from other projects in these pages, please let us know. Now on with the updates…

Linux Kernel

• Mariusz Mazur announces the release
  of linux-libc-headers v2.6.4. These headers are replacements for the headers
  that come included with the Linux v2.6.4 kernel and are designed to cut down on
  collisions between data structures that are defined in libc implementations and
  the kernel.
• If you are having problems with resuming a suspended session from disk, please be
  aware that this feature does not work when IDE
  support is compiled as a module. Arkadiusz Miskiewicz has graciously provided a
  patch that should
  prevent
  the suspend feature from showing at config time.
• Users of RealTek 8169 network cards who are experiencing
  hard crashes might want see if
  one of the later -mm kernels fix the problem. If you would rather apply the fixes to
  the standard Linux tree, you can try some
  fixes from Francois Romieu, and see if they help.
• Nigel Kukard announces
  a reworking of the DVD+-RW support for Linux 2.6.x. Give it a whirl and let us
  know your experiences with it.
• It appears that 2.6.x installs that use dm-crypt may suffer
  from heavy loads from pdflush. If you suffer from this problem, you might want to
  try this small
  fix from Andrew Morton. These performance enhancements will hopefully migrate
  to the main kernel tree in upcoming revisions.
• Greg KH announces another release of hotplug scripts on March 29.
• Linux
  2.6.5-rc3 released on March 30. Quoth Linux, “Nothing earth-shattering…”,
  but we figured we’d mention it, anyway. nVidia users, who are happily chugging away
  on 2.6.4, man want to consider delaying this upgrade, however.
• Are you curious about the maximum file size allowable on ext2/ext3? Well, it really
  depends on
  the block size, but with some programming tricks, you can access files that are
  4
  terabytes in size!
• Apple iBook2 users who have been having no luck with getting Linux 2.6.4 to boot
  using OpenFirmware might want to try some
  tips from Martin Schaffner, and see if they have better luck.
• Having problems with slow writes over NFS with Linux 2.4.x? If you are mounting your NFS share with the
  “noac” option, consider removing
  it and see if that helps your performance.

GNOME

• Philip Van Hoof announces the discontinuation of the GNOME Clipboard Manager,
  which provided a “clipboard history” for your GNOME apps. Thanks for your efforts
  on GCM, Philip!
• Users who spend a lot of time in the Nautilus list view might appreciate
  some changes from Soeren Sandmann which should help, by caching icons that need to be
  rescaled for that view.
• Nautilus users who have problems with their trobber crashing the program might be
  interested in a potential solution to the problem.
• Fresh from the software factory:
  • lumiere, a media player for GNOME,
    hit v0.5 on March 27.

KDE

• Tom Chance has released
  a draft copy of his media guide, as a part of the KDE Quality Team HOWTO. While
  some may think this an odd place to find such information, it should still prove to be
  a valuable resource the Open Source community. Give it a read, and pass on any suggestions you have to Tom.
• Marc Heyvaert has started a wiki-page for those of you interested in compiling
  KOffice.

Mozilla

• WARNING! — It appears that there may be a Mozilla-targetted
  piece of spyware/adware existing in the wild.
  If a site asks you to install something called a “Content Access Plugin v1.01”, please
  be careful and check it before you consider
  installing it. Chances are, you’ll be better off
  discarding it!
• Users who would like external programs to specific protocols (like mail, news and FTP)
  may want to try out these
  tips.
• Firefox users, who would like to have handy navigational aids which will support
  <LINK> tags, may want to take a
  suggestion from Black Fox and install linkTool.