brainwagon

I’ve got a weak spot for cheap, programmable hardware. In my junk drawer I’ve got a collection of Arduinos, Parallax Propellor boards, a couple of STM32 based ARM boards, and several Beagle Bone Blacks and Raspberry Pis. Today, another entry arrived: the WRTnode. I’ve only had it out of the box for a few hours, […]

A few days ago, I mentioned that @notch, the creator of Minecraft, had a new idea for a space game that he was beginning to work on. One of the features of this game is that your spaceship would be controlled by a simulated computer that you could program. He released a preliminary specification for […]

I like operating systems. My first exposure to Unix was a revelation. Unix was a complex operating system that provided useful facilities for programmers, and it wasn’t written in assembler and locked away: it was written in C (the same language that you use to write ordinary programs for Unix) and it was understandable. This […]

At various times, I’ve been interested in writing operating systems. I haven’t done much thinking about this recently, but it is a topic of interest. I hadn’t seen this project before: a small 64 bit kernel written in assembly. I have no idea whether it’s interesting, but I thought I’d bookmark it for future investigation. […]

I’ve been a long time fan of FreeBSD, going all the way back to the 1.1.5.1 days (and used regular BSD going back even further). Today, I still have a server which runs FreeBSD, as well as another desktop which is running Ubuntu. Which one I prefer is not really something I choose to argue […]

San Jose Mercury News – Google unveils mobile-phone software strategy the big news is that Google has gone generic, offering free software to anyone who wants it under the relaxed terms of an open-source license, which will allow developers to view the source code for that software. This also means there will not be a […]

How did I miss this? Minix, the small OS designed by professor Andrew Tanenbaum to teach operating systems concets, is now in its 3.0 revision. From their webpage: MINIX 1 and 2 were intended as teaching tools; MINIX 3 adds the new goal of being usable as a serious system on resource-limited and embedded computers […]

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Previously I’ve mentioned my appreciation for both Knoppix and Damn Small Linux, both fairly cute LiveCD versions of Linux. The problem is that Damn Small Linux can be just a little bit too small, and Knoppix can be a bit slow to boot, and can seem a bit bloated. Enter SLAX, a LiveCD which is […]

GCC 4.0 is now released, try checking out the release notes on gnu.org.

Over on the Register, there is an article on the ongoing row between Linus Torvalds, Andrew Tridgell, author of the Samba software you’ll find as part of many operating system distributions, and Larry McVoy, CEO of Bitkeeper software, the proprietary revision control software which is used to help maintain order in the Linux kernel source […]

VIA Technologies, Inc. has made code for their ProSavage, ProSavage DDR and Unichrome drivers available over at viaarena.com. Of particular interest to the growing number of Linux enthusiasts and customers utilizing VIA EPIA mainboards, is the source for the S3 Graphics UniChrome family display driver for version 2.6.x kernels. The UniChrome family display driver supports […]

Internetnews.com ran an interesting article about the synergy and tension beween Ubuntu Linux and classic . Ian Murdoch had this to say… Sarge vs. The Hoary Hedgehog? But Ian Murdoch, Debian’s founding father, does not believe Ubuntu’s popularity bodes well for Debian-based distros. “If anything, Ubuntu’s popularity is a net negative for Debian,” Murdoch told […]

The 5.04 version of Ubuntu Linux is freshly released, and is now running on my test machine. I must admit, I am really, really impressed by how quickly Ubuntu has become a mature and useful operating system. Things that are most impressive to me: It only takes up one ordinary CD blank. Yes, one. Yes, […]

I’ve got a very simple LiveCD of FreeBSD booting off of CDROM. If you are brave, you can surf over to itsyBSD.org and download the iso image, burn it to CD and give it a try. It doesn’t install anything to any hard disks, so nothing can be hurt by giving it a try, but […]