Editorial
Old 100
As these pages go to print, I notice that we have reached issue 147. The number 147 might not seem particularly noteworthy to the rest of the world, but I noticed it. You see, the first issue with my picture on page 3 was issue 48, and if you count by ones from the beginning of the issue 48 cycle to the end of the issue 147 cycle, you get to 100 issues. This number 100 is always good for a milestone moment in our base 10 universe. Celebrating a numeral is not so important on its own, but having these reasons to look back can provide some context for looking ahead into the future – or looking around at the present.
So many things were different back in the first year I wrote this column. The last version of the old Red Hat Linux (Red Hat 9) was just ending, giving way to a new Red Hat-inspired community distro known as “Fedora Core.” A few for-profit desktop systems were trying to nail down the role of Linux for nongeeks, including Xandros and Lindows (later renamed Linspire), and they actually carried a price tag of around US$ 35 dollars before getting washed away by the all-free Ubuntu. SUSE Linux came in a light green shrink-wrapped box. Debian was a really big deal – we even had a column on Debian, and we provided close coverage of the Debian elections. (Actually, Debian is still a big deal; people just don’t talk about it as much as they used to.) Solaris was going open source; the kernel developers lost access to the BitKeeper distributed version control system and started building their own open source tool, which they called Git.
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Linux Hits an Important Milestone
If you pay attention to the news in the Linux-sphere, you've probably heard that the open source operating system recently crashed through a ceiling no one thought possible.
-
Plasma Bigscreen Returns
A developer discovered that the Plasma Bigscreen feature had been sitting untouched, so he decided to do something about it.
-
CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.