Zack's Kernel News
Zack's Kernel News
Chronicler Zack Brown discusses the makers of manners.
The Makers of Manners
One of the most magical aspects of Linux kernel development is its relationship to official standards like POSIX and to the tools it relies on like the C compiler. It would be easy enough to say "the law is the law," and simply adhere to whatever the standards committees decided was best or accommodate whatever behavior a given dependency seemed to require.
But Linux is at the root of nearly every server in the known universe, responsible for a vast diversity of tools that serve web pages, maintain hospital systems, operate delicate machinery, and other things so strange and bizarre that they would hollow out your eye sockets if you ever caught a glimpse of them.
Clearly, for such purposes, efficiency and maintainability are near the top of the requirements list. Linus Torvalds, on various occasions, has found that a given tool or a given standard simply didn't have the right idea on a given subject, so he went ahead and did things a different way, allowing the standard or tool to catch up to Linux in its own time.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
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
-
Introducing matrixOS, an Immutable Gentoo-Based Linux Distro
It was only a matter of time before a developer decided one of the most challenging Linux distributions needed to be immutable.
-
Chaos Comes to KDE in KaOS
KaOS devs are making a major change to the distribution, and it all comes down to one system.
-
New Linux Botnet Discovered
The SSHStalker botnet uses IRC C2 to control systems via legacy Linux kernel exploits.
-
The Next Linux Kernel Turns 7.0
Linus Torvalds has announced that after Linux kernel 6.19, we'll finally reach the 7.0 iteration stage.
-
Linux From Scratch Drops SysVinit Support
LFS will no longer support SysVinit.
-
LibreOffice 26.2 Now Available
With new features, improvements, and bug fixes, LibreOffice 26.2 delivers a modern, polished office suite without compromise.
-
Linux Kernel Project Releases Project Continuity Document
What happens to Linux when there's no Linus? It's a question many of us have asked over the years, and it seems it's also on the minds of the Linux kernel project.
-
Mecha Systems Introduces Linux Handheld
Mecha Systems has revealed its Mecha Comet, a new handheld computer powered by – you guessed it – Linux.
-
MX Linux 25.1 Features Dual Init System ISO
The latest release of MX Linux caters to lovers of two different init systems and even offers instructions on how to transition.
-
Photoshop on Linux?
A developer has patched Wine so that it'll run specific versions of Photoshop that depend on Adobe Creative Cloud.