The Linux kernel mailing list comprises the core of Linux development activities. Traffic volumes are immense, often reaching ten thousand messages in a given week, and keeping up to date with the entire scope of development is a virtually impossible task for one person. One of the few brave souls to take on this task is Zack Brown. Our regular monthly column keeps you abreast of the latest discussions and decisions, selected and summarized by Zack. Zack has been publishing a weekly online digest, the Kernel Traffic news letter for over five years now. Even reading Kernel Traffic alone can be a time consuming task. Linux Magazine now provides you with the quintessence of Linux Kernel activities, straight from the horse’s mouth.

Split-ups, disputes, and flame wars repeatedly ripple through the open source community. So far, forks have benefitted the community, as illustrated by the reunion of Compiz and Beryl in the Compiz Fusion project.

A trick that anybody can learn lets you determine the day of the week from the date. We’ll apply some Perl technology to discover whether the method is reliable.

A new status report on suspend and hibernate discusses the workings of, issues with, and future plans for power-saving modes in Linux.

The Hotwire shell removes the complexities of interactive consoles. We’ll show you how to Hotwire your Linux with this handy text and graphical shell for developers and administrators.

The Vim editor supports Perl plugins that let users manipulate the text they have just edited. Complex functions can be developed far faster than with Vim’s integrated scripting language.