Linux Format September 2021

Jonni Bidwell Adobe Flash was born kicking and screaming (and otherwise animating colourful objects) into this world in 1996. This makes it just a little younger than Linux, and definitely not a thing the past three decades should be proud of. Nonetheless, we should all rejoice in its overdue demise. Les Pounder My highlight of the past 30 years is somewhat recent. Oggcamp is a FOSS event that I’ve been a part of since 2009. In that time Oggcamp has generated new communities and ideas. More importantly, friendships have been made, and that’s the true measure of Oggcamp’s success. Mayank Sharma Three decades is a long time, and though you weren’t specific I’m gonna skip getting married, and the birth of our mini human overlord from the highlights, and instead…

Jonni Bidwell Adobe Flash was born kicking and screaming (and otherwise animating colourful objects) into this world in 1996. This makes it just a little younger than Linux, and definitely not a thing the past three decades should be proud of. Nonetheless, we should all rejoice in its overdue demise. Les Pounder My highlight of the past 30 years is somewhat recent. Oggcamp is a FOSS event that I’ve been a part of since 2009. In that time Oggcamp has generated new communities and ideas. More importantly, friendships have been made, and that’s the true measure of Oggcamp’s success. Mayank Sharma Three decades is a long time, and though you weren’t specific I’m gonna skip getting married, and the birth of our mini human overlord from the highlights, and instead doff my hat to virtualisation,…

In the sage words of Kool & The Gang, “Celebrate good times, come on.” We are, of course, talking about me having edited over 100 issues of Linux Format <whispers from Jonni> but also that 30 years ago almost to the day a young Linus Torvalds announced on comp.os. minix that he’d started work writing a kernel (nothing big or professional like GNU) running on his i386 PC. The rest, as they say, is history. For this special occasion we’re taking time out to look back over those 30 years of Linux development (for which LXF itself has been around for 21 years) and ask how did that happen? We follow kernel growth over the years, reveal how distros expanded out of those early days to foster an open source…

In the sage words of Kool & The Gang, “Celebrate good times, come on.” We are, of course, talking about me having edited over 100 issues of Linux Format <whispers from Jonni> but also that 30 years ago almost to the day a young Linus Torvalds announced on comp.os. minix that he’d started work writing a kernel (nothing big or professional like GNU) running on his i386 PC. The rest, as they say, is history. For this special occasion we’re taking time out to look back over those 30 years of Linux development (for which LXF itself has been around for 21 years) and ask how did that happen? We follow kernel growth over the years, reveal how distros expanded out of those early days to foster an open source…

VALVE’S DOMINO EFFECT IN ACTIONIf the Steam Deck becomes a success, then it could also encourage games developers to port their games to Linux. Valve has revealed its new handheld gaming device, the Steam Deck (https://bit.ly/lxf280steamdeck). While its specs means it should comfortably outperform Nintendo’s Switch, the key takeaway is that the Steam Deck runs on SteamOS 3.0, which is now based on Arch with the KDE desktop environment. Since the announcement of the Steam Deck, there’s been much talk on the openness of the hardware and what it could mean for Linux gaming. When we say ‘openness’ we should be careful. Steam, after all, is a proprietary store that uses DRM. It’s also yet to be seen if SteamOS 3.0 on the Steam Deck will allow other games launchers…

VALVE’S DOMINO EFFECT IN ACTIONIf the Steam Deck becomes a success, then it could also encourage games developers to port their games to Linux. Valve has revealed its new handheld gaming device, the Steam Deck (https://bit.ly/lxf280steamdeck). While its specs means it should comfortably outperform Nintendo’s Switch, the key takeaway is that the Steam Deck runs on SteamOS 3.0, which is now based on Arch with the KDE desktop environment. Since the announcement of the Steam Deck, there’s been much talk on the openness of the hardware and what it could mean for Linux gaming. When we say ‘openness’ we should be careful. Steam, after all, is a proprietary store that uses DRM. It’s also yet to be seen if SteamOS 3.0 on the Steam Deck will allow other games launchers and stores…