Constrained by Red Hat’s tardiness in keeping Red Hat Enterprise Linux up to speed, Oracle has decided to spin off a new version of the Linux kernel dubbed the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel.

To date, Oracle Linux, which has claimed 5,000 customers, is built on the Red Hat Compatible Kernel that allows customers to continue running Red Hat applications.

In his keynote address Sunday, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison highlighted key issues the company faced with retaining full compatibility with Red Hat.

“Oracle spends a lot of time finding bugs in Red Hat Linux and fixing them. However, when we find the bugs, Red Hat has been very slow in incorporating those bugs into their software,” he said.

Ellison also noted that Red Hat has also been slow to take up enhancements contributed by the community.

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I wrote a piece for the Sunday Times published today about the emergence of the smartbooks – netbooks which use mobile processors and Linux/Google operating systems instead of the usual Wintel duopoly. I drafted the specs from the info provided and e-mailed it back to the computer company for them to confirm the specs. Everything was in order, except the OS part which the PR wanted me to
“pls state OS to be ‘comprising of a customer user interface layer, built on a custom Linux-based OS.”

In other words, a Linux OS. “That’s rubbish” was my response and I simply told him/her that the sentence was a total waste of valuable space on the newspaper. He/she said he/she did not understand why I used the word rubbish and went on to send me more info:

Q. What is the OS for Skylight and why did you choose it?
A. The Skylight User experience is comprised of a custom UI layer built on a custom Linux base OS.   The average user will not be aware that the OS is based on Linux.  We chose this approach because it provided the flexibility to deliver a simple, discoverable, and fun gadget based way of presenting web applications and media.

Q: Is this a Lenovo Operating System?

A: That depends on your definition of “Operating System”.   We have created a unique software stack optimized to achieve a specific user experience focused on web applications, media and cloud computing.    The focus of our investments have been on the User Interface layer.

Q: What did you base the OS on?

A: Lenovo’s Skylight Interface runs on Embedded Linux.  ThunderSoft is Lenovo’s Linux System Integrator.

Q: Are you working with a Linux distribution partner? Who is it?
A: Yes Thundersoft.  Lenovo recognized the value of running Linux as a base platform for the Skylight User Interface for everything from performance to extensive customization.   This allowed us to pick the best and most appropriate elements to solve the SmartBook equation.   An extensive team of partners along with internal development teams from Lenovo and Qualcomm worked together to pick, customize and create what we needed to provide a world-class solution.

Yes my friend. It is still a Linux OS.

Linux users are often at the mercy of hardware vendors when it comes to device drivers. The open source community often needs to turn to reverse engineering to churn out drivers from proprietary ones. As long as the majority of hardware is made for Windows and OS X machines, Linux users will need to wait until the community figures out the nuts and the bolts of a piece of hardware before a Linux driver can be written.

Take Nouveau for example. The open source project started in 2006 with the aim of building high quality drivers for Nvidia graphics cards. Although Nvidia provided a Linux driver several years ago, it was a basic driver with no 3D support. The Nouveau project gained momentum and a year later, its driver soon outperformed Nvidia’s in 2D performance.

While some Linux drivers can be as good as proprietary ones from hardware vendors, others only allow basic functionality with sometimes abysmal performance. My interest in Linux was rekindled recently when I installed Ubuntu 9.10 on my three-year-old Macbook. The basic hardware like the keyboard and graphics worked right out of the box after the installation, with the exception of the iSight webcam which only worked after I installed a software that reverse engineered the right driver out of Apple’s proprietary iSight driver.

Driven by commercial interest through a stranglehold over the unique features of its hardware, it is not in Apple’s interest or any hardware vendor to release open source drivers. A recent feature in Linux Magazine on the Nouveau project pointed out that Nvidia “still gains far too much advantage by keeping their driver closed. They get support for brand new models, extra performance, better power management, extra features like VDPAU, and certain technology components can remain a company secret”.

Meanwhile, Linux users have to continue tinkering with their boxes to make things work, but with the support of the community through hundreds of thousands of forums and interest groups on almost every Linux distro, there’s bound to be a workaround out there. But hey, it’s also what makes computing fun isn’t it?

How do you refine a piece of software that everyone has been using since the Internet arrived on home computers in the mid 1990s?

The answer, as Google will tell you, is to make it smarter and slicker. Its Chrome browser, launched on Tuesday, promises to give people the information they need faster and also offer a more intuitive interface.

An answer to Microsoft’s recently announced Internet Explorer 8 beta 2, it has some of Microsoft’s nifty new features, as well as the appeal of being “alternative”.
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