The Hurd Microkernel Still Isn't Ready But GNU Had A Great 2010s With GCC + Other Projects
Out of our 1,000+ articles written on "GNU" matters in the 2010s, here is a look back at the most popular ones in reliving some of the most successful moments for some of the projects as well as other drama and issues that were overcome.
GNU Octave 3.8 Has A GUI, Uses OpenGL
GNU Octave, the open-source high-level language for dealing with numerical computations and largely compatible with MATLAB, has a graphical user-interface with its new 3.8 release
Linus Torvalds On GCC 4.9: Pure & Utter Crap
Linus Torvalds' latest tirade is over the GCC 4.9 code compiler.
More GCC Patches To Get OpenMP Offloading To NVIDIA NVPTX Working
Fresh patches are available for GCC to get OpenMP offloading to the NVIDIA PTX ISA working for accelerating OpenMP on NVIDIA GPUs with the GNU Compiler Collection.
Free Software Foundation Endorses Its First Laptop
The Free Software Foundation today has come out for "the first time we've ever been able to encourage people to buy and use a laptop as-is." The Free Software Foundation now backs one laptop model as respecting the customer's freedoms, but are the hardware specs any good?
C++11 & The Long-Term Viability Of GCC Is Questioned
Back on Tuesday there was a basic email by a developer volleyed on the GCC mailing list, which has since sparked dozens of responses and a rather interesting conversation about the future of the GNU Compiler Collection and its ultimate path and viability moving forward. The initial e-mail was simply an inquiry asking about an estimated time-frame for having full support of the ISO C++11 specification. Diego Novillo, a well known GCC developer and Google employee, has even expressed fear that GCC may be past the tipping point and could die out naturally.
FSF Wastes Away Another "High Priority" Project
There's a new situation concerning another high-priority Free Software Foundation project and the unwillingness by Richard Stallman and the FSF to cooperate with real-world free software developers.
GCC 6 Will Warn You About Misleading Code Indentations
As reminded this weekend by Red Hat developer Mark Wielaard, GCC 6 will warn you about misleading code indentations.
GCC 4.9 Continues Piling On New Features
When GCC 4.9 is released in 2014 it will be coming in hot on new features with a large assortment of improvements and new functionality for the open-source compiler.
RMS Feels There's "A Systematic Effort To Attack GNU Packages"
Richard Stallman has come out against support for basic LLVM debugger (LLDB) support within Emacs' Gud.el as he equates it to an attack on GNU packages.
Libreboot Leaves The GNU, The Free Software Foundation Denounced
It was only in May that Libreboot became an official GNU project but now this free software Coreboot downstream has parted ways.
Richard Stallman: Goodbye to GNU Libreboot
The drama over Libreboot, a downstream of Coreboot, wanting to leave the GNU has come to an end.
The D Language Front-End Finally Merged Into GCC 9
The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) has a new language front-end! The D language support has finally been merged.
GCC 4.9 Will Make Compilers More Exciting In 2014
GCC 4.9 will likely not be released until later in H1'2014, but already a lot of compiler changes have been queued up to make this next major release of the GNU Compiler Collection exciting for developers and also benefiting users of the generated binaries.
GCC 5 Is Coming This Month With OpenMP 4.0, Offloading, Cilk Plus & More
GCC 5 is expected to be formally released later this month and it by far is looking to be the most exciting GNU Compiler Collection update yet! GCC 5 has amassed a ton of exciting open-source compiler features over the past year.
The Sad State Of FSF's High Priority Projects
With the Free Software Foundation having removed GNU PDF from their list of high priority projects after declaring the open-source work to implement proper Adobe PDF support a success, what's left to the FSF high priority project list and how are those remaining projects coming along?
Is Apple Now Blocking Contributions To GCC?
Yesterday on the mailing list for GCC is was brought up if Apple's Objective-C 2.0 patches for the GNU Compiler Collection could be merged back into the upstream GCC code-base as maintained by the Free Software Foundation. Even though Apple's modified GCC sources still reflect the FSF as the copyright holder and are licensed under the GNU GPLv2+, it doesn't look like Apple wants their compiler work going back upstream any longer.
The FSF Is Re-Evaluating Its Relationship With The GNU
With RMS resigning as head of the FSF but ultimately is remaining as head of the GNU, the Free Software Foundation is now publicly re-evaluating its relationship with the GNU.
FSF, RMS Issue Statements Over Libreboot's Accusations
Thursday night we wrote about Libreboot leaving the GNU and denouncing the GNU and FSF with rather harsh words. That thread generated more than 120 comments with differing views while now the Free Software Foundation issued a statement as well as Richard M Stallman.
SphinUX OS Claims To Be ~150% Faster Than GNU/Linux
SphinUX OS is an open-source POSIX-compatible operating system developed under the GPLv3 and running the Egyptian LSX Kernel Architecture. This open-source operating system claims to be much faster than Linux and that its memory usage can even be 3x less! This is an operating system with some of the most wildest performance claims we have ever seen.
GCC Looks To Turn Off Java, Replace With Go Or ADA
GCC developers from multiple companies are beginning to reach agreement that it's time for Java to be turned off by default in GCC. The Java compiler support in GCC is in the form of GCJ, but it doesn't see much active development these days with more of the Java work happening in OpenJDK. Developers are looking to disable Java from the default GCC build process but to potentially replace it with the Go or ADA languages.
Reverse Engineering PowerVR Is Now A High Priority
The Free Software Foundation has now determined that reverse-engineering the PowerVR Linux drivers in order to create a free software driver capable of 3D hardware acceleration is a high priority action item. With an increasing number of mobile devices running Linux bearing these PowerVR graphics chipsets, which currently require the use of binary blobs for graphics acceleration, is not acceptable and that action must be taken to create an open driver for this hardware.
Glibc Enables A Per-Thread Cache For Malloc - Big Performance Win
Glibc has added a per-thread cache to malloc and enabled it by default.
Debian 7.0 GNU/Linux vs. GNU/kFreeBSD Benchmarks
Up this morning are benchmarks comparing the performance of Debian GNU/Linux 7.0 to Debian GNU/kFreeBSD 7.0, the version of the Debian operating system that ships the GNU user-land but replaces the Linux kernel from that of FreeBSD 9.0.
Many FSF Priority Projects Still Not Progressing
Last October I wrote about the sad state of the Free Software Foundation's high priority projects... Most of the projects are basically not going anywhere. Many of them at the time were not really advancing in their goals, haven't had releases in a while, or coding hasn't even started. It's been more than a half-year and still there's no significant work towards clearing many of projects from the FSF list.
GRUB 2.00 Boot-Loader Officially Released
This morning I wrote that the official GRUB 2.00 release was imminent but little did I know that it would be released just 12 hours later. After being in development for more than a decade, the GRUB 2.00 boot-loader has been officially released.
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