serviscope_minor - Slashdot User

Submission + - A 2024 Discussion Whether To Convert The Linux Kernel From C To Modern C++ (phoronix.com)

Submitted by serviscope_minor on Friday January 12, 2024 @09:53AM

serviscope_minor writes: Over on Phoronix, Michael Larabel writes:
LINUX KERNEL A six year old Linux kernel mailing list discussion has been reignited over the prospects of converting the Linux kernel to supporting modern C++ code.

The Linux kernel is predominantly made up of C code with various hand-written Assembly plus the growing work around supporting Rust within the Linux kernel. While it's not clear yet if there's sufficient weight to make it a reality, a Linux kernel mailing list discussion has been restarted over potentially seeing the Linux kernel C code converted to C++ in the future. Back on 1 April 2018 was a set of 45 patches by Red Hat engineer David Howells to begin converting the kernel to C++. This would allow the mainline kernel to make use of inline template functions, inline overloaded functions, class inheritance, and other features not currently supported by the Linux kernel with its C code. A bit hard to make serious discussions that day and ultimately the patches resided on the Linux kernel mailing list for six years without much discussion.

It is notable thar the current discussion is somewhat different from the infamous discussions in the past.

Submission + - What do you use for backups at home? 1

Submitted by serviscope_minor on Sunday March 07, 2021 @08:21AM

serviscope_minor writes: I am curious as to what other slashdotters use for backing up of home machines (and possible family and/or friends). I moved away from the "bunch of disks with some off site" method. I found most of the methods generally had one or more of the following problems: poor Linux support, weak security (e.g. leaking file names), outrageously expensive, hard to set up, tied to a single storage supplier I don't fully trust, entirely proprietary (which makes me doubt long term stability), lack of file history, reputation for slowness, and so on.

My current solution is unixy: separate tools for separate jobs. Borg for backups to a local machine. Rclone for uploading to business cloud storage, versioned cloud storage to provide resistance against bitrot and other corruption.

I am interested about what other slashdotters use, why and what your experience has been given more than superficial testing.

Submission + - Fantasy and Sci-fi author Debra Doyle, 1952-2020 (locusmag.com)

Submitted by serviscope_minor on Tuesday December 29, 2020 @12:18PM

serviscope_minor writes: SF writer Debra Doyle, 67, died October 31 of a sudden cardiac event at home in Colebrook NH. She was best known for work written in collaboration with her husband, James D. Macdonald, including Mythopoeic Award winner Knightâ(TM)s Wyrd (1992) and the Mageworlds space opera series.

Doyleâ(TM)s first work of genre interest was story âoeBad Bloodâ (1988, with Macdonald). All her novels were written with Macdonald, beginning with Night of Ghosts and Lightning (1989, as by Robyn Tallis). School of Wizardry (1990) launched the Circle of Magic series and had sequels Tournament and Tower (1990), City by the Sea (1990), The Princeâ(TM)s Players (1990), The Prisoners of Bell Castle (1990), and The High Kingâ(TM)s Daughter (1990). The Mageworlds series began with The Price of Stars (1992) and continued with Starpilotâ(TM)s Grave (1993), By Honor Betrayâ(TM)d (1994), The Gathering Flame (1995), The Long Hunt (1996), The Stars Asunder (1999), and A Working of Stars (2002). Their Bad Blood (1993) was followed by sequels Huntersâ(TM) Moon (1994) and Judgment Night (1995). Groogleman (1996) was a standalone. They wrote Civil War-era fantasy Land of Mist and Snow (2006) and Lincolnâ(TM)s Sword (2010). They also wrote various works of tie-in fiction under their own names and assorted pseudonyms.

Submission + - LibReSSL unaffected by DROWN

Submitted by serviscope_minor on Wednesday March 02, 2016 @08:05AM

serviscope_minor writes: The OpenBSD people forked and heavily cleaned up OpenSSL to create LibreSSL due to dissatisfaction with the maintainance of OpenSSL, culminating in the heartbleed bug. The emphasis has been on cleaning up the code and improving security, which includes removing things such as SSL2 which has fundamental security flaws. As a result, LibreSSL is not affected by the DROWN bug.

LibreSSL is largely compatible with OpenSSL. The main exceptions are in the cases where programs use insecure functions removed from libreSSL, or require bug compatiblity with OpenSSL.

Submission + - Ask slashdot: Clusters on the cheap?

Submitted by serviscope_minor on Wednesday September 14, 2011 @04:03AM

serviscope_minor writes: Dear Slashdotters,

A friend of mine has recently started a research group. As usual with these things, she is on a shoestring budget and has computational demands. The computational task is very parallel (but implementing it on GPUs is an open research problem and not the topic of research), and very CPU bound.

Can slashdotters advise on a practical way of getting really high bang for buck? The budget is about 4000 GBP (excluding VAT/sales tax), though it is likely that the system will be expanded later.

The computers will probably end up running a boring Linux distro and Sun GridEngine to manage batch processing (with home directories shared over NFS?).

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