Category: Open Source

Many folks think the mainframe is obsolete as new technologies come online each year. I’m glad to see that the Open Mainframe Project is driving awareness around the mainframes staying power and flexibility.

Michael Cooney writes in Networkworld

With that in mind the Open Mainframe Project, part of the Linux Foundation, this week said at its Open Mainframe Summit that it was forming a working group to promote mainframe-modernization efforts and that it had acqured its own Big Iron to spur future development.

The working group will create a common definition and framework defining what mainframe modernization should look like and promote open-source development on the Big Iron.

I know companies that have created Linux partitions on their mainframe and moved applications away from physical servers to those mainframe partitions and saved money. I would not count mainframes out just yet.

I always caution folks against technology bias. You need to do what is right for the business.

Installing software from the command line can be quick. There are times when you may miss a dependency or two. Snap and Flatpak can help to make the process easy.

Jack Wallen writes at ZDNET

One of the reasons why Snap and Flatpak were developed was to remove the dependency issues found with traditional package managers. You see, both Snap and Flatpak packages contain all the software necessary to install the package in question, including dependencies. So, when you go to install a certain piece of software via either Snap or Flatpak, you don’t have to worry about installing dependencies because the developer of the Snap or Flatpak package has taken care of that for you.

Snap and Flatpak can also access proprietary software and make installing them easier. For those of you that like using the GUI, Snap, and Flatpak might be ideal for you.

Linux 6.0 release candidate version 1 (rc-1) has been released, but don’t expect any major updates.

Liam Tung writes at ZDNET

On Sunday’s release of Linux 6.0 release candidate version 1 (rc-1), he explained his reasoning behind choosing a new major version number and its purpose for developers. Again, it’s about avoiding confusion rather than signaling that the release has major new features. His threshold for changing the lead version number was .20 because it is difficult to remember incremental version numbers beyond that.

“Despite the major number change, there’s nothing fundamentally different about this release – I’ve long eschewed the notion that major numbers are meaningful, and the only reason for a ‘hierarchical; numbering system is to make the numbers easier to remember and distinguish,” said Torvalds.

It seems that most updates are improvements to the GPU, networking and sound.

Keeping development teams connect and moving in the same direction can be hard at times. We each get pulled into different areas of need and attention. To ease the planning and tracking of projects, GitHub has released GitHub Projects.

Mario Rodriguez writes on the GitHub Blog

The new GitHub Projects connects your planning directly to the work your teams are doing in GitHub and flexibly adapts to whatever your team needs at any point. Built like a spreadsheet, project tables give you a live canvas to filter, sort, and group issues and pull requests. You can use it, or the accompanying project board, along with custom fields, to track a sprint, plan a feature, or manage a large-scale release.

Is this something your team would consider? What tools are you using today to keep teams aligned and moving in the same direction? Do you currently use GitHub Projects? Please let me know in the comments below.

GitHub Copilot is now generally available to developers. GitHub Copilot uses OpenAI to suggest and complete code or functions in real-time in your editor.

Thomas Dohmke writes in the GitHub Blog:

With GitHub Copilot, for the first time in the history of software, AI can be broadly harnessed by developers to write and complete code. Just like the rise of compilers and open source, we believe AI-assisted coding will fundamentally change the nature of software development, giving developers a new tool to write code easier and faster so they can be happier in their lives.

GitHub Copilot is free to use for students and maintainers of popular open-source projects.