Paul Krill
Editor at Large

Linux going green

news
Jun 18, 20072 mins

The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, held last week at the Google Mountain View, Calif. campus, featured a “Green Linux” initiative to boost power management in the platform.

More than 230 leaders from the Linux community attended the event, including kernel developers, ISVs and users, the foundation said on Monday afternoon.

Aside from discussing Microsoft’s recent patent dispute over Linux, attendees covered a myriad of topics. One topic, better power management, resulted in plans to organize a Green Linux effort, the foundation said. Power management developers will meet in Ottawa next week to continue this work.

A collaborative session on device drivers, meanwhile, explained the Linux model and a new program for vendors, through which the Linux kernel community is offering free Linux driver development. Called the Linux Driver Project, it can be accessed here.

The Linux Foundation Open Printing Workgroup announced the LSB (Linux Standard Base) Driver Kit, to improve printing functionality in Linux. Representatives from major printing vendors met at the event with Linux community leaders to discuss improvements in printer driver support. The new Device Driver Kit provides tools and resources for printing manufacturers to support Linux distributions with one driver package, the foundation said. Also included in the kit is a Web API from the OpenPrinting database, allowing Linux printer setup tools to automatically find printer driver packages.

Representatives of the foundation’s accessibility workgroup explained the Linux model for writing accessible applications to ISVs and others. The workgroup and the iAccessible2 standard are focused on making software applications accessible to persons with disabilities.

Also at the event, the Linux Standard Base workgroup presented its LSB test framework and testing tools, featuring automated testing toolkits. The effort is intended to make it easier and less costly for developers to support Linux.

Linux founder Linus Torvalds was not at the event, the foundation said. The next Linux Foundation summit is planned for March 2008.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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