The Linux kernel has various debugging tools. One is the kernel function tracer, which traces function calls, looking for bad memory allocations and other problems.

Green Hu posted a patch to support the NDS32 architecture. He described the current status as, "It is able to boot to shell and passes most LTP-2017 testsuites in nds32 AE3XX platform." Arnd Bergmann approved the patch, but Linus Torvalds wanted a little more of a description—an overview of the "uses, quirks, reasons for existing" for this chip, to include in the changelog. Arnd replied:

These days, Intel's name is Mud in various circles because of the Spectre/Meltdown CPU flaws and other similar hardware issues that seem to be emerging as well. But, there was a recent discussion between some Intel folks and the kernel folks that was not related to those things. Some thrust-and-parry still was going on between kernel person and company person, but it seemed more to do with trying to get past marketing speak, than at wrestling over what Intel is doing to fix its longstanding hardware flaws.

Artificial intelligence is a threat—and an opportunity—for open source. It would be an understatement to say that artificial intelligence (AI) is much in the news these days. It's widely viewed as likely to usher in the next big step-change in computing, but a recent interesting development in the field has particular implications for open source. It concerns the rise of "ethical" AI.

With all the collaboration technology available for offices today, there's no reason telecommuters can't be as productive and as connected as other team members. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, known for high-tech companies, horrible traffic and high cost of living. When it came time for me to buy a house, I chose an area that left me with a 90–120-minute commute, depending on traffic and the time of day, so through the years, I've negotiated work-from-home days and have experience with telecommuting at companies of various sizes with different proportions of remote workers. Telecommuting is not only more convenient for many employees, it also can get the best work out of people, because it can grant better opportunities to focus and lets employees get right to work instead of spending hours getting to and from work. Unfortunately, many places inadvertently sabotage their telecommuters with bad practices, so here are a few tips to help make telecommuting successful.

Learn a few different ways to get a progress bar for your dd command. The dd tool has been a critical component on the Linux (and UNIX) command line for ages. You know a command-line tool is important if it has only two letters, and dd is no exception.

Dietmar Eggemann posted a patch from Quentin Perret to take advantage of energy-efficient CPUs on asymmetric multiprocessor (AMP) systems. AMP is distinguished from SMP (symmetric multiprocessor) systems in that an SMP system uses several instances of only one type of CPU, while an AMP system might use CPUs of differing speeds, feature-sets and so on.

This article is the second in my series "Road to RHCA", where I'm charting my journey to the Red Hat Certified Architect designation—a designation that's difficult to come by. As an advocate and enthusiast of Linux and open source, and more important, as someone who works as a Linux professional, I am eager to change the current state of affairs around the number of women and people of color who know Linux and open source, study Linux and work in the Linux and/or open-source space.

ONLYOFFICE is a free and open-source office suite that provides an alternative for three major MS Office apps—Word, Excel and PowerPoint—working online. ONLYOFFICE's main features include:

I've been covering chemistry software in my last few articles, so this time, I decided to move to physics and introduce a package called JaxoDraw. In physics, there's a powerful technique for visualizing particle interactions at the quantum level. This technique uses something called Feynman diagrams, invented by physicist Richard Feynman. These diagrams help visualize what happens when one or more particles have some kind of interaction.