ldn

With the end of the year approaching, it becomes natural to look back at the year past and sum up what's happened. Curiously, even though I should be in the mood for this, having just sent out the usual Proffitt Family Christmas newsletter, I find myself looking ahead more than looking behind.

You may have noticed the addition of a new articles on LDN today: the excellent "Anatomy of the Linux Kernel" from M. Tim Jones.

Conneseurs of the Linux trade press might be thinking to themselves, "hey, this article looks very familiar." And they would be correct: this is a piece that originally appeared on IBM developerWorks back in June, part of the "Anatomy" series Tim has written for that site.

I was talking to a new freelance writer for LDN this afternoon, and when the subject came up about how I decided what topics to cover.

The US elections are (blessedly) over, and like any political junkie, I am suffering from withdraw symptoms. After months of polls, blogs, and cable news, I find myself craving the process of democratically electing something, anything.

So you can imagine how excited I was to see that some LDN users were starting taking advantage of our Brainstorming tool. I wanted to take this opportunity to explain what this section of the LDN is all about and encourage everyone to participate!

This morning I was rolling through my blog feeds, catching up the latest news in the world o' Linux, when I noted an interesting piece of artwork in Celeste Lyn Paul's obso1337.org blog.

So, having made it through the launch of LDN yesterday, I thought it would be nice to take a step back  and point out what is the coolest functionality of the new site: the Linux Application Checker. This thing, I have to say, is one sweet application.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be there at the beginning of something big. Like when three guys from Seattle decided to open up a new coffee store in 1971. Or when some kid decided to build a new operating system for his PC to do a university project.

It's easy to look at things that are huge now and remember that once upon a time, all of the hubbub was just an idea.

If you're lucky, though, you might just have a chance to be there at the beginning. When something huge begins as somethng small. Today I feel pretty lucky.