IBM has published the following ten technical articles, tutorials, and downloads on its developerWorks Website. They cover a range of interesting (though not necessarily embedded) technical topics. Some require free registration. Enjoy . . .

• Improvements in kernel development from 2.4 to 2.6 — The long-awaited 2.6 kernel is finally here. The author takes a look behind the scenes at the tools, tests, and techniques — from revision control and regression testing to bugtracking and list keeping — that helped make 2.6 a better kernel than any that have come before it. Some interesting changes took place in the way the Linux kernel is developed and tested. Several key changes have improved overall stability as well as quality.
• Kernel comparison: Web serving on 2.4 and 2.6 — Many improvements have been made in the Linux 2.6 kernel to favor enterprise applications. This article presents results from the IBM Linux Technology Center's Web serving testing efforts, comparing the Linux 2.4 and 2.6 kernels from various aspects. The highlights here are the key enhancements in the 2.6 kernel, the test methodologies, and the results of the tests themselves. Bottom line: the 2.6 kernel is much faster than 2.4 for serving Web pages, with no loss in reliability.
• WS Notification and WS Resource Framework — Web Services-Notification, Web Services-ResourceLifetime, and Web Services-ResourceProperties - Three new specifications help define how Web services can maintain stateful information, aiming to unify grid and Web services.
• Create a portable Web service in multiple J2EE environments — This tutorial shows how to create a portable end-to-end Web service in multiple J2EE environments with the IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer 5.1.1 Web Service wizard. The Web service client and server application code are generated with different runtimes and EARs. The Web service is deployed to a remote server.
• Java certification success, Part 1: SCJP — This tutorial is designed to prepare programmers for the Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP) 1.4 exam, providing a detailed overview of all the exam's main objectives.
• Grid portlets with the GridSphere portal framework — In this article, the author explains how to design and implement Web- based interfaces, known as portlets, to provide end-user interfaces for using grid services. He explains the open source portal framework GridSphere and provides code examples of portlets in the GridSphere model. The article also explains the integration of OGSA-based grid services and GridSphere, and it includes a grid portlet example that shows how to write a portlet to access a sample OGSA counter service.
• From OS/2 to Linux: Pt 1. Threads, mutexes, and semaphores — Linux is evolving as the predominant operating system of the new millennium, and legacy OSes such as OS/2 are being gradually phased out. This series of articles helps the developers involved in the tedious process of migrating/porting the OS/2 system drivers and applications to Linux. It provides a one-to-one mapping of various OS/2-to-Linux calls related to threads, IPC, memory management, timer handling, file handling, and so on. In addition, it captures the various preprocessor directives and compiler/linker options that can be mapped from OS/2 to Linux. This is the first in a series of three articles.
• Rexx for everyone — It's easy to get lost in the world of “little languages” — quite a few have been written to scratch some itch of a company, individual, or project. Rexx is one of these languages, with a long history of use on IBM operating systems, and good current implementations for Linux and other Free Software operating systems. Rexx occupies a useful ecological niche between the relative crudeness of shell scripting and the cumbersome formality of full systems languages. Many Linux programmers and systems administrators would benefit from adding a Rexx implementation to their collection of go-to tools.
• Cutting through the hype of Atonomic computing — If autonomic computing is the process of making computers behave like living, sentient creatures, then you, as a developer, are the doctor who makes sure your products and systems are performing properly. If there's an area of concern, you must diagnose it and make sure it has what it needs to function properly. This article gives you a roadmap to begin integrating autonomic computing concepts into your products.
• No Cost developerWorks Live! Technical Briefings in 2004 — The IBM developerWorks Live! Technical Briefings, a great success worldwide in 2003, reportedly, have been expanded for 2004. The following five types of technical briefings, which include presentations and extensive demonstrations, will be held in cities around the world in 2004 (at no cost to you): e-business on demand, IBM Software Development Platform, Speed-start Linux applications, Speed-start Web services, Globalizing your applications.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.