Linus Torvalds - kernel 3.7 is now out.

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds <at> linux-foundation.org>

Subject: Linux 3.7

Newsgroups: gmane.linux.kernel

Date: 2012-12-11 03:59:50 GMT (9 hours and 45 minutes ago)

Whee. After an extra rc release, 3.7 is now out. After a few more trials at fixing things, in the end we ended up reverting the kswapd changes that caused problems. And with the extra rc, I had decided to risk doing the buffer.c cleanups that would otherwise have just been marked for stable during the next merge window, and had enough time to fix a few problems that people found there too. There's also a fix for a SCSI driver bug that was exposed by the last-minute workqueue fixes in rc8. Other than that, there's a few networking fixes, and some trivial fixes for sparc and MIPS. Anyway, it's been a somewhat drawn out release despite the 3.7 merge window having otherwise appeared pretty straightforward, and none of the rc's were all that big either. But we're done, and this means that the merge window will close on Christmas eve. Or rather, I'll probably close it a couple of days early. For obvious reasons. It's the main commercial holiday of the year, after all. So aim for winter solstice, and no later. Deal? And even then, I might be deep into the glögg. Linus

Read more here.

Simple convert images using ImageMagick - convert features

Can be done by using ImageMagick.This is a software suite to create, edit, compose, or convert bitmap images. It can read and write images in a variety of formats over 100. Using ImageMagick let you resize, flip, mirror, rotate, distort, shear and transform images, adjust image colors, apply various special effects, or draw text, lines, polygons, ellipses and Bézier curves.
Install the software under Fedora:

# yum install  ImageMagick 

Convert an image from one format to another. In this case jpeg.

$ convert *.png *.jpg

$ mogrify -format png *.jpg  

Read more about this software here.

News: Unusual commands in linux : pv

Today I will speak about pv command.
Pipe viewer - pv is a terminal-based tool for monitoring the progress of data through a pipeline written by Andrew Wood
To install pv on Fedora or CentOS do this:

$ sudo yum install pv

You can read the man file to get more help:

man pv

The result is:

NAME
       pv - monitor the progress of data through a pipe

SYNOPSIS
       pv [OPTION] [FILE]...
       pv [-h|-V]

DESCRIPTION
       pv  allows  a  user  to see the progress of data through a pipeline, by
       giving information such as time  elapsed,  percentage  completed  (with
       progress  bar),  current  throughput  rate, total data transferred, and
       ETA.

       To use it, insert it in a pipeline  between  two  processes,  with  the
       appropriate  options.  Its standard input will be passed through to its
       standard output and progress will be shown on standard error.

Let's see some examples.
You can get precise time how long it will take.

$ pv voronoi.py | python 
 737B 0:00:00 [86.9kB/s] [==================================>] 100%

You can see how fast the computer reads from /dev/zero.

$ pv /dev/zero > /dev/null
1.1GB 0:00:05 [   2GB/s] [    <=>                                            ]

You can use the dialog to show a progress bar.
To do this you need to use -n arg.

$ (pv -n /dev/zero > /dev/null) 2>&1 | dialog --gauge "Please wait" 10 70 0