Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 26/05/2009: KDE4 Bits, Ubuntu and Shops



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



  • Government Users Start Looking Under Linux Hood
    If you are a local government IT official in the U.S. today, it’s likely easier for you to pick up a phone and get easy, quick answers from proprietary software vendors to find technology products to fill your needs, rather than having to manually sort through the sometimes fragmented world of open source projects to find a good fit.


  • Invisible Linux: The Details
    Invisible Linux would essentially do for Linux what Apple did with NeXTStep / BSD: take the open source core and wrap it in a layer that may not be open source but which is polished to a degree that makes it irresistible to end users. Such a package would consist of three things: a stable and dependable ABI/API layer for programmers; a professionally designed and use-tested interface for end users; and an organized deployment of all these things for the sake of administrators and commercial software creators.


  • Vistec rolls e-beam for 8-nm devices
    The system includes Linux-based operational software. Users can choose the preferred data preparation scheme.


  • Giving New Life to Old Macs With Linux
    If you've run older PowerPC-based Macs in your businesses you may be wondering what to do with them now that Apple has made the transition to Intel, and the G3, G4 and G5 processors are beginning to show their age.

    One possibility is to scrap OS X, and turn the machines into servers (or workstations) running Linux. Several distros run on PowerPC Macs, including familiar names like Ubuntu and OpenSUSE, as well as one that is probably less familiar: Yellow Dog Linux (YDL).

    YDL is a distro based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux/CentOS core.


  • Why Your Boss Wants You to Use Linux
    As you “already know” – boss knows the best. If bosses were given to choose an operating system which would be right for their employees, that will be Linux. Here is the reasons:

    1. Since Linux is free, you have no reason to ask him for part of its budget every time you install, upgrade, and get new software applications. Now instead of buying you a Windows Vista Ultimate Edition, He now has extra money to spare for a spa.

    2. Because "he loves you and your job" so much, he wants you and your computer to be free from virus always. In addition, most bosses want the working place to be always clean and just hearing the words like virus, bacteria, or etc make them angry because they know that in the near future someone can absentee from the job.

    [...]




  • Kernel Space

    • Linux Unified Kernel 0.2.4
      On May 22nd, 2009, Linux Unified Kernel project development team officially issued Unified Kernel 0.2.4. This version ports the file managment functions into kernel with one interface, and fixes bugs of registry managment in the previous one. With the improvement, applications will perform better on Linux Unified Kernel than on Wine. And the .rpm and .deb installation files are provided in the new release to save the installing time and storage space.


    • New Open-Linux Firmware for ICY BOX IB-NAS4220-B and IB-NAS4210
      With immediate effect there is an improved open Linux firmware available for the ICY BOX IB-NAS4220-B and IB-NAS4210-B (version no. 2.6.3.2 and no. 2.6.3.1). It is the first update since the last official release in November 2008.






  • Applications

    • NetFlix Where Art Thou ?
      OK...I think we can put the old wive's tale to bed that Linux Users just don't spend money.

      2DBoy will be the first to punch a pin in that bubble.

      I could have linked the same data with a personal quote from Kyle from 2DBoy in my blog but that wouldn't have proven much. The fact that Linux Users absolutely destroyed all previous first-day sales of World Of Goo by 40% is a powerful indicator.








  • K Desktop Environment

    • KDE 4.3 Beta 1: A Short Preview
      There are a ton of features in KDE 4.3, more than I could possibly mention in one article. It seems that there are improvements all over the place.


    • 15 Beautiful KDM Themes
      KDM (KDE Display Manager) is the default graphical login interface of the K Desktop Environment. Anyone who uses KDE should know that KDM is highly customizable and can be easily configured.








  • Distributions

    • Sooner (Linux Mint 7), Later (Fedora 11) and Now (ooVoo 2.1)
      It looks like Linux Mint will be making their next release, 7 or "Gloria", in the next few days, according to the Linux Mint Blog. This is good news, because the new release is based on Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope", which means you will get OpenOffice 3, and quite a few other nice updates. Of course, there are lots of Mint-specific updates as well, many of which look very nice. I've been running the Release Candidate for a couple of weeks now, and it is very good.


    • Fedora 11: Virtual(ization) Reality
      8. Working on virtualization must be awfully time consuming and involved. Do you enjoy it? What do you do to get away from the pressures of hacking?

      Working on open source virtualization technology is a great experience because it is a really interesting and challenging field, having plenty of talented developers to work with and learn from. There is plenty of work still to be done at all levels of the stack from kernel/hypervisor right through to end user applications and not nearly enough time to do it all. I'm fortunate to be able to spread my work between upstream projects, the Fedora community and RHEL releases and maintenance.




    • Ubuntu

      • Ubuntu AppCenter
        The following is only an idea, but it could become reality in one of the next releases of the popular Ubuntu operating system. Back in August 2005, Matthew Paul Thomas submitted, on the Ubuntu wiki page, an idea and design of a piece of software that would unify all the existing package managers in the Ubuntu distribution. At the moment, the software is called AppCenter, and it was recently brought into spotlight. If you look at the mockup below, it pretty much looks like the Add/Remove application that is already an important part of the Ubuntu OS, but... if you look closer, you can notice that it also includes the ability to retrieve security and software updates.


      • Canonical developers aim to make Android apps run on Ubuntu
        As Android's platform gains a stronger following and attracts commercial software vendors, the ability to use Android software on a conventional Linux distro could be a significant asset for users and hardware vendors. It would also boost the inherent portability of Android applications, potentially making Android a more palatable target for some third-party application developers.


      • Android Full Screen on Ubuntu
        Hacking pays off. I can now run the Android stack on Ubuntu with applications and the launcher running full-screen.


      • Ubuntu to get Appstore
        It seems every man plus dog is trying to build an AppStore to mirror Apple's success. The latest comes from Open Source outfit Canonical which makes the user-friendly Linux OS Ubuntu. Of course the Linux fanbois claim that they had the idea first as Apple's AppStore is very similar to their idea of Linux repositories. However there is no doubt that the AppStore does things a lot better with an awful lot of software.


      • Dell Studio XPS 13 with Ubuntu Linux
        Dell have certainly been showing Ubuntu some much needed attention over the last few months, and now they have decided to offer a Linux-based operating system on their new Dell Studio XPS 13 notebook, this is one of their hottest items at the moment.










  • Devices/Embedded

    • Router platform runs OpenWRT Linux
      Ubicom is shipping a OpenWRT Linux-based router platform and reference design using the company's new Ubicom IP7100 Router Gateway Evaluation board. The Ubicom board incorporates its StreamEngine IP7100 series network RISC processor, and includes a gigabit WAN port and four gigabit LAN ports, says the company.




    • Phones

      • HTC plans Android-based 'OPhone' for China
        For a holiday, it's been an eventful day in the world of HTC-Android-phone news. First came those leaked internal AT&T documents that showed, among other things, a new HTC Android device called the Lancaster that's supposedly targeted for an August U.S. launch. Now comes word of HTC's plans, starting next month, to sell an Android-powered smartphone in China, the world's largest wireless market.


      • New Open Source Mobile Phone Targets Business Users: Report
        Also consider this: For a few months, now, analysts have been calling for flexible open source platforms to fuel sales of smartphones, which some say will double their share of the entire cell phone market by 2013.

        [...]

        Officials at the international firm, whose U.S. headquarters are in Boston, say support from developers, vendors and operators is driving adoption of the open source devices.


      • Hacking Android on Ubuntu
        Great now I can run Android, right? Not yet. I came to find out that there are many things in the Android code that rely on specific hardware features. For example, is the device powered on? Of course it is on -- we are a computer :)








    • Sub-notebooks

      • Feature-packed UMPC survives four-foot drops
        Data Ltd announced a ruggedized UMPC (ultra-mobile PC) claimed to survive multiple four-foot drops onto concrete. The Linux-compatible "DLI 8400" uses a 1.6GHz Atom processor, has hard disk or SSD (solid state disk) storage, and operates for nine hours via two hot-swappable batteries, the company says.


      • At last! Moblin has made Linux look cool!
        Moblin, though, is different. It's not a boiler. It's sleek, it's slick, it's almost sexy.

        So naturally, somebody's going to bugger it up. Of course they will. It's Linux!

        Instead of a single version of Moblin, there's going to be loads, and netbook firms are going to muck around with it, and we're going to end up with the same old confusion that stops Linux from breaking through and becoming the OS your mum, dad and grandparents use.


      • First look: Intel's Moblin 2.0 Linux desktop for netbooks












Free Software/Open Source

  • Code alteration isn't what open source is about
    Many vendors are jumping on the open source bandwagon and trying to make a 'quick buck' out of an emerging trend. Skewed versions of the definition of open source can largely be attributed to these vendors and it is recommended that companies seek out only certified and reputable open source vendors.

    Open source technology is by nature practical and pristine. Reputable vendors will not boast that their software and hardware have new and sexy features; they will not use alterable code as a selling point or claim to be absolutely “free”.

    Open source can only be considered to be so if it has a strong open source community backing. Anything less is something else entirely.


  • Innovation's Catalyst
    Enthusiasts have had a central role developing the Web and open-source software, often doing what they loved doing without wondering whether they would make money at it. At O'Reilly, we've been following enthusiasts to learn more about the technologies they're playing with. Tim O'Reilly calls them "alpha geeks." (See "Where Real Innovation Happens.")

    [...]

    Most importantly, he saw that users benefit from their own innovations. This insight speaks to the motivation of enthusiasts: They are doing it for themselves. Innovation results from making something you want to use yourself. It's the same idea that Eric S. Raymond described when he remarked that open-source projects were started by developers who were "scratching their own itch."




  • Browsers

    • Five Questions With Dion Almaer - Co-Creator Of Mozilla Bespin
      Dion Almaer is a name you will find 80,700 results for when searching on Google, so it is clear that people know how Dion Almaer is however, let's kick this interview of with, like the shower scene in a slasher movie, the obligatory first question, who is Dion Almaer?

      Haha, yeah, I guess people could find a lot about me if they wanted huh? :) I am a Brit who moved to the US many moons ago and now live in the bay area, California. Some may know my work at Ajaxian.com, which is a blog discussing Ajax technology. I founded that blog with my partner in crime, Ben Galbraith, and we recently had a chance to join forces at Mozilla to startup a new Developer Tools Lab together. Bespin is the first experiment out from that lab.


    • Flock 2.5 Delivers the Promise of Social Media on the Web
      It’s been a long time in coming, but with the 2.5 release, the Flock folks have pulled all of the pieces together to deliver a cohesive “Social Web Browser.” The 2.5 release of Flock, coupled with the increasing mainstream interest in social media, might just be enough to make Flock more than a niche browser for Web 2.0 junkies.






  • Business

    • OpenX Gets $10.4 Million in Funding, Squares Off With Google
      OpenX Technologies, an open source advertising community that helps online publishers make money, has just announced a $10.4 million third round of venture funding, bringing total investment in the company to nearly $31 million since mid-2007.


    • OpenX Raises $10 Million to Serve Ads
      Now, it has raised $10 million in its third round of funding, which brings the total investment in OpenX to $31 million. DAG Ventures led the new investment round and was joined by existing investors Accel, Index Ventures, Mangrove Capital, First Round Capital and Jonathan Miller, chairman of OpenX and the new digital head of News Corp.








  • Programming

    • Adobe acts against Flash video stream recorder
      SourceForge, the open-source project host, has removed the pages of the rtmpdump stream-recording software from its network in response to a cease-and-desist notice from Adobe. The program uses the Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) to record not only streamed Flash media but also encrypted streams. Adobe added encryption to its proprietary protocol on introducing Flash Media Server 3 in order to prevent the recording of Flash content, and defined RTMPE (RMTP encrypted) for the purpose. Adobe takes the view that its copy protection can be circumvented by the RTMPE support incorporated in rtmpdump and, in its cease-and-desist notice, invokes the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to prevent the distribution of the software.






  • Applications

    • click2try(TM) Adds XOOPS CMS to Content Management System Offerings
      click2try(TM) (http://www.click2try.com) today announced that it has added XOOPS Dynamic Web CMS version 2.3.3 (http://www.xoops.org) to its online catalog of virtualized Open Source applications. A Community site, click2try enables users to try applications for free and use by subscription.








Leftovers

  • Are Free Bandwidth And Distribution Bad? Ask Susan Boyle
    But, you have folks at the NY Times who seem to think that it's a bad thing, because the producers of the TV show aren't making any advertising revenue from the clip being on YouTube. No, but they've created a huge singing sensation that is getting attention from millions of people. If they can't figure out how to make money off of that in the long run, they don't deserve to be in business.






Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day



Kendall Dawson, Linspire Community Liaison 04 (2005)

Ogg Theora





Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

Recent Techrights' Posts

SLAPP Censorship - Part 68 Out of 200: Based on Their Particulars of Claims, Microsoft's Graveley and Garrett Seem Like the Same Person (Exactly Same Words Used, Sloppily Recycled)
almost identical (even a description of who they are and how they feel)
Gartner Group Paid The Register MS. And Now The Register MS is a "Gartner Says" Rag.
Follow the money
Microsoft's XBox Exodus Carries on: Corporate VP of Gaming Ecosystem Organization and Corporate VP of XBox Devices and Ecosystem Both Leave Microsoft
Don't expect what's left of the media to properly report the true scale of the XBox cuts and executive-level departures
Why Chatbots Based on LLMs Cannot Be Improved Even If More Energy (Money) Gets Wasted on Them
nobody can do it well
 
Pop the Slop Bubble, Don't Ask When It'll Pop or Expect Others to Pop It for You
It has all along been sold on a lie and it relied a great deal on corrupted (captured) media which played along with deliberate lies because it got paid to do this [...] The slop bubble is similar to the fake-coins bubble
The Operating Systems statCounter Cannot Identify or Classify
Is it possible that statCounter just cannot properly decipher and classify systems brought by and controlled by eastern Asia as opposed to Europe and North America?
IBM Allegedly Used Apptio to Target and Sack (RA) Productive or 'Expensive' Employees, Are Apptio Staff Now Subjected to Layoffs?
Apptio is one of several companies that IBM buys only to sink together with the IBM boat, RMS Watson
Gemini Links 06/05/2026: "Who Knows That You Blog?" and New Official Antenna by Michael Nordmeyer
Links for the day
Links 06/05/2026: Apple Accepts That It Misled People on Slop and Begins Blocking Software/Games Made With Slop
Links for the day
Codecs and Software Patents - Part II - AV1 and HEVC Not Really Safe
We are, in effect, looking at a sort of cartel (like the one which came out of Germany with MP3)
The Corrupt Lecture the Non-Corrupt - Part XIV - Antisemitism Inside the EPO
A sensitive topic for the European Patent Office (EPO)
Gemini Links 06/05/2026: Childhood Memories, Intense People, and Natural Web Exploration
Links for the day
Links 06/05/2026: Narges Mohammadi in Critical Condition and Copyright Infringement Rampant in Reddit
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, May 05, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, May 05, 2026
Ubuntu is Run by "N00bs" (and It Shows)
GNU/Linux users are not a small niche anymore
Gemini Links 05/05/2026: Bad Health, Pomera DM250 On Linux, and Children Using DO
Links for the day
Reading Closely What Microsoft Put in the Report, Expect Many More Layoffs Later This Year
The only thing that they grow rapidly is their debt
IBM is Collapsing, the People Responsible for the Collapse Aren't the Victims
IBM management has plenty of things to distract from right now
Media: Let's Repeat the Lie About Mass Layoffs Being a Win for a Buzzword
This says so much about the state of today's media
The Generations of CS Are Coming to 'End of Life'
Nowadays everything that is a computer is somehow called "hey hi"
Links 05/05/2026: Live Nation Problems, Growing Tensions in the Gulf Again (Energy Crisis)
Links for the day
Gartner Pays The Register MS and the Effect is Visible (IBM Promotion; IBM Also a Sponsor, of Both!)
Follow the money
The Register MS Published Fake Article That Mentioned "AI" Almost a Dozen Times. It Got Paid to Do This.
If you keep seeing the term "AI" quite a lot in the media, be sure to check who pays for it
Links 05/05/2026: Germany, Depression, and Control of Online Discourse in Geminispace
Links for the day
Links 05/05/2026: "Republicans Made Children More Expensive" and "Internet Blackouts" Cripple Economies
Links for the day
Microsoft Lunduke Has a Serious Problem: He's Fronting for Sites That Insist on Exposing Children to Pornography
He's even contradicting himself a lot
What "Age Verification" Laws Are About
We know based on experience (even predating the Web) that kids will find workarounds, so such restrictions are difficult to enforce
Unsustainable 'Tech' (Debt) Giants Rely on US Taxpayers for Bailouts and Subsidies
In the past 6 months Oracle and Amazon alone borrowed over 100 billion dollars
Future-Proofing Techrights
2 days from now this site turns exactly 19.5 (years)
Microsoft is Waning Like IBM
There will be lots of "ex Softies" or "former Microsofters" out there
Chatbots Are Not Replacing Web Search, But They Contaminate Results
People still value pages written and curated by humans; they use search engines to find these
SLAPP Censorship - Part 67 Out of 200: Graveley and Garrett Claims Against My Wife and I Assert 'Distress', But It Was Just a Copy-Pasted Template (Mechanical Crocodile Tears)
Can barristers charge 10,000-15,000 US dollars (about $1,000-1,500 per page!) to do such shoddy, sloppy work?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 04, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, May 04, 2026
Links 05/05/2026: Energy Crises, Data Breaches, and Journalists Murdered
Links for the day
The Corrupt Lecture the Non-Corrupt - Part XIII - Health and Safety With Cocaine
That they are trying to approach us (the President's own family) is a sign of weakness
Codecs and Software Patents - Part I - The 2026 Status Quo
It's frustrating to see how little (almost none) media coverage exists for these sorts of matters
Gemini Links 05/05/2026: ASCII Chessboard Without HTML and Ongoing Antenna Migration
Links for the day
Links 04/05/2026: Economics of Slop Discredited, Democrat and Republican Voters Want Cuts to Data Centres
Links for the day
IBM's "FutureNow" is the Rebranding of the Client Innovation Center (CIC), for Lobbying Purposes by IBM While Halving People's Salaries
So says a new comment
Libera.​Chat Openly and Publicly Admits It Has an LLM Slop Problem (Chatbots in Its Channels)
If there's a policy that bans chatbots (not humans), there's even a moral imperative for it
Microsoft: Yes, We Are Losing Windows Users and Yes, We Have Problems With Payroll (So We Lay Off Essential Workers)
From what we can gather, "hey hi" is now the name of everything at Microsoft
Ubuntu.com While Ubuntu.com is Under DDoS Attack and Intermittently Offline Due to Windows Botnets: Don't Use Ubuntu, Use Windows Instead
Unbelievable, as this is their advice when Windows zombies hammer away at their Web site and general infrastructure
Links 04/05/2026: "DNC Covering Up Its 2024 Autopsy" and Rudy Giuliani in Critical Condition
Links for the day
Linux Kernel Tainted by Software Patents That Make Linux Worse and the 'Linux' Foundation is Compiling Bribes to Enable This (Promotion of Monopolies and Tolerance of Software Patenting)
Why you need to reboot when a serious bug is found in Linux? "Licencing"...
ChromeOS and GNU/Linux Exceed 5% in New Zealand
Can we expect New Zealand and Australia to divest from GAFAM?
Links 04/05/2026: Energy Shortages Become More Visible, Germans Reject Military Service, Merz Says US 'Humiliated' Over Iran
Links for the day
KDE's Cornelius Schumacher Explains Why You Should be Slop-Free
Output is not measured by quantity of words
The Real News is Botnets (e.g. Windows With Back Doors), Not Iran
Let's focus on the botnets [...] Microsoft's aim is the opposite of security
SLAPP Censorship - Part 66 Out of 200: Alex Graveley Did Illegal Things, Then Asserted Mentioning Those Illegal Things is Privacy Violation
Alex Graveley "has suffered damage and distress" when the public found out he told women to kill themselves
The Corrupt Lecture the Non-Corrupt - Part XII - Outsourcing Everything to Microsoft, Which is Illegal
Today's EPO isn't about technology or law
Melissa Chan on Why Press Freedom Matters to Everyone, Not Just Journalists
dispelling a myth
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 03, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, May 03, 2026
Gemini Links 04/05/2026: Another Old Web Pillar Gone and Simple Lobsters Mirror for Gemini
Links for the day