Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 16/09/2009: New Unbreakable, Berkeley DB



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • Switching to Linux: A Windows developer’s view
    Summary: In this particular case, the switch to Linux took me just a few hours, while the benefit for me was rather big: Improved performance, and less hassle with dependencies. The drawbacks — getting used to Linux, different tools — are out weighted by the advantages for me; and that’s the main point of this blog post. I was surprised how easy it was to switch from Windows to Linux completely on this project; as I expected a lot of problems (like for instance, not being able to get the stuff running at all!)


  • Shh!!! HP sneaks Linux in on new laptops
    Except for Dell, the major PC vendors are reluctant to admit they actually sell and support Linux. For instance, HP supports Linux quite well on its servers but is very reluctant to support it on its desktops. They have trouble even admitting that they're now shipping DeviceVM's instant-on Splashtop Linux on their new notebook lines.


  • Open Source Should Be Open To All
    Often the way is baby steps. If today you can convince someone to use some Open-Source software package – a document creator, a presentation tool, a web browser, or even a web server – you give yourself the wedge to start pushing for an Open Source operating system.


  • LCA2010 Schedule is now available!
    LCA2010 Organisers are proud to announce the schedule of talks for linux.conf.au 2010!

    A full schedule of talks is now available for LCA2010. The conference brings together speakers from around the world presenting a variety of topics; from the strongly technical such as Linux kernel development, to social interaction within communities and issues relating to diverse and minority groups. linux.conf.au 2010 runs for a full week starting Monday 18th January, with more than 65 talk sessions, together with a number of Keynote presentations and 14 Miniconfs.


  • Dreaming Again with One Laptop Per Child
    Predicting that a dream will vanish is cheap, getting consideration for what replaced the dream is priceless. OLPC is changing the world in ways that where not predictable when the dream started. So let's first admit a few facts, then tackle the errors and misunderstandings of UNdispatch's article.




  • Desktop

    • Run Evernote in Ubuntu Linux with Wine
      I may even try running some other Windows programs in Wine at some point. Maybe. But there are so many excellent native Linux apps, I may not need to.


    • The State Of Linux Desktop Functionality
      The State Of Linux Desktop Functionality


    • 10 Reasons to use Linux for Enterprise Business
      For a year now the information technology sector has been suffering under the global economic recession. At this juncture, setting up a network system for any organization could be highly expensive. Linux is an open source OS and edges over it arch rival Windows in several instances when it comes to business. Apart from the fact that they are generally free, Linux is more secure, reliable and customizable than other proprietary counterparts. Some of the most renowned companies in the world, including the bigshots like Amazon, Google, and Yahoo, run their servers with Linux rather than Windows.






  • Server

    • A Skeptical Look At The Linux Server Botnet
      When The Register ran news of a "Linux botnet" out in the wild, the bloviation did fly: See? Linux really isn't that secure! But odds are this has nothing to do with Linux security per se, and everything to do with the biggest and most notorious security hole of all: bad system administration.








  • Kernel Space

    • Torvalds on EFI
      Insightful quote of the day:
      Not that I’d ever claim that the BIOS is wonderful either, but at least everybody knows that the BIOS is just a bootloader, and doesn’t try to make it anything else. – Linus Torvalds (in reference to EFI)








  • Distributions

    • LFS, Gentoo or XYZ distribution. Which one for you?
      Finally, if you really, really want to learn exactly how a Linux system is created. There are a couple of methods which I know of that compile a complete Linux system from nothing. In other words you start off with an empty partition and end up with a working Linux system. The most famous one is the Linux From Scratch book which is an online (downloadable) book for compiling a Linux system from, er, scratch. Another, from a thunder down under, is DIY Linux (Do It Yourself Linux). This is not for the faint of heart and only those with a technical bent and some knowledge of Linux can work on this. There is no package management and every single aspect of your Linux system is under your control. As an added bonus you will be able to understand and work on any Linux system with ease.


    • The Netbook World Summit, a major IT event
      The Netbook World Summit 2009 will be held on the 8th of December 2009 in Paris.

      ABI’s Research forecasts worldwide shipments of nearly 35 million netbooks in 2009, rising to an estimated 139 million in 2013.




    • Red Hat Family

      • Trademarks - The dinosaur in the room
        Branding is just as vital to the success of FOSS projects as it is to proprietary software. This article explores the importance of trademarks for open source.




      • Oracle

        • Oracle Enterprise Linux updated
          Oracle has updated its Linux distribution for enterprise deployment. Oracle Enterprise Linux Release 5 Update 4 is now in step with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 which was released earlier this month.


        • Oracle updates Berkeley DB


        • Oracle *could* kill off MySQL as a commercial product, but probably won’t
          Before I even start this post I am going to repeat our view that Oracle is well aware that it has little to gain from killing off MySQL and that we expect MySQL to become the scale-out database for non-transactional web applications and to compete with SQL Server in departmental deployments.

          [...]

          Q. This is all very theoretical.

          A. Yes it is, but it highlights the importance of thinking through the long-term implications of licensing and copyright assignment. If you don’t want to end up in the situation faced by Monty Program, don’t go GPL with full copyright assignment.











    • Debian Family

      • 5 Exciting 2D Graphics Design tools for Ubuntu Linux
        Ubuntu linux is rich with exciting graphics utilities, Here you can see simple but very useful 2D Graphics Design tools for Ubuntu Linux. Yes welcome to the fantastic world of ubuntu graphics.


      • Launchpad Bug Filing Changes for Ubuntu
        As a part of the Increase Apport Adoption specification we are going to kick off an experiment and redirect all of Ubuntu’s /+filebug links in Launchpad to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs. This change has been tested on staging.launchpad.net already and will be landing shortly on edge.launchpad.net (There will be a +filebug?no-redirect if you really really need it).


      • Ubuntu Artwork team starts delivering - Four cool themes and two icon sets to start with!
        Ubuntu Artwork team finally starts delivering. Although Ubuntu have been the most popular distro for a pretty long time now, it really need to put in a lot of work on enhancing look and feel. Though a number of high quality third party themes are available like the bisigi-project, one thing where Ubuntu lacked was the absence of good quality themes by default. That is all going to change now.


      • Ubuntu 9.10 Home Encryption Performance
        There is certainly a performance cost to having the home directory encrypted along with the SWAP partition, as you can see from these results. Though a normal user not running disk benchmarks all day will not notice as severe of a change, depending upon the task it may be apparent. Is encrypting the data on your netbook worth it? Well, yours truly will not even travel without a netbook that has a fully encrypted disk running Ubuntu. What we had not compared in this article was how the home encryption performance change compared to Ubuntu 9.04 (without an encrypted SWAP and with an EXT3 file-system) or how it compares on Ubuntu 9.04 to a disk with a fully encrypted LVM, but we may have those results in a future article.


      • Ubuntu help: Finding answers fast
        Just before I finish I will mention a few paper resources: The Official Ubuntu Book, of which I am a co-author, or the Official Ubuntu Server Book are just two of dozens of books about Ubuntu on the market. You can also purchase paper copies of the official help at Lulu.com. Hopefully I have given you some good information about where to find help. Good luck and have fun with Ubuntu.












  • Devices/Embedded

    • Linux-ready mini-PC powers up
      Linutop announced the third generation of its compact Linux-based PC. Larger and with twice the memory of previous models, the Linutop 3 has a 1GHz Via C7 CPU, gigabit Ethernet, dual SATA ports, and PCIe expansion, the company says.


    • Android 1.6 is out
      GOOGLE HAS RELEASED the next version of its Android operating system for mobile phones, "Donut".

      Having a look at the promo video, Android 1.6 brings support for CDMA phones, more screen resolutions, more APIs, better camera software and improved search.


    • CrunchEee — the bad-ass netbook Linux for snobs that doesn’t give a rat’s ass whether you like it or not.
      CrunchEee is based on the Ubuntu 8.10 kernel — there’s a new version of CrunchBang, with 9.04 but without the Array.org customization for my Eee’s WiFi needs. I tried to install the Array.org kernel myself once and it didn’t take. I guess I’m still a Linux n00b after all… Just don’t tell anyone, okay?








Free Software/Open Source



Leftovers

  • Dell Settles New York Fraud Case For $4 Million
    New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has announced that Dell and its subsidiary, Dell Financial Services (DFS), have agreed to pay his office $4 million in restitution, penalties and costs to settle charges of fraudulent and deceptive business practices that scammed consumers in the state.


  • Denmark pulls 'promiscuous' video
    The three-minute clip shows a young blonde woman, trying to find a man whom she had a one night stand with, who fathered her child "August".




  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • Taiwan government aims at 80% global market share for Taiwan-made e-book readers in 2013
      Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) will be implementing a 5-year project with a total budget of NT$2.134 billion (US$65 million) to boost development of digital publication industries in Taiwan, with the goal being to make Taiwan-produced e-book readers reach a global market share of 80% with sales of NT$50 billion in 2013, according to the agency.


    • Cracks show in music industry over P2P enforcement
      Divisions inside the music business have prompted its umbrella trade organisation to issue a statement today denying any serious rift, while dodging the issue of whether it will urge the government to cut off persistent pirates from the net.

      The ructions were provoked by last week's statement from the Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), a group of managers and big-selling artists including Radiohead, Billy Bragg and davefromblur. The FAC was sharply critical of Lord Mandelson's proposed anti-copyright infringement measures, especially suspension of internet access.


    • Stunned film, music sectors react to Veoh decision
      In the cafes along Sunset Boulevard and the high-rises on Fifth Avenue, executives and lawyers at powerful entertainment conglomerates were talking about Veoh on Tuesday morning.

      They were not joyful discussions. Copyright owners in the film and music sectors were stunned Monday by the news that U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz ruled that Veoh, an online-video service, is protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's safe-harbor provision and cannot be held liable for acts of copyright infringement committed by users. This was the most significant court victory that the tech sector has won against copyright owners in some time.


    • WIPO Once Again Sides With Trademark Holder Over Common Sense
      The phrase "ta ta" is a well known way of saying goodbye. So, it was a cute idea for an Indian online travel site to use the domain name OkTaTaByeBye.com.










Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day



Jim Hogg teaches GNU Linux to high school kids 06 (2008)

[an error occurred while processing this directive]



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

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft's Bing Falls to Fourth in the Europe/Asia-Based Turkey, Share Halved Since LLM Hype, Now Only 1% (Sometimes Less)
Turkey (Eurasia) is another example of Microsoft failing with LLM hype and just burning a lot of energy in vain (investment without returns)
Backlash and Negative Press After Microsoft Tells Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) People to DIE
Follow-up stories
Censorship as Signal of Opportunity for Reform
It remains sad and ironic that Wikileaks outsourced so much of its official communications to Twitter (now X)
The World Wide Web Has Been Rotting for Years (Quality, Accuracy, and Depth Consistently Decreasing)
In the past people said that the Web had both "good" and "bad" and that the good outweighed the bad
Comoros: Windows Plunges to Record Low of About 6% in Country of a Million People (in 2010 Windows Was 100%)
Many of these people earn a few dollars a day; they don't care for Microsoft's "Hey Hi PC" hype
The Mail (MX) Server Survey for July 2024 Shows Microsoft Collapsing to Only 689 Servers or 0.17% of the Whole (It Used to be About 25%)
Microsoft became so insignificant and the most astounding thing is how the media deliberate ignores it or refuses to cover it
Windows Down From 98.5% to 22.9% in Hungary
Android is up because more people buy smaller mobile devices than laptops
Microsoft Windows in Algeria: From 100% to Less Than 15%
Notice that not too long ago Windows was measured at 100%. Now? Not even 15%.
Microsoft Windows "Market Share" in New Zealand Plunges to 25%
Android rising
SUSE Goes Aryan: You May Not Use the Germanic Brand Anymore (It's Monopolised by the Corporation)
Worse than grammar Nazis
Gratis But Not Free as in Freedom: How Let's Encrypt is Dying in Geminispace
Let's Encrypt is somewhat of a dying breed where the misguided CA model is shunned
 
[Meme] The Warlord's Catspaw
Thugs that troll us
Microsoft Misogyny Will be the Fall of Microsoft (Covering Up for Misogynists is a Huge Mistake and Highly Misguided Short-term Strategy)
Microsoft's undoing may in fact be its attitude towards women
Red Hat Keeps Behaving Like a Microsoft Reseller (for Proprietary Stuff!), Microsoft Employees as Authors in redhat.com
In some ways this reminds us of Novell
UEFI 'Secure Boot' Once Again Bricking PCs and Fake Security Models Are Perishing in Geminispace
Let's Encrypt has just fallen again
Links 17/07/2024: New Attacks on the Press, European Patents Squashed Even at Kangaroo Court (UPC)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/07/2024: Proponents of Censorship and New Arrivals at Gemini
Links for the day
Links 17/07/2024: School Budget Meltdown and Modern Cars as Tracking Nightmares
Links for the day
This Should Certainly be Illegal, But the Person Who Helped Microsoft Do This is Still Attacking the Critics of It
perhaps time for an "I told you so post"
[Meme] A Computer With an Extra Key on the Keyboard Isn't Everyone's Priority
(so your telling me meme)
Africa as an Important Reminder That Eradicating Microsoft Doesn't Go Far Enough
Ideally, if our top goal is bigger than "get rid of Microsoft", we need to teach people to choose and use devices that obey them, not GAFAM
Billions of Computers Run Linux and Many Use Debian (or a Derivative of It)
many devices never get updated or even communicate with the Net, so exhaustive tallies are infeasible
[Meme] Microsoft is Firing
Don't worry, Microsoft will have some new vapourware coming soon
More DEI (or Similar) Layoffs on the Way, According to Microsoft Team Leader
What happened shortly before Independence Day wasn't the end of it, apparently
[Meme] Many Volunteers Now Realise the "Open" in "OpenSUSE" or "openSUSE" Was Labour-Mining
Back to coding, packaging and testing, slaves
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 16, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 16, 2024
[Meme] Ein Factory
A choice between "masters" (or "master race") is a false choice that results in mass exploitation and ultimately eradication (when there's little left to exploit)
Links 17/07/2024: Open Source Initiative Lies and Dark Net Thoughts
Links for the day
Media Distorting Truth to Promote Ignorance
online media is rapidly collapsing
Android Rises to New Highs of Almost 80% in Cameroon
How many dozens of nations will see Windows at under 10% this coming winter?
Links 16/07/2024: TikTok Ban in Europe and Yandex Split
Links for the day
Gemini Links 16/07/2024: On Packrafting and on Trump Shot
Links for the day
[Meme] Firefox Users Who Think They Know Better Than Mozilla
Enjoy Firebook
Firefox Used to Have About Half the Market in Switzerland, But It Doesn't Stand a Chance Anymore (Chrome Surging This Summer)
Mozilla has managed to alienate some of the biggest fans of Firefox
Microsoft's Biggest Losses Are in Europe This Summer
Microsoft's ability to milk a relatively rich Europe is fast diminishing
How to Make Software Suck and Discriminate Against People at the Same Time
ageism glorified
Bing Was at 2.6% in Russia When LLM Hype Started. Now It's Down to 0.8% (for 3 Months in a Row Already)
The sharp fall of Bing may mean that exiting the Russian market won't matter to anybody
[Meme] Microsoft Seems to be Failing to Comply With WARN Act (by Refusing to Announce Mass Layoffs as They Happen)
since when does Microsoft obey the law anyway?
Microsoft Layoffs Are Still Too Frequent to Keep Abreast of and Properly (or Exhaustively) Classify
The "HR" department knows what's happening, but whistleblowers from there are rare
Bahamas Joined the "5% Windows" Club
statCounter only traces back about 1 in 20 Web requests to Windows
Links 16/07/2024: Salesforce Layoffs and Microsoft's DMARC Fail
Links for the day
Antenna Abuse and Gemini Abuse (Self-hosting Perils)
Perhaps all this junk is a sign of Gemini growing up
Possibly Worse Than Bribes: US Politicians and Lawmakers Who Are Microsoft Shareholders
They will keep bailing out Microsoft to bail themselves out
The Software Freedom Conservancy Folks Don't Even Believe in Free Speech and They Act As Imposters (Also in the Trademark Arena/Sense)
Software Freedom Conservancy was already establishing a reputation for itself as a G(I)AFAM censor/gatekeeper
Djibouti Enters the Windows "10% Club" (Windows Was 99% in 2010)
In Africa in general Microsoft lost control
GNU/Linux Share Doubled in the United States of America (USA) in the Past 12 Months
Or so says statCounter
Even in North Korea (Democratic People's Republic Of Korea) Google Said to Dominate, Microsoft Around 1%
Google at 93.26%
[Meme] The Red Bait (Embrace... Extinguish)
They set centos on fire, then offer a (de facto) proprietary substitute for a fee
Shooting the Messenger to Spite the Message
segment of a Noam Chomsky talk
[Video] Boston Area Assange Defense (Yesterday)
It was published only hours ago
Guinea: Windows Down From 99.3% to 2.7% 'Market Share'
Guinea is not a small country
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 15, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, July 15, 2024
What's Meant by "Antenna Abuse" (Gemini)
syndication is not a monopoly in Gemini and if one doesn't condone political censorship, then one can create one's own syndication service/capsule
Microsoft Layoffs and Entire Unit Termination: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
What an announcement to make just before Independence Day
Links 16/07/2024: Old Computer Challenge and One Page Dungeon Contest
Links for the day
Microsoft Falls Further and Closer Towards 10% (Windows "Market Share") in Kuwait
more countries entering the "single-digit Windows" (under 10%) club
Gemini Links 15/07/2024: Antenna's Pro-Hamas Bias Revisited and Old Computer Challenge
Links for the day
[Video] Julian Assange, Over One Decade Ago, Cautioning About What the Internet Had Truly Become
video is not new
Homage to Malta
Malta is probably easy for Microsoft to bribe
IRC at 16
Logging has been used for us and against us
In Malta, Android/Linux Has Overtaken Microsoft Windows (According to statCounter)
statCounter milestone?
Links 15/07/2024: China’s Economic Problems, Boeing Under Fire
Links for the day
500 Days' Uptime Very Soon
Good luck doing that with Windows...
Windows Falls Below 20% in Tunisia
A month ago we wrote about GNU/Linux in Tunisia
Links 15/07/2024: Google Wants Wiz and Why "Sports Ruin Everything"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/07/2024: Old Computer Challenge and Sending Files via NNCP
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 14, 2024
IRC logs for Sunday, July 14, 2024