Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 1/1/2010: Many New GNU/Linux Releases, Ubuntu Tweak 0.5



Novell happy year





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • A standard Windows desktop is useless
    I type, LyX does the layout. Creating a PDF is painless. With eLyXer HTML creation is easy - and boy, does it look good. With LaTeX2RTF I can create those @#$% Word documents the whole world seems to be craving for. I written my entire 4tH manual with LyX, which is over 450 densely written letter-size pages - with graphics. No problem. Making references, bibliographies or a simple table of contents, it's just a few quick clicks away. I fire LyX up, adjust the document properties and I'm away. I type the title, my name, indicate this is the "title" and "author" and begin my first section. Highlight the section title, indicate this is a "section" and off we go. That's how you produce content. Needless to say that once you've put an image somewhere that it doesn't move anymore - and certainly isn't overlaid.


  • The Linux Commercial Contest
    Post a link to that video in the Comments section below this post.

    The deadline is January 10, 2010 at 5pm Eastern Standard Time. You can post your entries after that time but they won't be considered for the contest.

    I will announce the winners via a post here on Daniweb on January 15, 2010.

    There will be three winners: First, Second and Third place.

    Winners will receive fame and possibly some higher form of recognition. I'll work on that part.

    Winners will be judged on the following criteria: 1. Originality 2. Number YouTube views 3. Commercial Appeal

    Good luck and get creative.


  • IT Experts: Our Top Tech Resolutions for 2009
    If you're not going to stick with Windows, then jump ship in 2009 -- after all, it's now clear that Windows 7 won't be a brand-new OS but simply a better Vista, so what are you waiting for? Plus, the next Mac OS X, Snow Leopard, will also be a continuation of the current OS, so there's no reason to delay your journey down that path. Linux's stability also argues for not waiting.




  • Applications

    • Trying Out Single Window Mode on GIMP 2.7
      Once you run GIMP 2.7, you'll notice that it will start up in the traditional multi-window interface. To switch to the single-window interface, go to the "Windows" menu and toggle "Single-window mode".

      Now that GIMP has the window mode of your choice, I hope the multi-window zealots and the single-window lovers can both rejoice about the wonderful, yet underrated program we know as GIMP.


    • A Look Back At Docky in 2009
      As with a few other of my favourite Linux applications, Docky has an incredibly insightful and focused team who hare a passion for making Docky awesome – as proven by its breathtakingly fast development speed!


    • Some GNOME Activity Journal (GNOME Zeitgeist) Screenshots
      So after some cleanup we decided to upload these pics before new years starts. Development is going very fast thanks to the Zeitgeist Framework 0.3 series. This is not our final design and there are ofcourse some usability flaws. We welcome critics, praises and suggestions.


    • Learning is Childsplay
      I spent some time looking at Childsplay and if you have small children, I think you should too. As soon as I started the program, it started to play it's theme song and my 18 month old son came running, and he still comes running every time he hears that music. For most parents and educators, my review of this program could end right here, but I suspect that I should probably write a bit more.


    • Android apps: Six of the best
      Astrid

      Astrid is a to-do list manager on steroids. Astrid can be used to create tasks with notes, deadlines, reminders tags and priorities. Input is straightforward and reminders can be set in any form. Astrid can also sync with online site Rememberthemilk.com and prompts you with human-like reminders at regular intervals: "Let's get this done". Tasks can also record time spent on each of them so Astrid also acts like a time-logger for billing hours. If you have stuff to do then Astrid is the best at keeping you organised.




    • Instructionals







    • Games

      • 3 Wonderful Open-Source Games to Install After Installing Ubuntu
        Wesnoth 1.6.5

        Scripting is handled in Wesnoth by WML, the Wesnoth Markup Language, which allows for building entire scenarios and campaigns.

        Wesnoth is in a continuous change, with every new release bringing more features and gameplay innovation. The current stable release is 1.6.5, but soon 1.8 will be out, and it will include new unit portraits, WML (Wesnoth Markup Language) improvements, updated campaigns and more. 1.8 will also allow the user to directly upload user-made campaigns and scenario from in-game add-ons menu.












  • Distributions

    • Getting Started with Arch Linux
      It’s hard to come up with an opinion about Arch, since Arch is what you make of it. I like that it gives so much control to the user when it comes to system configuration, but at times it feels like a little too much control. There are a few things that make you think “come on, does this HAVE to be manual?” but the developers are clearly just trying to follow the Arch philosophy of giving the user all the control. In particular, it would be nice to have tools like hwd and aurbuild as part of the system, or at least available for installation through pacman. That may happen at some point as packages in AUR have a chance to be worked into the community repo eventually. Overall I think I like Arch and pacman, and I can see how it would make a great choice for systems that should be kept fast and clean.




    • New Releases







    • Mandriva

      • Noteworthy changes 21 december – 31 december 2009
        In spite of the holiday season, lots of new packages continue to trickle in Mandriva Cooker. Amongst the many updates, here is an overview of some important changes:

        * GNOME is now updated toversion 2.29.4: The most important changes are in Nautilus. In preparation of GNOME 3.0, where Nautilus will purely be a file browser and won’t provide the desktop anymore, the file management part has been improved a lot. Upstream is now using browser mode by default (this was already the case in Mandriva) and made several UI improvements for it. The developers have added now an optional split view like Midnight Commander. Another useful change is that it’s now possible in GNOME to configure a background per monitor on a multi-monitor setup in GNOME. Also worth mentioning is the fast progress the Tracker document search engine is making since some time. I would recommend removing Beagle from your Cooker system, and switching to Tracker instead. Then by clicking on the Search button in Nautilus’ toolbar, you can easily search your files. * KDE has been updated to the latest beta, which is version 4.4 beta 2.








    • Ubuntu Tweak

      • Ubuntu Tweak Gets New User-based Website, New Release
        Today should also see the release of Ubuntu 0.5.0 which sports a slightly-rejigged interface and several new features – not least of which being the integration of UTCOM application database.


      • Ubuntu Tweak 0.5: An Early Look
        Ubuntu Tweak 0.5 will come with a redesigned UI (but version 0.6 will suffer major UI changes), XFCE specific features and most importantly: the ability to fetch online database to keep the ppplication information up-to-date. That means that you will be able to keep your applications and sources up-to-date without updating Ubuntu Tweak.










  • Devices/Embedded

    • Ask a Geek: Home servers, and why you need one
      The final solution that I can present is to use a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu Server (http://ubuntu.com). There are a great many tutorials throughout the Internet that will walk you through setting up Ubuntu as a server, and more specifically as a home server. Please know that this column lists solutions from least to most complicated, and Ubuntu will be the hardest setup of the solutions presented. At the same time, Ubuntu will also provide you with the most flexibility to do whatever you want with your own machine for little to no cost.


    • Tri-OS SmartQ V5 MID goes on sale in China
      The company does reveal, however, that the device is powered by a 600MHz ARM11 CPU which can be overclocked to 800MHz thanks to a firmware update. Most interestingly, the V5 ships with Android, Ubuntu Linux and Windows CE 6.0 preloaded.








Free Software/Open Source

  • Spoiled Brats




  • BSD

    • Letter from the President
      In 2009, the FreeBSD project had the misfortune of losing two long time contributors: John Birrell and Jean-Marc Zucconi. I chatted with John recently, during this year's BSDCAN, so his death was all the more shocking. It forced me to recognize my own mortality and to consider what contributions from our lives remain after we pass away. Reviewing the heritage of FreeBSD it becomes clear that our work on this project takes on a life of its own. John and Jean-Marc's efforts live on in FreeBSD.


    • The Great Fallacy of BSD Unix vs. Linux
      "Linux is just a kernel." It's a commonly heard refrain amongst the arguments put forward by BSD Unix aficionados, and it is a true statement, but it is all too often abused to try to make a fallacious point.








  • Programming

    • Release Early, Release Often, Adopt Slowly
      The Mozilla folks can push people to upgrade to the next release Firefox in droves because it's relatively easy to upgrade to the latest Firefox, and they have mechanisms in place to make that easy. But one shouldn't expect that all technology adoption is going to happen at the same clip. Moving to a new OS or a new version of PostgreSQL or Python requires a lot of moving bits to be aligned correctly.








Leftovers

  • 10 Historic Events Then and Now


  • South Korea Closes Flash Memory Antitrust Investigation
    South Korea's Fair Trade Commission has closed an antitrust investigation of the flash memory industry, concluding that there is no evidence of a pricing cartel.


  • Fallon’s Getting a Dell!
    Fallon would probably have preferred the more colorful Mini9 but he got the Vostro, instead, because I was able to buy a new one from Dell for $199 with free shipping. Heck of a deal.

    [...]

    The Dell people have been uniformly helpful, friendly, courteous, and kind.


  • Dell crowned Bad Santa computer maker by angry customers
    Dell customers are furious at the computer maker after it failed to deliver products in time for the holiday season, and instead offered a "Holiday Card" to place under their Christmas trees to replace undelivered gifts.


  • DVD Is Dead
    The movie studio fantasy was that we’d pay $20-$40 per Blu-Ray disk, but then Daddy was laid-off and that Blu-Ray copy of 8 Mile suddenly wasn’t THAT much better than the DVD version for half the price. Some people decided to wait while others gave up completely, leading to that $68 Blu-Ray player down at WalMart. Remember WalMart is the largest seller of DVD’s (and presumably Blu-Ray disks) in America and possibly the world. WalMart is such a Big Kahuna in the home video business that they can dictate prices pretty much to the rest of the market. I predict, therefore, that after Christmas Blu-Ray prices will crash to only marginally more than DVDs and maybe even the same.


  • Tories swallow Web 2.0, spit out €£1m crowdsource prize
    The Tories are waving a €£1m taxpayer-funded crowdsourcing prize under the noses of developers to produce a website that can "harness the wisdom" of voters to "resolve difficult policy challenges".




  • Security

    • TSA Subpoenas Bloggers, Demands Names of Sources
      As the government reviews how an alleged terrorist was able to bring a bomb onto a U.S.-bound plane and try to blow it up on Christmas Day, the Transportation Security Administration is going after bloggers who wrote about a directive to increase security after the incident.

      TSA special agents served subpoenas to travel bloggers Steve Frischling and Chris Elliott, demanding that they reveal who leaked the security directive to them. The government says the directive was not supposed to be disclosed to the public.


    • US feds squeeze bloggers for posting TSA orders
      At least two bloggers who posted the latest Transportation Security Administration security guidelines have received visits from the feds. One had his laptop confiscated and was served a subpoena. The other just received the subpoena.

      In case you've been recovering from a massive holiday bender and haven't viewed the news recently, on Christmas day a singularly inefficient Nigerian doofus attempted to blow up an airliner by setting his underpants on fire.


    • TSA To Save Print Media? No Electronics On International Flights? What A Joke.
      Obviously, this is all in reaction to the Nigerian man who attempted to bring down a plane coming into the U.S. And the TSA is going to do whatever it thinks is necessary to prevent further attacks of a similar nature. But the simple fact is that if the TSA was really this seriously worried about electronic devices, they could have banned them anytime since the attacks on September 11, 2001. Instead, they’re doing it more than 8 years later after a man apparently lit some sort of mixture of powder and liquid in his lap. How that relates to electronics, I’m not sure. This just reeks of a “well, we have to do something” move.








  • Finance







  • Censorship/Civil Rights







  • Internet/Web Abuse/DRM

    • Despite Awful Customer Service, Woman Felt Forced To Buy Another Sony eBook Reader... Thanks To DRM
      After all of this, she went out and bought another Sony ebook reader. She noted that she would have gladly purchased a competing product "but would have lost access to the library she's spent hundreds of dollars building up." And there it is. The DRM tax at work creating serious lock-in and consumer problems. At least in this case, due to the publicity from Consumerist, Sony agreed to reimburse the woman, but you shouldn't have to get a major publication to tell your story first to get that kind of resolution.






  • Intellectual Monopolies/Copyrights

    • Netflix Trying to Make Peace with Wary Studios for More Streaming Content
      Things are looking tough for Netflix. The online rental service is trying to convince Hollywood studios to sell them the rights to more video content for their “Watch Instantly” streaming offering, but many studios still seem to be mad about Netflix’s deal with Starz last year. The Starz deal, which in one fell swoop added around 2,500 titles for streaming, allowed Netflix to gain access to newer Disney and Sony movies without asking for permission from the studios.


    • Author Robin Sloan Offers Up Money To Fans For Good Remix Ideas
      It's yet another cool way of connecting with fans, and going explicitly against what copyright allows. It's explicitly encouraging people to copy his work and even offering money to them if they do a good job.


    • Songwriter Sues Eddie Vedder for Changing 'Hard Sun' Lyrics
      Peterson is now suing Vedder and has filed papers in New York's Manhattan federal court. The suit states, "Vedder altered certain key lyrics of 'Hard Sun'... eroding the integrity of the composition." Executives at Universal Music are also targeted in the lawsuit after allegedly licensing the track without his permission.










Clip of the Day





Direct link

Recent Techrights' Posts

Get Ready for Increase in PIPs and RAs at IBM, Red Hat, and Other Companies Devoured by IBM
IBM's "market cap" has just fallen to 199 billion dollars and it has about 70 billion dollars in debt
Like Kyndryl, Multiple Securities Fraud Investigations Into IBM
Remember what happened to Kyndryl
Who Next After IBM? (Bubbles Don't Last Forever)
the demise of companies with "ai" in their name/domain
GNU/Linux Estimated at 8% "Market Share" Today (in statCounter)
Days ago it said 7.1%, then 7.3% or 7.4%
 
IBM Down to $211.20, the Market in General is Up
No recovery for IBM today
UEFI 'Secure Boot' Still Not Secure in 2026, New Holes (or Bypasses) Still Being Found
In 2026 there are still many people who call it "secure" and pretend to themselves that it is about security. It's not. It never was.
Gemini Links 15/07/2026: Lab 6, Retrospective 2, and "Getting Back Into Gemini"
Links for the day
Links 15/07/2026: "Gianni Infantino Under Fire" and "Todd Blanche's Record Raises Alarming Questions About the Future of the US DOJ"
Links for the day
Allegedly More IBM RAs (Mass Layoffs) Same Day the Stock Crashed
No paper trail, so it never happened, right?
Techrights Was Right: Microsoft's Layoffs Tally Was False, Far More People Are Being Sacked
"The Xbox Bloodbath Is Actually Way Bigger Than It Seems"
IBM Sinking to Lowest Levels Since 2024, But Will Any Executives Be Arrested for Securities Fraud?
52-week high of $332.46 and now down to $212.94
Microsoft Whistleblowers Say "The Entire Thing is Going to Fall Apart" and There Are "No Benefits" to Being Part of Microsoft
"Multiple sources, who chose to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal"
IBM's Crash Continues Today
Stocks go up and down, but they don't typically go down by over 25% in a single day
How Long Before GNU/Linux is Measured at 20% in Chad?
The main way to get people to adopt Vista 11 is to sell them a new PCs and in poor countries it happens a lot less
Making Techrights Faster Down Under (Australia and New Zealand)
there's more to life than speed
Strikes at the EPO Approved for the Rest of the Year, "€1,3 Billion Taken From Staff Income"
Intensity can be revised and increased over time
Focusing on What We Really Ought to Focus on
Today we'll focus mostly on EPO affairs
Violence is Not a Joke
"Police say Widdecombe killing was targeted but motive remains unclear"
How to Properly Measure the Performance of a Patent Office
A "contribution from staff [which] is published by SUEPO Munich."
EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part XIV - "Not One of Us" (How the Group Dubbed by EPO Insiders "Alicante Mafia" Pushes Out Talent, Replacing It With Friends)
misuses the EPO's budget like it is a fountain of money for his friends
LibreTech Collective Abandons Microsoft GitHub and All Other Proprietary Software
Each time a project eliminates control by a hostile party it stands to gain
Links 15/07/2026: US Regime "Cuts Two Utah National Monuments by More Than 90%", "Hormuz is Less Crucial Than It Was"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/07/2026: Old Computer Challenge, "Trial by Fire", LLM Slop Destroying Companies
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 14, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, July 14, 2026
Heshan de Silva-Weeramuni Becomes Program Manager at the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
Heshan's addition means that the FSF is growing after a solid financial year (best in years)
Michael McMahon Explains Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks on the Free Software Foundation (FSF)
The real solution is a curb on botnets. A mitigation strategy, however, would involve going static.
Matters of Public Safety
"Police say Ann Widdecombe killed in 'targeted attack' as motive investigated"
The Register MS and Its Promotional Microsoft Content
It's not too hard to see what the business model of The Register MS is
IBM: From $306 to $212 in 7 Days, IBM Won't Go Up More Than 50% to Where It Was at 'Peak Vapourware'
There's a limit to how much or how long a company can fake its performance and its potential [...] Early this morning a few insiders ("traders") cashed in on their "pump-n-dump"
Red Hat Staff Needs to Start Looking for the Next Job
Workers can conveniently lie or deny it to themselves, but waves of PIPs ("silent layoffs") will sweep over more and more units or teams as the company runs out of money to play with
IBM the Next Bear Stearns
IBM cannot recover if all it has to show is vapourware
IBM Stock Collapses and It's Only the Beginning
Will GAFAM soon follow and will any executives be arrested for the accounting fraud insiders have long cautioned about?
I'll Be Extremely Difficult for Microsoft to Sell Any XBox Consoles Now
Microsoft understands this
How Software Freedom Would Benefit Everybody
A society that denies control by greedy companies would do a disservice to monopolies and improve all services to citizens
Links 14/07/2026: Harsh But Also Fair Criticism of Hey Hi (AI) Slop, 'Open' AI Shuts Down Its Own Products as Funds Run Out
Links for the day
Gemini Links 14/07/2026: Old CD Binder and AWK
Links for the day
In Defence of Physical Tickets
Tickets are not some "app" and not some "code" on some "screen"
Microsoft Layoffs Not Limited to XBox (False Narrative in the Mainstream Media)
Microsoft is becoming less relevant and workforce reductions won't end any time soon
Links 14/07/2026: Plagiarism Spun as "Training", Zelensky Announces Leadership Shuffle
Links for the day
The Register MS Has Just Published "AI" Webspam That Mentions "AI" 54 Times. It Was Paid to Do This.
Who pays for all this "AI" hype or "buzz"?
Gemini Links 14/07/2026: Self-Advocacy Online; "The Internet Is Dead: How the Web Lost Its Human Soul"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 13, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, July 13, 2026
Modern Technology Harms Women More Than Men (Because the 'Tech Bros' Who Dominate STEM Have a Poor View of Women)
“Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.”
Internet Relay Chat Trolls Are Not Expressing Opinions, They Are Saboteurs
For the record
Links 14/07/2026: "The Freedom of Information Act Is in Serious Trouble"; Irish Datacenters Use Up Almost 25% of Total Energy
Links for the day
The Register MS: "AI" Puff Pieces for Sale, Not Journalism at All, Just "Webspam"
The Register MS isn't the sole culprit
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 12, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, July 12, 2026
How We Do Techrights (and What's Changing Next Week)
Many former news sites no longer yield much non-meaningless news (not anymore); there's a gap to be filled