Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 16/11/2010: Debian 6.0 is Coming, OpenRespect.org Criticised



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



  • Desktop

    • Windows Legacy Apps vs. Linux Desktop Adopters?
      In a previous article on Linux-Window desktop competition, I shared my thoughts on why desktop Linux shouldn’t focus on competing with Windows. Not because Linux can't compete, but because Linux can stand its ground on its own merits without being held against Windows for comparison. I believe most groups within the Linux community can agree on, despite their differences on other issues.

      Now let's ask a bigger question. Is it not possible that the real culprit that prevents people from trying new platforms like Linux is actually due to legacy software and familiarity with the Windows desktop? Seems plausible that the above hurdles could be a common challenge faced by prospective Linux adopters, does it not?




  • Applications



  • Distributions



    • Red Hat Family

      • Attention class! Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA)


        Red Hat is urging system administrators to up their skill sets with a new base-level certification aligned to the key tasks required of Red Hat Enterprise Linux system administrators.


      • Fedora

        • Upgraded to Fedora 14
          I just did a preupgrade upgrade from Fedora 13 to Fedora 14. The only hitch is that it didn’t find enough space to download the installer ahead of time so that had to be downloaded after the the reboot. Everything went off without a hitch. My absolute cleanest upgrade ever. Dual screen worked, nothing had to be uninstalled. None of the repos had to be disabled. All my usual programs work. I haven’t tried Blender yet, that’s tomorrow. The first thing I noticed was that the OpenOffice.org icons have changed again. This is the third time, I think,since I’ve been using Linux.


        • Fedora 14: Strong follow-up to 13 still suffers from same niche appeal
          As far as Linux is concerned, there are distributions that are ready for the masses (Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Linux Minut) and there are distributions whose appeal doesn’t go much further than a niche of users. Fedora Linux, however, is a distribution that seems to want to vacillate between target audiences. At one point Fedora wants to reach out to a massive scope of users. At the next point Fedora seems to focus on a far, far smaller audience. And it seems this vacillation happens just about every release.






    • Debian Family

      • Debian 6.0 Homestretch Just Around Corner
        Neil McGovern, Debian release team member, wrote to the Debian Development Announce mailing list, "It's time for another release update as we move, like a glacier, inevitably and unstoppingly towards the release."


      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Make it really easy to fix bugs on Ubuntu
          One of the best things that anyone ever said was, "not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap". Mr Glass was probably talking about writing, but his words could well have been aimed squarely at any well-established software development process.


        • New Introduction To Ubuntu 10.10


          I’ve recorded a new screencast introducing Ubuntu 10.10. This video gives beginner Ubuntu users a brief tour of the operating system, and covers installing updates, proprietary drivers, customizing appearance, and installing software via the Ubuntu Software Center as well as with downloaded *.deb files, all in less than 10 minutes. Enjoy!


        • OpenRespect.org: a bid to deflect criticism of Ubuntu?
          In today's climate, when spinmeisters are trying to gain ascendancy in the FOSS world and are succeeding to a large extent, Torvalds' comments would not go down well. The man was clearly not showing respect - which, as Stephen Colbert would say, is today's word.

          But the topic of respect is raised only when it suits people to do so. Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution has been under siege recently, for its decisions to adopt a new interface and also a new X server. Some of the criticism has been rather, shall we say, pointed and direct.

          Now suddenly, Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu community manager - the spinmeister-in-chief - has come up with an initiative to try and create respect within the FOSS community. Why? Well, Bacon feels that all the aggressiveness in the community is not of much help in what the community is trying to do.


        • Natty Community Team Plans
          With every cycle, part of my responsibility is to understand the needs of the Ubuntu community, understand the needs of some of the key stakeholders to my team, and to plan what the team will work on throughout the next cycle. Recently I have been asking the team (Jorge Castro, Daniel Holbach, David Planella, and Ahmed Kamal) to reach out to the community to get a feel of needs, and flesh out their goals in a set of blueprints. I then reviewed and accepted a set of blueprints ready for the cycle. I think this is a good, solid chunk of work and will make some inroads into some key areas.


        • Flavours and Variants

          • Linux Mint 10
            Summary: Linux Mint 10 adds some helpful tweaks and improvements to an already great distro.

            Rating: 5/5












Free Software/Open Source



  • 55 Open Source Replacements for Popular Multimedia Software
    Open source multimedia software clearly has remarkable growth potential. Statistics reveal that multimedia grabs a huge percentage of the time most users spend with their PCs and smartphones. Hulu has 30 million viewers a month. Netflix now accounts for 20 percent of U.S. Internet traffic in the evening. According to NPD Group, 30 percent of U.S. music consumers listened to streamed music in August. As of June, consumers had downloaded more than 5 billion songs from iTunes, and they watch 50,000 movies through the service every day.


  • An Open Source Toolkit for Your Small Business
    Whether your small business has been around for years or you’re just starting out, it simply makes good sense to use open source software for everything from managing your office network to putting together slide decks for your next client presentation. Open source software is inexpensive (and often free!), secure, and easy to customize to the unique needs of your company. Unlike many commercial applications on the market today, you can even find in-depth, no-cost tech support from within the user community.


  • Should Companies That Use Open Source Software Pay a Tithe?
    Just about every startup on the planet benefits from the use of open source software--everything from database software PostgreSQL to the Apache web server--which is free to use.

    Weinberg's idea is simple: reckons companies that make a profit with the help of Free and Open Source Software should return a tenth of their profit to the open source community, to help solve problems with some open source projects.


  • Web Browsers

    • Try the uzbl browser if you're tired of feature bloat
      Give it a shot. Talk to its community in the #uzbl channel on the freenode IRC network if you need some help getting started. See if you like it. If not, go back to a big, sophisticated browser, if that is what you prefer. To tell you the truth, I am actually using Chromium, Firefox, and uzbl about equally right now, switching between them; I have not entirely given up on those big and sophisticated browsers myself, at least so far. I think you owe it to yourself to see if you like your browser small and simple, though.




  • Oracle





Leftovers

  • 'Super-secret' debugger discovered in AMD CPUs
    A hardware hacker has discovered a secret debugging feature hidden in all AMD chips made in the past decade.

    The password-protected debugger came as a shock to reverse-engineers who have hungered for an on-chip mechanism for performing conditional and direct-hardware breakpoint operations. Although AMD has built the firmware-controlled feature into all chips since the Athlon XP, the company kept it a closely guarded secret that was only disclosed late last week by a hacker who goes by the name Czernobyl.


  • Is AMD Having Second Thoughts About Killing Off ATI Brand?


  • Nvidia CEO: We're Done with Chipsets
    Share/Save

    One thing we appreciate about Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang is that he typically doesn't pull any punches. Rather than dance around marketing speak and typical PR rhetoric, the outspoken CEO gets straight to the point, oftentimes in a very candid manner. More recently, Huang got on the topic of chipsets, seemingly putting an official end to that part of Nvidia's business, Xbit Labs reports.


  • Security







Clip of the Day



Intel on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6



[an error occurred while processing this directive]



Credit: TinyOgg

Recent Techrights' Posts

Google "Hey Hi" (Slop) Having a Stroke, Thinks I am Married to the Grandmother of My Grandfather
Seriously!
Beehiiv and Substack Are Platform Lock-in (Similar to Vendor Lock-in), Don't Use Beehiiv and Substack (and the Likes of These)
Proprietary platforms are a problem. Some people "get it" sooner than others.
Jim Zemlin/Linux Foundation Selling Anthropic Slop After Getting Bribed for Slop Marketing ('Linux' Foundation is a Pay-to-Say For-Profit Marketing Company That Buys and Manipulates the Media Based on False Pretences)
Look what they've done to Steven Vaughan-Nichols (SJVN)
The Corrupt Lecture the Non-Corrupt - Part XX - EPO Management's Unified (One) Voice or Policy is, Doing Cocaine is OK When You're a Friend and/or Family of President Campinos
The management needs to resign to save the Office
 
IBM Falls to One-year Low
At one point or threshold does the Board (controlled by the CEO) sack the CEO?
Gemini Links 12/05/2026: On Astronomy and Stargazing, Coyote Time, and Freenom
Links for the day
Links 12/05/2026: Data Centres Destroying Neighbourhoods, "Care Workers Are Saying No to 24-Hour Workdays"
Links for the day
Richard Stallman to Give Public Talk in Erlangen, Germany (Next European Tour)
Seems like a large room
If IBM Suddenly Vanished in the 1980s, There Would be Chaos. Not Anymore.
IBM's management has rendered IBM more irrelevant than ever before
Gitlab is in Trouble and Its Shares Have Collapsed
Down almost 80% since it began [...] The real issue has nothing to do with slop, it is a lack/loss of customers and erosion of the company's theoretical "value"
Microsoft: Mass Layoffs Are "Offers" (Like "Job Offers"), Culling Experienced and Highly-Paid Staff is "Softer Workforce-reduction Strategy"
Media sites that play along with those lies don't do journalism, they're in the PR industry
Under IBM, Mass Layoffs at Red Hat No Better Than Oracle Under Larry Ellison (Treating Workers Like Disposables - Even Enemies - Overnight)
under IBM the respect for the worker (or peer) does not exist
The Slop-Amplified Fear of Privilege Escalation (Local, Not Remote) in Linux, the Kernel
we are meant to assume this is no better and no worse than Microsoft intentionally putting back doors in everything, even encryption
GitLab the Latest Company to Do Mass Layoffs and Use Slop as the Go-to Excuse (GitLab Users Should Worry Too)
This round of layoffs (disguised as something else) has nothing to do with slop ("hey hi"). It's about commercial problems.
Technology Not Meant to Last
A society apathetic towards declining production (or manufacturing) standards will end up ripped off
statCounter Cannot 'See' Chinese Operating Systems That Gain Many Millions of Users Per Month
There is no way for statCounter to recognise or show the market share of HarmonyOS
SLAPP Censorship - Part 74 Out of 200: The Basis of My Lawsuit Against Alex Graveley, Who Helps Garrett Stack the Docket in Another Continent
claim against the Serial Strangler from Microsoft
Update on Slop About "Linux"
"Linux" is a term many people are interested it, so it's not shocking that slopfarms target it
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, May 11, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, May 11, 2026
GAFAM (Microsoft) "Cloud Computing" Means Another Country's Military Accesses All Your Data
reminder that confidentiality and Clown Computing are complete opposites
Another Discrimination Lawsuit Against IBM and Workers Say IBM Culls Older Workers (Just Like Microsoft)
If IBM fails to retain some of the smartest people, then what is the future of IBM?
Gemini Links 12/05/2026: Android Nostalgia and Switching to Guix
Links for the day
Links 11/05/2026: Another Oracle Setback and Mass Layoffs in Iran
Links for the day
Gemini Links 11/05/2026: Older Can Be Faster and Textmode Workflow
Links for the day
Links 11/05/2026: The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Admits It Only Reacts When It's Too Late (Damage Already Done), Ombudsman’s Animal Cruelty HK Report
Links for the day
If It Takes You a Second to Serve (or Receive) a Page, That's Definitely Too Slow
For speeds at milliseconds (e.g. for pages to fully load in a tenth of a second) the pages must be ready to be sent as soon as they're requested
It's Not About Speed, It is About Patience and Adherence to Truth, Principles, Scientific Integrity
attacks on us only ever made us stronger - a lesson that our adversaries have learned the hard way
Cyber Show Does it Like Techrights: Static and Gemini Protocol as 'First-Class Citizen'
HTML and GemText (over Gemini Protocol) would be rendered in tandem
Libya's Share on the Web: 5.2% GNU/Linux
GNU/Linux has hit an all-time high there
SLAPP Censorship - Part 73 Out of 200: Microsoft's Graveley and Garrett Remain Closely Connected in May 2026 ("Tag-Teaming" Against Bloggers in Another Continent)
The phrase "judge a person by their friends" seems applicable here
Codecs and Software Patents - Part VI - The European Patent Office, Nokia, Microsoft, Sisvel, and More
Whatever Nokia used to be, it's certainly not an ally and a lot of the turmoil at the EPO is the fault of companies like Nokia
Discussions About When the Axe Falls at IBM/Kyndryl (11,000 Layoffs Estimated)
"Kyndryl restructuring should reduce overhead functions and reduce the number of managers that lack technical knowledge"
A World After Microsoft (and GAFAM) and After GitHub Shuts Down
the only growth area is debt
Fake News, Propaganda, and Misinformation: Microsoft Investing Money It Does Not Have in "Hey Hi" (for "Entertainment Purposes" Only)
This will not end well
Today the Whole European Patent Office (EPO) is on Strike and Next Monday an Even Bigger Strike
the media refuses to cover these and is thus complicit
The Corrupt Lecture the Non-Corrupt - Part IXX - EPO Management Speaks of Reputation and Integrity While Putting Cocaine Addicts in Management
If the EPO values its "reputation", then it needs to start by ousting the management
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, May 10, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, May 10, 2026
Links 11/05/2026: Security Breaches, Politics, and Energy Crunch
Links for the day
Gemini Links 10/05/2026: "Accidental Cameras" and "Addictive" Interfaces in Social Control Media
Links for the day
Codecs and Software Patents - Part V - A Reminder That GAFAM and the European Patent Office (Which Serves American Monopolists) Do Considerable Harm to the Commons and Culture
some 'breaking' developments
Gemini Links 10/05/2026: Inkscape, Guix, and Alhena 5.5.8
Links for the day
The "Alicante Mafia" at the European Patent Office (EPO) Experiments With New Methods for Crushing Industrial Actions
Open letter to VP1 and the COO [...] What does this tell us about the status quo at the European Patent Office, Europe's second-largest institution?
The Corrupt Lecture the Non-Corrupt - Part XVIII - "The European Patent Office (EPO) has a zero-tolerance policy for fraud" (except when managers do it)
The guidebook of the EPO says fraud is not to be tolerated, but who enforces or revisits such "Red Lines"?
Links 10/05/2026: Hantavirus Brings Back 'Contact Tracing' Surveillance, "Staple Food Prices Soar in Iran"
Links for the day
Microsoft XBox Staff Know They're in Trouble, They Try to Unionise Ahead of Mass Layoffs
As the slang goes, it's going to be a "bloodbath"
Links 10/05/2026: Fake Suicide Notes and New EU Restrictions on Slop
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 72 Out of 200: Microsoft's Graveley and Garrett Signed Documents That Hold Them Accountable to Truth and Liable for Lies
Such collaborations are unsavoury and apparently unprofessional, too
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, May 09, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, May 09, 2026
Gemini Links 10/05/2026: Travelling to Van and "Dark Mode" as Passing Fad
Links for the day