Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 27/10/2011: Chrome 15 is Out, Mozilla Sells Out to Microsoft





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • Frozen In One Place While Everything Moves Forward
    He was basically telling me that I, or people in my age group, had become old, and stuck in one place. Not an insult either, but a clear fact. If you remember back when you were younger you should remember when things changed all the time in your life and you easily accepted it. Not just accepted it, enjoyed it and looked towards tomorrow for more. Sure, this isn’t everyone, but the majority.


  • Desktop





  • Kernel Space



  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments

    • Some Attractive Wallpapers For Your Linux Desktop
      Here are a few great wallpapers available for download at GnomeLook.org. First and foremost is the debian chick, this gorgeous babe is the perfect addition to any desktop. Unfortunatelty those curves may cause you to miss a project deadline or two.


    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • KDE Password And User Account Settings


      • Calligra 2.4 Beta
        The Calligra team is proud and excited to release the third beta version of the Calligra Suite. Since the start of the Calligra effort, we have had a long and very productive development phase. In the mean time we have released four snapshot versions, also known as alphas, to give the users a chance to see what we are doing.





    • GNOME Desktop







  • Distributions





    • New Releases



    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat Is Red Hot Right Now
        Red Hat posted a surge of 28% in quarterly revenues over the past year, which drove net income up a whopping 69%. This staggering growth was mainly because of enormous demand for its open-source solutions everywhere, especially in the financial services sector and local, state, and federal governments. Moreover, Red Hat's customers have been looking to modernize their data center infrastructure. This helped in growing revenues and highlighted customer loyalty. High demand for Red Hat's services, low service charges, and excellent reliability drove revenue growth.


      • The Perfect Server - CentOS 5.7 x86_64 [ISPConfig 2]


      • Red Hat talks ahead of Linuxcon keynote
        Tim Burke is the VP of Linux technology development at Red Hat. He spoke to us about the power of free software, what he thinks is the best thing about Linux and what it might be used for in the future.


      • Fedora

        • Secondary Fedora is hiring
          Red Hat is hiring a Fedora release engineer with primary focus on the PowerPC platform, where he/she will prepare the testing and final releases, work on the build system infrastructure, work with architecture maintainers on package build failures and much more.






    • Debian Family

      • m23 rock 11.4 is ready!
        We've done it! m23 rock 11.4 is ready - and now Debian Squeeze is available as an additional client distribution and TDE (which can be seen as a continuation of KDE3) was added to the list of desktop interfaces to choose from.




      • Derivatives



        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu 11.10 Experience on Dell D610
            First off, I would like to congratulate Ubuntu team for releasing another milestone of a good Linux distribution. It is such a big project which requires great balance between schedule, functionality, level of polish and quality.

            On the polish, I really like the new theme, it fits well to my taste.


          • Planning Ubuntu 12.04
            I love planning a new Ubuntu release. It’s a great experience to take a few steps back and look at the biggest challenges and opportunities in your area of interest and try to identify the most promising.


          • Disunited
            If you want a shiny barely-customizable straitjacket as a desktop environment, go buy a Mac. Please stop wrecking Ubuntu.


          • Ubuntu 11.10 review
            At the end of the upgrade process, I had changed an existing installation of Ubuntu 11.04 with a core of Linux kernel 2.6.38 to one running Ubuntu 11.10 with a core of Linux kernel 3.0.0, with no loss of existing data. Very nice. Though I did not backup my data because there was no useful data on the system, it is always a good idea to keep a backup of your data before an upgrade. You just never know.


          • White Screen of Death
            Remember the good old days when Windows had problems with the “Blue Screen of Death.” Years later, XBox followed with its “Red Ring of Death.” Now, it’s Ubuntu turn, what others are coining as the “White Screen of Death.”

            Yesterday, I upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot. Prior to the upgrade, I was using Ubuntu 11.04 and the Gnome desktop (not Unity). Somehow, for some reason, when I upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10, it wiped out my Gnome default environment and switched me back to Unity. Argh!


          • United for Unity alternatives
            Having said this, allow me a Captain Obvious moment to say that folks have different tastes, likes and dislikes, which in the final analysis boils down to a subjective smorgasbord of opinion rather than any resemblance to objective fist-bearing, knuckle-bashing fact.

            I loathe Unity with a heat of a nova, but some people absolutely love it to the ends of the earth. And that’s great, but it’s not for everyone. What about those Ubuntu users who don’t like Unity because it’s a brain-numbing, unintuitive desktop environment that’s has a my-way-or-highway range of tweakability (or do I overstate it?), or what about an Ubuntu user who can’t use it because they’re using older hardware?


          • Canonical upping desktop support for its next Ubuntu LTS to 5 years
            Ever since Ubuntu shipped its first long-term-support release, the 6.06 Dapper Drake (one of my all-time favorites by the way), the distro's LTS editions have enjoyed three years of support on the desktop and five years on the server.










  • Devices/Embedded



    • Phones



      • Android

        • DROID RAZR Pre-Orders Start Tomorrow at 8AM, Will Ship “No Later” Than November 10
          Verizon pinged us this morning with a reminder that the pre-order period for the DROID RAZR starts tomorrow at 8AM, giving potential owners a chance to jump on the device early for $299 on contract. Up until now though, we had no idea when you would expect to see that order since Big Red and Motorola decided not to give us an actual release date last week at the RAZR event. According to this reminder email, it looks like November 10 is the latest you will see it.










Free Software/Open Source



  • Events



  • Web Browsers



    • Chrome

      • Chrome 15 released with... improved start page
        Google has rolled out version 15 of Chrome to its "stable" channel. The update brings some minor cosmetic changes, including a slightly cleaner new tab page, and Google has also redesigned the Chrome Web Store with a simpler layout.


      • Google Releases Chrome 15 Stable for Linux
        The Google Chrome developers at Google proudly announced last night, October 25th, the immediate availability for download of the stable and final release of the Google Chrome 15 web browser for Linux platforms.




    • Mozilla





  • Licensing

    • GPL or BSD License: Confusion Galore
      I started with the notion that GPL should always be used in open source software. I also thought that releasing software under BSD license was letting others take advantage of your hard work without giving anything in return; a highly unfair practice. My thoughts have changed a bit. You can read all about the regurgitated pros and cons all over the Internet. I’m looking to introduce a new perspective, if I can.




  • Programming





Leftovers



  • Security





  • Finance

    • Wall St. Giants Seek a Piece of Nigeria’s Sovereign Fund
      Nigeria, the West African nation that has gained notoriety for the illicit e-mail spammers aiming for Western bank accounts, is attracting attention for legitimate financial opportunities — investing its own savings.

      In an effort to preserve and increase its oil revenue, the country recently established a so-called sovereign wealth fund, following the path of many resource-rich countries. Now, Wall Street titans like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase are courting top government officials, aiming to grab a piece of a portfolio that could eventually be worth tens of billions of dollars.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Herman Cain's New Internet Campaign Ad Promotes Smoking
      Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain's new internet ad features a tight head shot of his campaign's "chief of staff," Mark Block, telling viewers how great Cain will be for the country and how much confidence he has in Cain.






Recent Techrights' Posts

Symptom of Publishers Dying: They Move to Adopt Slop. Symptom of Software Companies Dying: They Move to Adopt Slop ('Vibe').
It'll always fail. It's hype. It's a bubble.
Under IBM, Red Hat Replaces Code With LLM Slop, Fedora is Slopware
Not even hiding it, those things are in plain sight
"systemd is essentially a corporate IBM/Redhat project and corporations of course will comply"
Microsoft and IBM care about users' freedom like Cheeto Lump cares about the US Constitution
Gemini Links 20/03/2026: Digital Identity Bifurcation and a "Return to Gemini"
Links for the day
 
SLAPP Censorship - Part 17 Out of 200: A Long Track Record of Online Abuse, Then Choosing a Low-Cost Law Firm to Muzzle People Who Have Illuminated This Abuse for Over a Decade
Censorship by targeting ISPs and webhosts isn't unprecedented
Plagiarism in "Linux" Clothing (LLM Slop in linuxiac.com, LinuxTeck.com, and linuxsecurity.com)
The net effect of those slopfarms is very negative
Links 20/03/2026: Facebook Weaponised Politically, Openwashing by LF and NVIDIA, Encyclopedia Britannica Sues Microsoft Proxy for Plagiarism
Links for the day
The EPO's Local Staff Committee Munich (LSCMN) Explains to the Administrative Council (AC) How Bad Things Have Become at Europe's Second-Largest Institution, Biggest Patent Office, and Corruption/Cocaine Hub (Jobs Sold to Friends)
We'll say a bit more tomorrow
IBM's Red Hat Diversity: Only 3 Women (Out of 11 Leaders)
For comparison's sake, the FSF is about 50% female
Gemini Links 20/03/2026: Depictions of Culture and The Social Smolnet
Links for the day
SimilarWeb Was Never a Reliable Yardstick for Traffic
5RB may need some "house-cleaning"
Strangulation, suffocation, Jonathan Carter & Debian toxic culture confirmed
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Reports or Hearsay Suggest Ogilvy Broke Up With IBM and Insiders Report Mass Layoffs in "Infrastructure" (Might Impact Red Hat Entrants)
hearsay in Social Control Media
Scheduled Server Maintenance Tomorrow Night
Starting 9PM
None of the Above (NotA) & Debian snubbing Sruthi Chandran
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 20/03/2026: Cryptography Pioneers Win Turing Award and BMG Sues Anthropic for Copyright Infringement
Links for the day
Even Uganda Understands That Journalists Never Belong in Prison
"Ugandan authorities must respect the spirit of this ruling and abandon any measures that seek to jail Ugandans for the free flow of ideas."
Inaction Helps Your Enemies
Without freedom, there's nothing else left
Windows Down From 99% to ~50% in Republic of Seychelles (République des Seychelles)
Windows fell by a lot
Confluent Insiders: IBM Laid Over Over 800 at Confluent, Not Just 800
For the record, the layoffs at Confluent won't be over. After the bluewashing there will be "IBM RAs" impacting Confluent folks, aside from PIPs
The Layoffs at IBM Carry on (Shades of Enron)
Is IBM another Enron?
"IBM boss Arvind Krishna... financial package valued at $38 million in calendar 2025 - equivalent to the average collective pay of 765 Big Blue workers."
continues to ruin the company to enrich himself while pretending he has a strategy
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 19, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, March 19, 2026
SLAPP Censorship - Part 16 Out of 200: Detailing the Actors and Explaining Techrights' Own Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Network
For those who have not followed our story
Microsoft "hiding behind bigger news of war, Epstein, other companies' layoffs"
They know what's coming, they just don't know when
Joerg Jaspert (Debian Account Manager/DAM) personally approved Raphael Hertzog's wife Sophie Brun
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Letter 'A' prohibited by Code of Conduct extremism
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Spoiler: Diversity & Debian means different things to different people
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Admits Failures and Criticism of Inaction on SLAPPs
many if not all solicitors and solicitor firms in the UK are in effect unregulated
Archiving or Preserving Pages About IBM Layoffs
Layoffs at IBM and the media does not talk about these
ABC, the American National Broadcaster, "Now Publishes Slop"
If the "big media" absorbs slop, it'll no longer be trusted and therefore not read/watched by the public
Links 19/03/2026: Culling Deepfakes of Artists’ Music and "Age Verification Isn’t the Answer"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/03/2026: "Aktion GPT-4" and "Kill All Descendants"
Links for the day
"AI" 15 Times in Short 'Article' From The Register MS. And The Register MS Got Paid to Publish It.
gets paid to do this
People Who Decided to Boycott Novell Over Its Microsoft Alliance Should Also Boycott Canonical
As an associate put it, "selling out further, due to Microsoft moles inside Canonical"
Links 19/03/2026: "AI Glasses" as Euphemism for Mass Surveillance and ABC (US) Has Begun Publishing Slop as 'News'
Links for the day
The European Patent Office, Europe's Second-Largest Institution, is on Strike Today
Lots more to come
What People Impacted by the Bluewashing Layoffs at IBM Confluent Say (While the Media Says Nothing at All, in Effect Burying the News)
Worse yet, the mainstream media spreads lies about it right now
IBM Has Turned Red Hat and Fedora Into Slop
This is IBM policy
IBM is Being Robbed, Companies and Jobs Are Destroyed
Companies taken over by IBM will be exploited and destroyed to keep a bubble inflated for a little while longer
In Confluent Layoffs, IBM Vapourises a Quarter of Its Workforce (IBM Buys Something That It Destroys Already)
In the past, such things were typically referred to as "media blackout"; now it's just "the norm".
IBM Effect at Confluent: Mass Layoffs and IBM's Business Conduct Guidelines (BCGs) Said to be Violated
For Confluent employees who survived the layoffs there will be "culture chock"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 18, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Links 19/03/2026: LLM Fatigue (It Doesn't Work as Advertised), "Small Web Feeds"
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 15 Out of 200: Background and Particulars of Truth Regarding Techrights and Tux Machines
the basic facts (this has aged well, except the times/ages/numbers)
A Slopfarms Survey for Today (linuxteck.com, linuxsecurity.com, linuxjournal.com)
Not only did Google news link to a slopfarm; it linked to three run by the same team!
Links 18/03/2026: "Venture Capitalist Warns That It’s All About to Come Crashing Down" Due to Slop Bubble, "Birdwatching for Fun and no Profit"
Links for the day
IBM Red Hat is Still Promoting Restricted Boot Which Restricts Users' Control Over Their Computers
Red Hat under IBM is a total catastrophe
Arvind Says... Something Something "Hey Hi" (the State of Today's Media)
Look for news about IBM and most likely it'll boil down to some sound bites from an executive and nothing else
New Post Has Just Explained How IBM Gets Robbed by the People Who Fail IBM
Their plan for IBM is a personal plan
Slop-Spewing GAFAM LLM That Knows Nothing and Understands Nothing, It's a Stochastic Parrot That Cannot Even Figure Out Tux Machines is a Community That Started in Tennessee 22 Years Ago
RMS rightly calls those things "bullshit generators"
Cusdeb Makes New Presentation About Where GNU Hurd (Still a Possible Linux Replacement) Stands in 2026
coming from a generally RMS-friendly account
Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Librarians, Phone Anxiety, Growing 'Small' Net, and Slop Versus Software Engineering
Links for the day
Estimates That IBM to Lay Off Close to 10,000 Workers in 2026 (Not Counting People Pushed Out)
There's still chatter about Confluent mass layoffs
Smug Threat by Garrett to Put My Family and I in Prison Doesn't Prove We Did Anything Wrong, It Only Proves He's Truly Desperate to Stop Further Publications That Embarrass Him
his reputation is poor in the United States
systemd Increasingly Microsoft Project, Controlled by Microsoft and Slopware
Cannot allow choice
What IBM Meant to Red Hat: "Proprietary Bundling, Restricted Source Access"
Anyone or anything that joins IBM likely shortens its lifespan
IBM Thrashing Confluent Upon Arrival, Based on Rumours
We deem it a bigger issue that investigative journalism perished, not that one must rely on hearsay online or mere "rumours"
Slop Is Plagiarism, Not (Vibe) Coding, and It's Not Automated, It Doesn't Save Money
Reject misnomers, explain what's actually happening
UPC is Still Illegal and Unconstitutional (Kangaroo Court for Patents, Manned by Corporate Staff), Federal Court of Justice of Germany Receives Belated Complaint About It
What is happening to Europe???
EPO Demonstration Happening Right Now, Later This Week Things Will Only Escalate Further
The SUEPO The Hague Committee wrote to staff this morning
Sophie Brun, Raphael Hertzog & Debian sexual conflicts of interest
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 18/03/2026: Commodore's Hedley Davis Dies, Apple Not Good Enough, Cheeto "Floats Treason Charges for Iran War Coverage"
Links for the day
A Step Close to Shutting Down the European Patent Office (EPO)
Not going to work all month long
EPO Staff Demonstration Today
The demonstration will be live-streamed for those thousands of colleagues who don't live in Munich
Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Brazilian SYN Attacks and BGP
Links for the day
LibreLocal Also Coming to Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, and Spain
It helps raise awareness of Software Freedom
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 17, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 17, 2026