Links 21/3/2012: Torvalds Secrets, Radeon HD 7000 Driver Now Free/Libre
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2012-03-22 00:15:30 UTC
- Modified: 2012-03-22 00:15:30 UTC
Contents
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Kernel Space
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To get the most out of your systems, you want detailed insight into what the operating system kernel is doing. A typical approach is to sample stack traces; however, the data collected can be time consuming to read or navigate. Flame Graphs are a new way to visualize sampled stack traces, and can be applied to the Linux kernel for some useful (and stunning!) visualizations.
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Graphics Stack
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Applications
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The TEA Text Editor is a very handy writing tool that delivers a much different user interface. For most computer users cranking out words or program code for digital consumption, text editors are often preferable to feature-bloated word processors. TEA pours on features yet keeps from getting too steamy.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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You may have heard a few days ago that Dear Esther, a game built upon Valve's Source Engine, would be ported to Linux and released in the coming months. Well, here's more details about that Source-based game is getting to Linux.
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Desktop Environments
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GNOME Desktop
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Users who choose between GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 are rarely making that decision on a purely rational basis. In my experience, users of GNOME 2 are often choosing what they know, while users of GNOME 3 are technophiles who enjoy anything that is new.
Neither is likely to go over the two generations of GNOME feature by feature. In many cases, the choice seems made before login.
But what happens when the two desktop environments are compared in general features? I'm a fan of neither GNOME 2 nor GNOME 3, but I decided to find out.
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New Releases
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Today sees the release of Legacy OS 4 Mini an Update / Replacement for TEENpup 2010 Mini Beta. Those updating from TEENpup 2010 Mini Beta will need to save any important documents, music etc to an external Hard Drive, USB stick etc as a full reinstall is required to update to this new version, sorry!
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Debian Family
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Spending a couple of days intensely running Linux Mint 12 on a very nice desktop PC sent to me for review by ZaReason (much more about that later), I probably shouldn't have been surprised by the annoying bugs in Mint that made me a lot less productive than I am in the Debian Squeeze system I've been running on my laptop since late 2010.
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In this interview, Luke Kanies, CEO and founder of Puppet Labs, explains why the Puppet configuration management tool is a huge hit with sys admins, and tells us what to expect next from the popular open source project.
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We got another reminder of how disruptive open source software is to mobile computing this week, when Linux and Android merged back together. This appears to be good news for a number of parties, but Android and Linux developers and users seem particularly likely to benefit. The inclusion of Android code in the Linux kernel and the ability for Linux developers to more easily work on the Android environment and applications also ties into some of the key topics we’ll be covering in a Webcast March 21 titled ‘Open Source, A Tale of Two Cities in the Mobile Enterprise,’ presented by 451 Research and Black Duck Software.
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Web Browsers
Chrome
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Ever since Google started working on its Chrome OS operating system, it has had a pronounced focus on allowing users to only work with cloud-based data and applications. This has drawn criticism from many users, and some from us here at OStatic, as seen in this post. With Chrome OS, Google placed a heavy bet on the idea that consumers and business users would have no problem storing data and using applications in the cloud, without working on the locally stored data/applications model that they're used to.
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CMS
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Licensing
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Are developers actually chasing down license violations?
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Openness/Sharing
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There are some pretty basic things that a researcher can do to make their work into an open content project. Here are a few.
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Programming
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Finance
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Censorship
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The Obama administration has condemned Iran for trying to take control of the Internet. In addition, The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued guidance and licensing information to further support the free flow of information to citizens of Iran – a freedom the Iranian regime has consistently denied to its people.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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They're selling us out. Just weeks after Internet users from across the globe came together to to beat SOPA, the major ISPs are cutting a deal with Big Content to restrict web access for users who are accused of piracy.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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ACTA
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Concerned of the ACTA dossier many citizens contacted the press staffers of his colleague Commissioner Neelie Kroes. Commissioner Michel Barnier is right when he emphasized the need for better communications. Karel De Gucht had the opportunity to embrace the public attention to ACTA, and strengthen the institutional cohesion with the European public, help the transformation of the EU towards an “Europe of the citizens”. He didn’t exercise this opportunity, and it appears to me the reason is a fundamental disrespect to democratic principles, he doesn’t take the public seriously.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- SUEPO Central Made a Strike (or Striking) Success
- Europe has more than enough qualified patent officials
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- Not April Fools But April First: Red Hat Staff Becoming "IBM"
- claims of mass layoffs set to kick off at IBM some time soon
- Gemini Links 31/03/2026: Antenna Packed Up, AuraGem and AuraSearch Maintenance
- Links for the day
- Links 31/03/2026: More Social Control Media Bans, BBC Now Run by GAFAM (US) Executive
- Links for the day
- 'Broligarchs' Don't Want Science, They Want Entertainers to Entertain Them (and Make Them Richer)
- Of course this will result in things getting worse in the sciences and everyone who relies on the sciences
- When Republics Turn From Democratic Governments Into Imperialistic Dictatorships
- What goes on in the US would require talking about politics
- Companies That Have Nothing Except Buzzwords and Promises Will Perish
- Dishonest media will perish along with the companies it is covering up for
- The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to be Grilled in Two Weeks' Time by the British Government for "Recent Regulatory Failures"
- we escalated to our politicians
- GNU/Linux Will Thrive as Long as It's Modular, Not Monolithic
- To IBM, it's all about money. Nothing else matters.
- EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part X - People Are Leaving
- "I was happy to be at the EPO in the beginning, but since I realized it's all a big mafia"
- IBM's 33 Years as a "Financial Engineering" (Accounting Tricks) Company
- In relation to Red Hat, this "financial engineering" involves culling many workers and trying to replace them with slop
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 30, 2026
- IRC logs for Monday, March 30, 2026
- Links 31/03/2026: Rising Costs, Cyberattacks, Novo Patent Expiry
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 31/03/2026: American Spring, Distributed Systems Simulator, and Calculus for Electronics
- Links for the day
- IBM Layoffs and Their Expected Scope in April 2026
- Such layoffs impact not only IBM "proper"
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 28 Out of 200: Facing Consequences for Impersonation and Worse
- It's not "funny". It is moreover libellous.
- Links 30/03/2026: South Korea Next to Curb Social Control Media Addiction and Manipulation, Notorious Patents in the US Challenged
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 30/03/2026: Going Back to Wrist Watches and Why LLMs in Programming Suck
- Links for the day
- Did IBM Pay thestreet.com for Puff Pieces? (Like It Did With Forbes)
- If so, there is no disclosure
- Wikipedia - Funded by Slop-pushing Companies and 'Broligarchs' - Gave Benefit of the Doubt to Slop, Then Regretted It
- Wikipedia sucks. Without slop it'll suck a little less.
- Payoffs of Lifelong Commitments
- "The Lifelong Activist"
- Links 30/03/2026: "We Can’t Income-Tax Ultra-Elites"; "The Pirate Bay’s Oldest Torrent Turned 22"
- Links for the day
- Today, Europe's Second-Largest Institution (EPO) Goes on Strike That Can Last Until 2027. Nobody in the Media Covers This!
- "We stand with the protesters"
- When the Cost (or Time) of Maintenance Exceeds the Value
- In recent years it seems like more people learn to remove things from their lives, not add more things
- Passage of Wealth Upwards, Blaming the Victims
- Tim Sweeney's net worth is 5.1 billion USD according to Forbes
- More Media Needs to Tell the Public Slop is a Giant Bubble, It Should Stop Taking "Sponsorship" Money to Inflate This Bubble
- If enough of (what's left of) the media changes its tune and quits being a parrot of GAFAM, then we can debate slop like grown-ups
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 29, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, March 29, 2026
- Trying to Hide One's Abuses by Imposing Silence on Critics ("My Profile Was Private")
- With enough daylight, sooner or later everyone knows you are a vampire
- Fedora Badges System Shows the Demise of Fedora Under IBM
- IBM isn't good at keeping what it buys
- IBM is Sunsetting Red Hat, It Only Uses the Brand and the Shell
- IBM buys or spins off companies as containers for "toxic assets" and debt
- Cisco Systems is a Still Weak Spot With Bug Doors
- nothing to offer except storytelling
- EPO Strike Begins Today and It's the Longest One Yet (Can Last a Year)
- Where's the media?
- Gemini Links 30/03/2026: Approaching April and Arvelie Calendar
- Links for the day
- No Daylight Saved
- Is there still any practical reason for this ritual?
- Microsoft Azure Does Not Have "Hiring Freezes", It Has Had Mass Layoffs Every Year Since 2020
- Things are always a lot worse than Microsoft formally or publicly acknowledges
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 27 Out of 200: Using the Tor Network to Hide From Consequences
- Only 1-2 weeks after the countersuit the Canadian attempted to deplatform several Web sites
- The Limits of Inclusion
- Inclusion with caution isn't "opinionated"; it's a defence mechanism, sometimes a survival instinct
- Almost 20 Years After Microsoft/Novell
- The mission has not changed, but the priorities evolve all the time
- People Discuss Rumours of Mass Layoffs at IBM Becoming Public in 1-2 Weeks
- IBM is killing its brand or its "goodwill"
- LLM Slop Kills Sites, as Sites That Adopt Slop Are Doomed
- People won't subscribe to such sites and visit them if they recognise it's just slop
- Links 29/03/2026: Indonesia Cracks Down on Social Control Media Addiction, China Becomes World’s Scientific Superpower
- Links for the day
- Fedora at the Mercy of Microsoft Because of Back-Doored Kick-Switch Boot
- We'll soon revisit the defamation attacks on Torvalds
- Links 29/03/2026: Water Shortages and No Kings Rallies
- Links for the day
- The Old Days
- In the early days of this site (2006) it was mostly just a couple of people, plus comments
- Gemini Links 29/03/2026: Return to Gopherspace, "Zen of Marking Playing Cards"
- Links for the day
- The Real XBox is Dead, So Microsoft is Calling Everything "XBox" Now
- It even wanted to run a campaign to convince everybody that XBox is not actually a console
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 28, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, March 28, 2026