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
- Debian is Dying for Some of the Same Reasons IBM's Fedora is Rapidly Dying
- Prioritising CoC censorship, not communities
- 2026 Microsoft Layoff Rumours
- Surely if we had properly-functioning media, then someone would investigate this rather than rely on official statements from Microsoft and WARN notices
- Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 13 Out of 200: Abuse of Process to Make False Accusations of UKGDPR Violations
- familiar barrister and same lawyers
- What Puts the Brakes on GNU/Linux Adoption on Laptops and Desktops is Monopoly Control (or Monoculture) Over the Distros
- Distros that adopt systemd are controlled by IBM and GAFAM
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- Links 16/03/2026: Moscow Experiencing Cellphone Internet Outages, "Salman Rushdi eIs Tired of Talking About Free Speech"
- Links for the day
- The Register MS is Again Femmewashing GAFAM (Which Makes Widows) in Exchange for Money
- This is a moral issue because they betray or harm women and prop up authoritarian regimes
- Gemini Links 16/03/2026: AB 1043, Lagrange Android Beta 47, and Poetry
- Links for the day
- "Slop-forking" or "Vibe-forking" as the New 'Noble' Plagiarism
- New Cloudflare Slop Project?
- EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part VII - Cult Mentality, Mobbing, Nepotism
- Does the EPO actually believe in the law?
- EPO Strike This Week
- contact your national representatives about it
- Gemini Links 15/03/2026: "Create Opportunities for Good Things to Happen", DOSbook, and Bitcoin Criticism
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 15, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, March 15, 2026
- Pirate Praveen Arimbrathodiyil & Debian denouncing volunteers, hiding romances
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 15/03/2026: WB Games Montréal Undergoes Layoffs, "Swiss Reject Cuts to Public Broadcasting"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 15/03/2026: Messages in Bottles and Audio Streaming in Lagrange for Android
- Links for the day
- Thrown Under the Microsoft Bus
- Microsoft wants disposable contractors
- Quitting IBM and "Rumors of an Upcoming RA [Mass Layoffs] in April 2026"
- Blue layoffs or "RAs" were confirmed upfront by the CFO
- GNU/Linux Distro Builders Barely Paid Enough to Pay Basic Bills, Chief of "Linux" Foundation (Not Even Using Linux!) Increases His Own Salary by Over 50% in 5 Years
- Salaries or compensation correlate with the ability to exploit people, not to create things
- The "Zero-Sum" Fallacy
- Fallacies like "zero-sum" - especially in the context of foreign affairs including war - are utterly ruinous
- A Happy Birthday to Richard Stallman
- Richard Stallman will turn 73
- Jürgen Habermas is Dead, But the Politicised, Inherently Corrupt, Corporatised Court for Patents That He Inspired Is Not
- In the news throughout the weekend
- Mountains of Abuses of Process by Brett Wilson LLP on Behalf of Americans and Sometimes at the Expense of British Taxpayers
- a virtual "limited liability"
- linuxteck.com FUD by LLM Slop, ubuntupit.com Passes the Slop Baton
- Unless they get back to doing long-form authentic articles, as opposed to slop, no good will come out of it
- Links 15/03/2026: New Shortages, Lynx Populations Depletion
- Links for the day
- Sruthi Chandran & Debian Diversity, Favoritism, Hidden Conflicts of Interest
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- software in the public domain
- Reprinted with permission from Alex Oliva
- Links 15/03/2026: Slop "Bubble Driving Interest in Chip Alternatives" and Wildlife Erosion Reported
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 14, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, March 14, 2026
- Layoffs in Twitter, Facebook, and Microsoft's LinkedIn
- There are silent layoffs at Microsoft this month
- We Don't Depend on Google and Don't Care for Google
- We have our own site search and we don't depend on Google to bring visits/visitors to us
- Change of Address at the Hired Guns, Address Removed
- Companies tend to alter their 'shell structure' in anticipation of major action
- Facebook Layoffs Due to Enormous Debt, Nothing to Do With "Hey Hi" Slop
- The lies about "hey hi" in relation to layoffs will only contribute to further public resentment towards: 1) the media and 2) all the slop.
- The Good IBM Managers Have Flown Away, All That's Left is the Book-Cooking Loyalists
- IBM is just cheating the SEC and shareholders. This seems to be the only thing IBM's management is nowadays good at.
- Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 12 Out of 200: Months Ahead of Serial Strangler From Microsoft Who Helped Double the Lawsuits (Funded by Third Parties) as 'Revenge' for Exposing Crimes
- In 2024 I sat down and wrote about what had been done to me and to my wife
- Crime Comes in Many Forms
- apparently the SRA is OK with stranglers of women in America bullying the media in the UK
- commandlinux.com, linuxteck.com, linuxiac.com, and linuxsecurity.com are Slopfarms With "Linux" in Their Domain Name
- once readers realise they read slop they immediately lose interest
- Links 14/03/2026: Adoption of Slop Has Killed BuzzFeed, Russia Sees "Economic Gain From Iran War"
- Links for the day
- Patriotism is Conditional, If It's Unconditional, Then It's Like a Cult
- My love for Software Freedom is only as strong as my love for Freedom of the Press
- Links 14/03/2026: Mass Layoffs at Facebook ('Meta') and Sweeping Layoffs at Twitter (xAI), Social Control Media and Slop Are Only Debt
- Links for the day
- Wrong Time, Wrong Place (Digg)
- Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian can relaunch Digg.com, but we doubt it'll work "this time for real!"
- Universities Became Bad Places for Work
- What happened to academia?
- Reporting New and Suppressed Information is What Journalism is All About
- In the domain of Free software, there are very few sites out there that offer exclusive coverage on community affairs and there are many gagging/censorship attempts
- The Limits of Speech and the Rationale of Limitations
- it seems to be part of an international trend
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
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- IRC logs for Friday, March 13, 2026
- Gemini Links 14/03/2026: Goodness, AD534 Multiplier Module, and Extroverts Online
- Links for the day