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
- 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"
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- 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".
- 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
- Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 14 Out of 200: Men Who Strangle Women (and Worse) Trying to Force Us to Write Public Apologies to These Men
- For those who never before saw a SLAPP, they basically make many demands
- Instant Bluewashing at Confluent: Mass Layoffs Alleged at IBM
- So the main question is, did IBM just fire 800 people?
- "Vibe-forking" and Why It'll Ultimately Fail (Hype on Top of Hype)
- Code made with LLMs sucks; converting solid, human-tested code into slop only complicates matters and increases risk
- Updates About Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation
- After all those years (a decade) and in spite of phony scandals many people out there still respect him
- LLM Slop With "Linux" in the Domain Names
- This is becoming a pain and a problem also in the arts and in software engineering
- The EFF Has a Bug, Fixing This Bug is Likely Not Possible Anymore
- "the EFF's continued existence impairs the arrival of a replacement organization, one which will actually champion digital rights."
- Links 17/03/2026: Microsoft Windows Broken by Samsung, Afghanistan-Pakistan War Escalation
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 17/03/2026: Newcomers and False-Positive 'Slop'
- Links for the day
- Héctor Orón Martínez & Debian shadow candidate pressure on Sruthi Chandran
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Links 17/03/2026: American Fentanylware (TikTok) Investors Implicated in Kickbacks, "Big Oil Knew It Was Wrecking Louisiana’s Coast"
- Links for the day
- For Third Time in a Week The Register MS Runs Google SPAM That Paints Google as an Ally of Women (Which is False, They're Womanisers)
- What does that make The Register MS to women?
- British Justice Minister Sarah Sackman Blasts Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)
- The "legal industry" is due for "some reckoning"
- GAFAM Deprecating Old Videos ("Content") by Removing the Support for Their Format for No Good Reason
- "Security" is not a valid excuse
- Credit/Debit Cards Have Long Been Called Plastics, Over Time They're Becoming More Like Pure Plastics
- They cost less than a dollar to manufacture
- The European Patent Office (EPO) Holds a Public Demonstration Tomorrow and It'll be Live-streamed
- The EPO's workforce was meant to be capable of speaking many languages and have extensive experience in the sciences
- People Who Attacked Techrights Also Attacked My Mother
- Picking on old ladies because you don't like Free software advocates is never OK
- Little Community Element Left in CentOS
- CentOS, unlike Fedora, was meant to be long supported and solid
- Social Control Media is Cancel Culture (Companies Like Facebook Also Punish/Ban Accounts for Mentioning "Linux" and Lobby for Anti-Linux Legislation)
- The masters of Social Control Media decide what ideas can and cannot be expressed
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 16, 2026
- IRC logs for Monday, March 16, 2026