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
- Links 28/03/2026: Microsoft's LinkedIn a National Security Risk, Microsoft's Slop "Ambitions Face Investor Scrutiny Amid Soaring Costs"
- Links for the day
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 26 Out of 200: Asking for Documents and Information You Already Have, Even Letters and E-mails That You Yourself Sent!
- barristers are expensive
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- 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
- Open Web Destroyed by Centibillionaires, Says Anil Dash of Blogging Fame
- Blogging was going through its 'prime years' about 20 years ago
- "Linux" Slop Going Away, Microsoft et al Pay 'Linux' Foundation to Promote Slop
- It's a timely reminder that the Linux Foundation exists to promote whoever pays the Linux Foundation, even pedophiles and companies that attack the GPL
- Gemini Links 28/03/2026: "Finding My Base Tone", "Astrobotany", and BugoutBack/OFFLFIRSOCH
- Links for the day
- Links 28/03/2026: More Worldwide Bans on Social Control Media (Harms to Adolescents), Protests in US Against Dictatorship
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 28/03/2026: Echo Delay and 0x0.st
- Links for the day
- Rumours of More IBM Mass Layoffs at Beginning of April
- IBM is not doing well
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 27, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, March 27, 2026
- "Headcount" as Distraction From Mass Layoffs and Salary Reductions
- Things aren't looking well when one considers revenue is acquired, not earned
- "Linux" Slop Turning Rarer, New York Times Nowadays Contaminated With LLM Slop
- Another day has passed without much slop about "linux"
- Links 27/03/2026: Studying Whale Births, Apple is Cancelling Products, Cambodia Arrests Journalists Over Photographs
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 27/03/2026: GTD, Gopher Catchup, Gemini Crawlers, and "Slop Everywhere"
- Links for the day
- Mozilla Was Ruined Like Sirius Open Source Was Ruined - From the Top Down
- Mozilla will never return to its Free software roots
- Nokia Could Never Recover From Microsoft
- It's very important to remember what really happened
- Why Techrights and Many Other Sites Stopped Doing April Fools’ Day Articles
- Well before slop (made by LLMs) it was "bad optics" to have satire or humour in a site, irrespective of the day of the year
- President Not-Cocaine Campinos Notified of Historic EPO Strikes (Thousands of Workers Not Coming Back to the Office)
- Please do pay attention to how the media treats these strikes in Europe's second-largest institution
- Slides From the Presentation Discussing EPO Strikes Until End of June or Until End of 2026 (Maybe Next Year Too)
- More to come soon (later today)
- IBM Cuts Are Everywhere (Global), the Aim is to Lower the Pay
- Because the revenues keep falling (IBM buys other companies' revenues using borrowed money)
- Perpetual Strikes to Begin at European Patent Office (EPO), Large Majority Votes for Strikes Any Day of the Week
- Approved industrial actions [...] Notice how none of the media or even so-called 'IP' blogs write about it
- Mozilla is Not a Privacy Company, Mozilla is Run by GAFAM Executives and Managers Who Came From American Surveillance Companies
- Would you trust a VPN they claim to be "free"?
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 25 Out of 200: That Time Matthew J. Garrett Got Temporarily Banned/Suspended From Twitter
- That he gets banned from large social control media platform is hardly surprising given his combative communications
- Ubuntu Started as Free With ShipIt, Now It Becomes Payware That Exploits Debian Volunteers (Slaves)
- "Ubuntu" the distro now replaces the GNU components inherited from Debian with a bunch of Microsoft GitHub (proprietary) things that reject reciprocal licences
- Last Night The Register MS Published a Fake Article. It Mentioned "AI" 27 Times.
- Paid-for nonsense! [...] What's left of once-respectable news sites actively harms society
- Links 27/03/2026: Google Executive (GAFAM, US, Surveillance) "Named the New BBC Head", Prominent Climate Scientist Resigns From NASA
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 27/03/2026: "Being Busy" and "Posting Again"
- Links for the day
- GNOME Has No "Real" Executive Director, Only an IBM (Perma)'Interim' One With No Openings in Sight
- GNOME is having financial problems
- Microsoft Experiencing "Leadership Exodus"
- Microsoft's current position is no better than Meta's (Facebook)
- GNU/Linux Distros Should Reject "Age Verification" and Uphold Software Freedom for Users
- It's not about protecting children
- Slop Plunge
- we can already "smell the blood" of the so-called 'AI industry'
- IBM Media Puff Pieces While Layoffs Go On and On
- Has the PR industry absorbed the press?
- Media Says Microsoft Hiring Freezes, But There Are Already Microsoft Layoffs
- They want the public to talk about Microsoft as if it's just not hiring when it is actually firing
- Richard Stallman lynchings: Sruthi Chandran splitting Debian
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 26, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, March 26, 2026