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
- Ponzi Schemes Are Useful (to Corrupt CEOs)
- Pathetic, corruptible so-called 'media' is bagging bribes to perpetuate the lies about "AI" (slop)
- Body-Shaming Using Fakes
- a lot of the people who casually claim "defamation" are themselves defaming loads of people every day
- EPO People Power - Part XXIV - Today or Tomorrow You Should Write to National Representatives (Delegates) at the EPO in Your Country
- Keep up the pressure!
- Red Hat and IBM Layoffs, Staff Kept Quiet About it, WARN Act Skirted/WARN Notices Avoided
- What a terrible company to be in
- Slop Still Rare
- So far a good start for 2026
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- Links 04/01/2026: War Without Borders, "Large Hadron Collider Being Shut Down"
- Links for the day
- Links 04/01/2026: US Imperialism in Greenland and Venezuela, "Climate Protesters Face Greater Risk of Crackdown Amid Rising Authoritarianism"
- Links for the day
- 2026 Should be the Year We All Stop Saying "AI" and Call Things What They Really Are
- Don't give anyone the satisfaction of this misguided belief there's any intelligence there
- GNU/Linux at All-Time High in Algeria
- In 2026 it hit a new all-time high
- Online Mobbing (and Worse) Disguised as 'Free Speech'
- People who say they believe in "free speech" have been trying hard to silence RMS and squash the FSF
- A 'Cancer That Attaches Itself' to Bulgaria?
- "Cancer" is what Microsoft called GNU/Linux
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, January 03, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, January 03, 2026
- GNU/Linux "Market Share" in Switzerland More Than Doubled Last Year, Based on statCounter
- GNU/Linux continues its considerable growth
- XBox Layoffs Imminent, More Appalling Sales Figures Published
- Expect many layoffs in the gaming division
- Gemini Links 03/01/2026: Climbing, Waking Up, and Social Control Media Woes
- Links for the day
- Links 03/01/2026: Growing Censorship, Another US Invasion, and Will Smith 'Cancelled'
- Links for the day
- Links 03/01/2026: Twitter Turns From Disinformation Powerhouse to Production and Dissemination of Child Pr0n, "New China Cybersecurity Law Becomes A Reality In 2026"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 03/01/2026: Formatting Text for Gopher and Text-only Websites
- Links for the day
- Unverified Claim: Mass Layoffs at Microsoft to Start Around Week 3 (or 4) of This Month
- Let's wait and see if the claim above is from an insider who has inside knowledge
- Firefox Fell Below 1% in Asia
- less than 1 in 100 Web users is detected/assumed to be using Firefox
- Links 03/01/2026: Ryanair Fines and Facebook Misleads Regulators
- Links for the day
- New Record High for GNU/Linux in Benelux in 2026
- If the above trends stand (throughout the year), then we can begin talking more seriously about a post-GAFAM Europe
- In the Search Engine Market, Microsoft is Falling Behind Russia's Yandex
- The so-called 'AI industry' is a boy that cries wolf
- A Year of Relaxation, But Also of Hardcore Whistleblowing
- Expect industrial action some time soon
- The More Influential Richard Stallman (RMS) Becomes, the More Aggressive Attacks on Him (and the FSF) Will Get
- We've meanwhile noticed disinformation being spread in social control media
- GNU/Linux Reaches All-Time High of 5% in Indonesia (Not Counting Chromebooks and Android)
- There are also related events in Indonesia and SUSE in particular seems to have been popularised there
- EPO People Power - Part XXIII - António Campinos Knows He's Extremely Vulnerable at This Time
- Campinos should never have been put in charge
- Gemini Links 03/01/2026: New Organisation System (Notebooks) and "2026 Already Off to an Amazing Start"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, January 02, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, January 02, 2026
- The More Buzzwords a Corporation Resorts To...
- buzzwords are a fool's way to compensate for or disguise a lack of knowledge
- So You Should Definitely Call it "Slop" and Stop Saying "AI"
- with more XBox/gaming layoffs being imminent the blowback will be fun to watch
- Why Are We Still Using Voting Machines?
- Voting machines still seem to me like an infantile cargo cult and an act of salesmanship (like various security theatre rituals at airports)
- "Works for Me!"
- Who knows best?
- Why IBM Workers Like Techrights (Same Reason EPO Workers Do)
- IBM will likely be a daily theme (high rate of recurrence)
- Workers Fly Away From IBM's Red Hat (This Year a Lot of Red Hat Staff is "IBM")
- The stock (share price) of IBM says nothing about what actually goes on
- In 2025 We Contributed to the Headlessness of the OSI, But It's Not Over Yet
- By airing some 'dirty laundry' about the OSI last year we contributed to its current state
- Africa's Largest Population Sees Diminishing Impact of Windows
- less than 1 in 10 Web requests in Nigeria comes from Windows
- Russia Cuts Finnish Cables ("Hybrid War"), Finland Cuts Off Microsoft
- the birthplace of Linux
- Links 02/01/2026: Science, Patent Maximalism, and Public Domain Day
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 02/02/2026: Books, Scams, and mkscript (a Script to Make Scripts)
- Links for the day
- Free Software is More Naturally Inclusive
- large, intolerant, violent companies get painted as a glorious example of United Colours of Benetton
- Strong Start for GNU/Linux This Year
- based on statCounter
- More Tools, Factorising Code
- If some things in the site of Gemini capsules don't behave as expected, then that's likely due to a bug
- Europe in 2026: Over 5% GNU/Linux, Not Counting Chromebooks
- 2026 has started strongly
- State of Tech Journalism in 2026: Follow the Money
- in order to understand what motivates an opinion piece one must follow the money
- Slopfarm Says Microsoft's "Biggest Business" is the 'Business' Where It Loses Tens of Billions of Dollars
- TOI still pretends to have a lot of output
- At the Start of January 2025 Microsoft President Said Microsoft Would Spend 80 Billion Dollars on "AI" Data Centres. That Didn't Happen. Microsoft Laid Off 30,000 Workers, Debt Surged.
- Maybe this coming Monday Microsoft will come up with more false promises and vapourware
- Links 02/01/2026: Insurrectionist Attacks Musicians Critical of Him With Lawfare, Project Gutenberg Now Has Over 75,000 Books
- Links for the day
- Decline in LLM Slop About "Linux" is a Good Start for 2026
- When the only remaining proponents of slop are slop, which is pretty much what's happening right now, the bubble is popping
- EPO People Power - Part XXII - Contact Officials and Inform Your National Representatives (Delegates) of the EPO's Cocainegate
- Europe's largest media intentionally covers up serious scandals in Europe's second-largest institution
- Slopwatch Still Dead, Not Enough LLM Slop About "Linux"
- this is the desirable thing
- LibXML2 Will Carry on (Without or With the Name "LibXML2")
- The proprietary software boosters are projecting
- Gemini Links 02/01/2026: ThinkPad, SHARP Zaurus, Lagrange Handheld Support
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 01, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, January 01, 2026