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
- Microsoft said “GitHub and its leadership team will continue its mission as part of Microsoft’s CoreAI organisation.” But it's just an empty shell created earlier this year.
- In short, it's not too clear what Microsoft has just done except dumping GitHub - i.e. mostly a Web site that loses a ton of money (it always lost money) - into some mysterious new bucket
- IBM Layoffs in MCC, or Marketing, Communications and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
- IBM and Microsoft inflate their share price by circular financing
- The Register MS gets Lazy, Uses Slop
- Unlike 3-D renderings or "Classic" CG, slop images aren't quite original and definitely not fair use
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- Accessibility Isn't Overrated
- Making things simpler typically means better accessibility
- The Register's Slopfest
- Remember when The Register UK (yes, UK) had better standards?
- Latest Version of Windows (Vista 11) is a Failure 4 Years After Its Fake 'Leak'
- Vista 11 became more scarce this month
- Improving Our Archives
- Our old archives are still accessed a lot. Making them better is well worth the investment.
- Things One Learns as a Litigant in Person at the UK High Court
- Don't fear the official manuals
- Slopwatch: Lots of Fake Articles From Fake "Linux" Sites and About "Linux"
- Google says it's committed to "AI" (it means slop, not AI); that seems like an excuse to dodge accountability
- Links 19/08/2025: "Eavesdropping on Phone Conversations Through Vibrations" and Air Canada in Chaos
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 19/08/2025: Niche Spaces and "AI Pasta Sauce"
- Links for the day
- Links 19/08/2025: "NASA Is Giving Up on Climate Change Science" and "Earth's Continents Are Drying Out at an Unprecedented Rate"
- Links for the day
- Phil Wyett evidence & Debian Zizian plagiarism, modern slavery tendencies
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- In Many Countries People Move Away From Vista 11
- Vista 11 has been available for download for 4 years already, but adoption has been poor
- Desktops/Laptops Fall to All-Time Lows in the UK, So Why Does British Media Quote a Famous Criminal on "End of the Smartphone Era"?
- mobile usage (for Web access) has never been higher, based on an Irish surveyor, statCounter
- The Groklaw Web Site Has Been Hijacked by Scammers
- Groklaw.net isn't a safe site to access at this time
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 18, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, August 18, 2025
- Online Safety Act Does Not Tackle the Worst (and Biggest) Culprits
- if our governments are serious about tackling online harms, then they need to look closely at GAFAM and social control media giants
- Chat Control (1 and 2) in the European Union Sends the Wrong Message
- This is an EU law
- Slopwatch: Google News and Serial Sloppers (Fake Articles About "Linux")
- Calling out the culprits
- Gemini Links 19/08/2025: Digital Legacy and Chat Control
- Links for the day
- English Law Misused by Americans and Irishmen Against Brits is Unfair
- There's always a way to improve existing laws
- Overly Maximalist, Expensive, Localised Patent Law is Dooming Western Companies, Argue 3-D Printing Champions
- We've long warned (over 7 years already!) that China's approach to patents will impress WIPO by gaming the totals but will doom the West
- Links 18/08/2025: "Microsoft Store" Gets Increasingly Hostile, "Cracking Abandonware DRM"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 18/08/2025: Summer "Gone" and Web Reposts in Gemini
- Links for the day
- Microsoft's Windows in Gabon: Still Moving Down
- What is this Unknown? Who knows...
- Links 18/08/2025: LLM Reputation Damaged, Australia Catches Google Foul Play
- Links for the day
- Geeks Like GNU/Linux
- The technical community seems to be consolidating and rallying around GNU/Linux
- GNU/Linux is 486 in Ireland
- 4.86% that is
- End of Reliable Media
- it makes the world a worse place, it renders the Web a misinformation machine
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 17, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, August 17, 2025
- GitHub Won't Last Much Longer
- Many things at Microsoft are going to go the way of the Skype (or "dodo"). GitHub will be among those.
- We've Never Used Large Language Model (LLM)
- we just never used an LLM
- "Secure Boot" is a Security Problem, Not a Solution
- These people don't try to improve security but to undermine security
- Gemini Links 18/08/2025: Retro and Endless Escape from the WWW
- Links for the day
- Working Whilst Away From Home
- Decades ago being away meant all sorts of problems associated with workflows and connectivity
- The Next Version of Windows Will Always be the Best (for Microsoft)
- It's worse and slower over time
- "End of the Smartphone Era" According to Jeffrey Epstein's Key Enabler
- They call it "sour grapes"
- Links 17/08/2025: Strike Downs Air Canada, Postmortems of Putin's Red Carpet Summit
- Links for the day
- Links 17/08/2025: Slow Tools and Enshittification of YouTube
- Links for the day
- Don't Talk to Bullies
- This serious matter is still being examined by British authorities
- Links 17/08/2025: "The Performance of Power" and "My Undesirable Friends"
- Links for the day
- Growing Our Reach
- Our goal was never "hits"
- The Russian Vision of Technology
- Russia's surveillance is very extensive
- Sooner or Later Almost Everyone Will Know "AI" is Just a Go-To, Misused, Misapplied, and Grossly Overused Term of Liars and Con Jobs Who Ride a Ponzi Scheme
- At the expense of people gullible enough to "invest" in this or take salaries/bonuses in the form of "stock" (tied to a Ponzi scheme)
- The Register MS Has Begun Using Slop Images
- It's not clear when it started; but it's definitely getting worse [...] Worst of all are 'articles' about slop that are themselves slop
- Reddit Funded by Microsoft
- Reddit is merely a filter and we knows who controls that filter (using money)
- When It Comes to Technology, Mozilla and Firefox Are Illiberal
- Last month in Planet Debian we saw one more person explaining to everyone how to "turn off" DRM in Firefox and hide the pop-up/s
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 16, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, August 16, 2025
- The Open Source Initiative Has Many Scandals, We'll Try to Summarise Them All
- Open Source Initiative (OSI) hates facts
- Open Source Initiative (OSI), Wikipedia, Molly De Blanc, and Censorship/Reputation Laundering
- OSI is like SPLC. The old name remains, the mission changed
- Gemini Links 17/08/2025: Misunderstanding "Geminiverse" and Let's Encrypt
- Links for the day
- Links 17/08/2025: Breaches, Layoffs, and Scams
- Links for the day