Historical Week for Debian and Ubuntu (a Look Back)
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-02-15 11:34:24 UTC
- Modified: 2014-02-15 11:34:24 UTC
Summary: A roundup of news about Debian, Ubuntu, and derivatives of Ubuntu
Debian
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The Debian project is pleased to announce the fourth update of its stable distribution Debian 7 (codename "wheezy"). This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories were already published separately and are referenced where available. Please note that this update does not constitute a new version of Debian 7 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away old "wheezy" CDs or DVDs but only to update via an up-to-date Debian mirror after an installation, to cause any out of date packages to be updated.
Systemd in Debian
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Since this weekend we have known that systemd was winning the Debian init system battle, but now it's official: systemd has prevailed over Upstart in Debian.
After a very heated fight between the Debian technical committee and also Debian stakeholders, Bdale Garbee as the chairman of the tech committee has announced systemd will be used in Debian 8.0 Jessie.
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systemd already has a wide adoption withing the GNU/Linux distribution with all major distros including openSUSE, Fedora, Arch Linux, etc using it as their default init system. Upstart was either way not getting much support from the free software community due to the restrictive CLAs Canonical requires which is often criticized by the community. With Debian going* for systemd, it will get even more developer power whereas Canonical will be left alone to deal with Upstart along with many more project that it’s trying to do on its own – including the recently discussed File Manager which may replace Nautilus (Files).
Systemd in Ubuntu
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Going forward, systemd will be Debian's default init system for Linux distributions, an init system soon to be used by every other major Linux distribution other than Ubuntu.
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With this move Canonical has slowed the alienation of Ubuntu from the rest of the Linux community. It also shows that Canonical also understand that it can’t fork it’s path too much from the mainstream Linux community, especially from mommy Debian. In a nutshell it’s a wise and welcome decision by Ubuntu leadership and will help them focus on more pressing issues which will help make Ubuntu better.
Systemd
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My view is that this idea is wrong: systemd is broken by design, and despite offering highly enticing improvements over legacy init systems, it also brings major regressions in terms of many of the areas Linux is expected to excel: security, stability, and not having to reboot to upgrade your system.
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As usual in these cases, not just Lennart, but many of those who supported him, also those who sponsored these efforts, has suffered all kind of attacks. Sadly not just for technical, I mean ATTACKS. Even journalists have been involved. Yes, Free Software is also mature enough to have "yellow (technical) press" associated, political and business interests and people in different communities willing to use them against anybody who threaten the current status quo.
Mobile
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Vodafone joined Ubuntu’s Carrier Advisory Group, as Ubuntu demoed progress on a unified desktop/mobile UI, but a Debian decision may further isolate Ubuntu.
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One of Canonical's main goals in bringing Ubuntu to mobile devices is to create a converged platform across smartphones, tablets, and PCs. As such, a developer should be able to write an app that has a single code base yet runs on all three types of devices, presenting a different interface to the user on each form factor.
Licence Agreement
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Canonical has issued an official explanation for the reason why Linux Mint developers have to sign a license agreement in order to continue to distribute the package straight from the Ubuntu repos.
Valve
LTS
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After this weekend sharing benchmarks of the recent Ubuntu 12.04 LTS point releases, here's some complementary tests that offer a look at the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" performance against the current state of the "Trusty Tahr", a.k.a. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.
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The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS
(Long-Term Support) for its Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core products,
as well as other flavours of Ubuntu with long-term support.
Development
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Last week I was in Orlando sprinting with my team as well as the platform, SDK, and security teams and some desktop and design folks. As usual after a sprint, I have been slammed catching up with email, but I wanted to provide a summary of some work going that you can expect to see soon in the Ubuntu app developer platform.
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The Ubuntu Developer Summit is the primary place where we discuss, debate, and plan the future of Ubuntu. The entire event takes place online, is open and accessible to all, and every session is recorded so everyone can see how decisions are made. It is a useful, fun, and rewarding event to join.
Ubuntu Variants
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Various flavors of Ubuntu 14.04 have come out today with their Trusty Tahr Alpha 2 spins.
Bodhi Linux
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We are huge fans of Jeff Hoogland’s work as a Software Developer and his efforts with Bodhi Linux. So we invited Jeff for a quick chat with Unixmen Australia. We were privileged when Jeff accepted our invitation. Here is what he had to say.
Linux Mint
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It’s no great secret that our organization Reglue uses Linux Mint on many of our outgoing computers. I run Mint on one of my work computers and at home as well. Linux Mint has given us the opportunity to create a respin for educational purposes within our non profit, largely due to an app named mintConstructor. It provides a fairly simple method of making custom systems using Linux Mint as the base.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- At Microsoft, "Firing People is a "Cheat Code" to Pump the Stock Short-term But They Are Literally Destroying the Company's Soul Long-term."
- They frame layoffs as a "success story"
- Google News Poisons Its Own Index With More Slopfarms (Including "filmogaz")
- Naming and shaming lazy slobs who rip off other people using LLMs can work, eventually
- Naming Culprits in Switzerland
- Switzerland is highly secretive about white-collar crime
- Sanitised Plagiarism as "AI" (How Oligarchy Plots to Use Slop to Hide or Distract From Its Abuses, or Cause People Not to Trust Anything They See/Read Online)
- This isn't innovation but repression
- Recent Layoffs at Red Hat (2026 the Year of Ultimate Bluewashing)
- I found it amusing that Red Hat's CEO has just chosen to wear all blue, as if to make a point
- Team Campinos Talks About SAP Days Before EPO Industrial Actions and a Day Before the "Alicante Mafia" Series (About Team Campinos Doing Cocaine)
- EPO staff that isn't morally feeble will insist on objecting to illegal instructions
- Stack(ed) Rankings and Ongoing Layoffs at Red Hat and IBM (Failure to Keep Staff Acquired by IBM)
- IBM is mismanaged and its sole aim is to game the stock market (by faking a lot of things)
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- Great Reset at IBM, the Company That Pulps Red Hat
- In 2026 many workers are RTO'ed, PIP'ed, and at Red Hat many have effectively 'left the company' and now start afresh as "IBM" staff
- The "Alicante Mafia" - Part II - Breakout of Discontent This Winter in Europe's Second-Largest Organisation
- So far we've caused a lot of panic and stress inside Team Campinos
- The "Alicante Mafia" - Part I - An Introduction to the Mafia Governing the EPO
- Are some people 'evacuating' themselves to save face?
- J.H.M. Ray Dassen & Debian, Red Hat, GNOME unexplained deaths
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Gemini Links 16/01/2026: "Porting My Main Website Over to Gemini" and Seeed Studio DevBoard
- Links for the day
- IBM Stacked and Ranked Badly, Maladministration Dooms the Company
- Now they stack people up for PIPs and layoffs ("RAs")
- Links 16/01/2026: UK Royal Family's "Legal Team Accused of Dishonesty, Fraud and Misconduct", OSI Still Controlled by Microsoft (the OSI's Spokesperson is on Microsoft's Payroll, Not Interim Executive Director, Deborah Bryant)
- Links for the day
- Writing About Corruption
- Fraud is everywhere
- The B in IBM is Brown-nosing and Buzzwords (or Both)
- International Buzzwords Machines
- IBM's 'Scientific-Sounding' Tech-Porn Won't Help IBM Survive (or Be Bailed Out)
- Who's next in the pipeline?
- IBM Was Never the Good Guy
- its original products were used for large-scale surveillance, not scientific endeavours
- The Bluewashing is Making Red Hat Extinct (They All Become "IBM", Little by Little)
- IBM does not care what's legal
- Slopfarms Push Fake News About Microsoft Shutdown, 30,000+ Microsoft Layoffs Last Year Spun as Only "15,000"
- The Web is seriously ill
- Countries Take Action Against Social Control Media and 'Smart' 'Phones', Not Slop (Plagiarised Information Synthesis Systems or P.I.S.S.)
- None of this is unprecedented except the scale and speed of sharing
- Sites That Expose Corruption Under Attack, Journalism Not Tolerated Anymore (the Super-Rich Abuse Their Wealth and Political Power)
- Sometimes, albeit not always, the harder people try to hide something, the more effective and important it is for the general public
- Links 16/01/2026: Social Control Media Curbs in Australia Underway, MElon Still Profiting by Sexualising Kids 'as a Service'
- Links for the day
- More People Nowadays Say "GNU/Linux"
- We still see many distros and even journalists that say "GNU/Linux"
- LLM Slop on the Web is Waning, But Linuxiac Has Become a Slopfarm
- I gave Linuxiac a chance to deny this or explain this; Linuxiac did not
- More Signs of Financial Troubles at Microsoft, Europe Puts Microsoft Under Investigation
- The end of the library is part of the cuts
- Pedophilia-Enabling Microsoft Co-founder Cuts Staff
- Compensating by sleeping with young girls does not make one younger
- Microsoft Shuts Down Campus Library, Resorts to Storytelling About "AI" to Spin the Seriousness of It
- Microsoft is in pain
- Free Software Foundation (FSF) Back to Advertising the Talks of Richard Stallman
- A pleasant surprise
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 15, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, January 15, 2026
- Gemini Links 16/01/2026: House Flood and Pragmatic Retrocomputing Dogfooding
- Links for the day
- Links 15/01/2026: Starlink Weaponised for Regime Change (by Man Who Boasted About Annexing South American Countries for Tesla's Mining), Corruption in Switzerland Uncovered by JuristGate
- Links for the day
- Linuxiac May Have Reverted Back to LLM Slop (Updated Same Day)
- Is he back off the wagon?
- GAFAM and IBM Layoffs Outline
- a lot of the layoffs happen in secrecy and involve convincing people to resign, retire, relocate etc.
- Links 15/01/2026: Internet Blackouts, Jackboots Society in US
- Links for the day
- Coming Soon: Impact With EPO Cocainegate
- Will Campinos survive 2026?
- The Last 'Dilberts' or Some of the Last Salvaged (Comic Strips Which Disappeared Shortly After They Had Been Published)
- Around the time the creator of Dilbert went silent he published some strips mocking TikTok and usage of it
- The Creator of Git Probably Doesn't Know How to Install and Deploy Git
- Nobody disputes this: Mr. Torvalds created Git
- Slop is a Liability
- Slopfarms too will become extinct because people aren't interested in them
- GAFAM is a National and International Threat to Everybody
- GAFAM is just a tentacle in service of imperialism
- EPO People Power - Part XXXVI - In Conclusion and Taking Things Up Another Notch
- They often say that the law won't deter or stop criminals because it's hard to enforce laws against people who reject the law
- Running Techrights is Fun, Rewarding, and Gratifying
- In Geminispace we are already quite dominant
- Red Hat is Connected to the Military, Its Chief Comes From Military Family (From Both Sides)
- The founder of Red Hat's parent company literally saluted Hitler himself (yes, a Nazi salute)
- Don't Cry for Gaslighting Media in a Country Which Loathes the Press
- my wife and I received threats for merely writing about Americans
- Red Hat (IBM) is Driving Away Remaining Fedora Users
- I've not used Fedora since Moonshine
- Robert X. Cringely Has Already Explained IBM's Bullying Culture (Towards Its Own Staff)
- IBM is a fairly nasty company
- Proton Mail compromise, Hannah Natanson (Washington Post) police raid & Debian
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, January 14, 2026
- IRC logs for Wednesday, January 14, 2026
- Gemini Links 15/01/2026: "Ode to elinks", envs.net Pubnix and Downtime at geminiprotocol.net
- Links for the day
- Still Condoning Child Labour and Exploiting Unpaid Children Developers as PR Props (to Raise Monopoly Money)
- These people lack morals. So they project.
- "Security, AI or Quantum" on "the IBM Titanic"
- Who's RMS?
- Hours Ago The Register MS Published Microsoft Windows SPAM "Sponsored by Intel." The Fake 'Article' Says "AI" 34 Times.
- The Register MS isn't a serious online newspaper
- EPO People Power - Part XXXV - Where Else Will Corruption and Substance Abuse be Tolerated?
- We need to raise standards
- Status and Capital
- People who do a lot are too busy to boast about it and wear fancy garments
- IBM Paying the Price for Treating Workers Badly and Discarding Real Talent (Because It's "Expensive")
- IBM is dead man walking
- Turbulence Ahead
- I last rebooted my laptop in 2023
- Google News Rewards Plagiarism With LLMs (About Linux, Too)
- Google is in the slop business now
- Links 14/01/2026: Failing Economy and Conquest Abroad as a Distraction From Domestic Woes
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 14/01/2026: The Ephemerality of Our Digital Lives and "Summer of Upgrades"
- Links for the day
- Projection Tactics - Part III: Silencing Inconvenient Voices Online
- If X gets banned in the UK, it'll be hard to see what the spouse says in public
- Outsourcing on Microsoft's Agenda, Offshoring Also
- "In some cases, India hiring is poised to replace certain roles previously based in the U.S."
- Links 13/01/2026: 'Dilbert' creator Scott Adams Passes Away With Cancer, Ban on X/Twitter Considered for CSAM Profiteering
- Links for the day
- The Goal is Software Freedom for All
- Anything to do with "Linux Foundation" is timewasting
- Reminder That Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Is Not Free, And It's Because of IBM
- software freedom just 'gets in the way'
- Under IBM, in Order to Game the Stock Market, Red Hat Resorted to Boosting the Biggest Ponzi Scheme in Human History
- This is what IBM turned Red Hat into
- Revision handed Microsoft the keys to the distortion of the past/history
- This isn't the first time The Register MS rewrites computing history in Microsoft's favour, as we pointed out several times in past years
- What Will Happen to GAFAM After the US Defaults Rather Than Bails Out the Market?
- Or tries to topple every government that doesn't play by its rules?
- EPO People Power - Part XXXIV - Bad Optics for the European Union (for Failing to Act and Tolerating Cocaine Use in Europe's Second-Largest Institution)
- There are principles in laws which tie awareness with complicity
- EPO's Central Staff Committee is Now Redacting (Self-Censoring) Due to Threats From the EPO "Mafia"
- "On the agenda: salary adjustment procedure for 2025 (as of January 2026)"
- "AI" (Slop) 'Demand' Isn't Growing, It's Fake, It's a Pyramid Scheme
- They try to resort to 'creative' accounting (fraudulent schemes like circular financing)
- Difficult Times at IBM and Microsoft Ahead of Mass Layoffs (Probably Before This Month's Results Unless Postponed to 'Prove' Rumours 'Wrong')
- IBM and Microsoft used to be tech giants. Nowadays they mostly pretend by pumping up their stock and buying back their own shares.
- Canonical: Make Ubuntu Bloated (Debian With Snaps), Then Sell the 'Debloated' Version for a Fee
- If people want a light distro, then they ought not pay Canonical but instead choose a light (by design) GNU/Linux distro
- People Don't Want "Just Enough", They'll Look for Quality
- That's why slopfarms will go away or become inactive
- Gemini Links 14/01/2026: 3D and Tiny Traffic Lights Pack
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, January 13, 2026
- IRC logs for Tuesday, January 13, 2026
- Slop Waning Whilst Originals Perish
- Slop is way past its "prime"
- XBox's 'Major Nelson' Loses His Job Again, This Time in a Microsoft Mono Pusher
- Microsoft hasn't much of a future in gaming. XBox's business is in rapid decline and people who push Mono to game developers are the same
