Bonum Certa Men Certa

Abundance of Good Code, "Just Like Air."

posted by Roy Schestowitz on May 18, 2025

Reflections On Water, Bright Background

"Once GNU is written, everyone will be able to obtain good system software free, just like air."

-Richard Stallman

This morning we rebooted the London-based server hosting the sites, IRC, Git, Gemini and so on. We had a new kernel to load. The server, unlike my personal computers, has many ports open to the whole world. For my personal computers the risks (or risk factors) are different, so I still use a kernel from 2023 and only Free software is installed. It'll soon be 600 days since the last reboot:

roy@vonick:~$ uptime
 14:07:36 up 586 days, 19:52, 40 users,  load average: 0.76, 0.80, 0.72

My second laptop is trailing not by much:

roy@bubi:~$ uptime
 14:12:13 up 521 days,  5:24,  3 users,  load average: 7.75, 7.39, 7.31

This shows just how good the code is. If 4GB of RAM can be enough for millions of processes to be spawned (over time), memory leaks accounted for too, why would anyone choose Windows? For the former PC it's close to 4 million processes already and just over 3 million for the latter. My wife's laptop also runs Free software, it's still snappy (4GB of RAM), and it was last rebooted 447 days ago.

Richard Stallman's (aka RMS) seminal manifesto and foundational (practical) work on GNU gave us a very solid system that facilitates productive work without concerns over spyware. There are good reasons why he rejects DRM (like Steam) and proprietary software (which tends to spy, either secretly or not; without sources code it's hard to restrict such unwanted behaviour).

Hours ago an influential vlogger, Salvatore Sanfilippo, was paying respect to RMS. More and more people realise where is all started. RMS. Many companies don't want people to find this out because then they might learn about freedom (as in, control over one's computer) and never again consider proprietary things as a "first option" or "default". I had many arguments over this in Sirius Open Source [sic] towards the later years. I wasn't the only one there to use the "f" word (freedom).

The Microsofters still look for creative new ways to attack Richard Stallman and, as we'll explain tomorrow, they try to interject ad hominem attacks on Dr. Stallman into our trial against them [1, 2]. They must be scared. Perhaps even desperate. They don't even use Free software for their communications.

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 10/06/2025: Jaws at 50 and US Democracy Crushed Very Rapidly (Martial Law Seems Imminent)
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VII: Washing Their Hands After Corruption and Abuse
"Tragedy or comedy?"
Culling Bad RSS Feeds of Bad Sites
Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater
Live as You Preach
technology is fast becoming dysphoric
 
Links 10/06/2025: Apple Hype and Physical Attacks on Bloggers
Links for the day
Gemini Links 10/06/2025: Loon Lake, Farming, and Forth
Links for the day
If 'Microsoft v Techrights' is Dealt With by a 'Microsoft Court' (or a Court Outsourced to Microsoft)
More on that later
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 09, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, June 09, 2025
Gemini Protocol Turns Six in 10 Days From Now
If you haven't tried it yet, then give it a go today
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Addition Addiction and Nitride
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Science, Hardware Projects, and Democracy Receding
Links for the day
Computers Got Smaller, So GNU/Linux Got Bigger
Many people here recognise the lack of urgency (or need) to get expensive new laptops
BetaNews is a Plagiarism and LLM Slop Hub, the Chief Editor Isn't Addressing This Problem Anymore
SS Fagioli is basically a parasite leeching off or exploiting other people's work
Links 09/06/2025: Chaos in Los Angeles and Hurricane Season
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Grows at Windows' Expense and Microsoft Trolls Infest and Maliciously Target Articles About It
Microsoft is - and has long been - organised crime
They Say I'm Mr. Bombastic
They didn't take good lawyers
Links 09/06/2025: Windows TCO and Many Data Breaches
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VI: Political Stunts by Former President Edyta Demby-Siwek and the Connection to Profound Corruption at EUIPO
it's like a money-laundering operation where one politician rewards another at taxpayers' expense
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Pipelines and Splitgate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 08, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 08, 2025
Links 08/06/2025: Tiananmen Carnage Censorship Persists, North Korean Goes Offline
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/06/2025: Love as an Ethnographic Method and Monitorix Gemini-Frontend v0.1
Links for the day
Links 08/06/2025: Exposure of More GAFAM Surveillance and Social Security Records Compromised
Links for the day
Linux Foundation is a Mediator for Microsoft et al, Not for Small Companies That Support Rather Than Attack the GPL
Many people still wrongly assume that because it is called "Linux Foundation", then it is pro-Linux and represents the same mindset
This Past Friday, Confirming What We Said All Along About Brett Wilson LLP: It's Shrinking, Has Considerable Debt, Loss of Net Assets Despite the Microsoft SLAPP Money
The documents only became publicly available less than 2 days ago
Some of the Many Reasons We Sued Microsofters for Harassment
perpetrators of harassment
For 20 Years Many People Were Sharecropping for Canonical's Oligarch, Now He's Deleting All Their Contributions
"Ubuntu has erased instead of archiving the trove of material at Ubuntu Forums"
There Was Always Too Much 'Crazy Stuff' Going on Around Freenode
What many IRC users lost sight of
Exposing Crime is Not a Crime (It Never Was)
In the eyes of rich and powerful people, those who speak about their crimes are the "criminals"
GNU/Linux Distros Abandoning Microsoft GitHub
Will curl be next to leave Microsoft GitHub?
Expect More XBox Mass Layoffs Soon If the Rumours Are True
From a Microsoft media operative
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 07, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 07, 2025
Europe Needs to Move Away From GAFAM; The Sooner, the Better
Europe - not just the EU - must abandon GAFAM as soon as possible
The Issue Isn't GNOME's Promotion of Diversity But GNOME Corruption, Abuse, Censorship, and Worse
So-called "Conservative" (republican, pro-Trump, bigoted) people want you to think the problem with GNOME is politics
When the News Sources Become Scarce and Increasingly Full of Polluted/Contaminated 'Content' (With LLM Slop and Slop Images)
Integrity matters
"Linux" Sites That Spew Out LLM Slop
We're lacking enough material for another "Slopwatch"
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part V: Breaking the Law, Just Like EPO
We'll hopefully cover some of the pertinent details later this year