Links 22/05/2008: 14 Million Downloads This Year for Famelix (GNU/Linux); Another Linux-Based Media Centre
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2008-05-22 16:48:29 UTC
- Modified: 2008-05-22 16:48:29 UTC
GNU/Linux
- Famelix and the dangers of combating Windows
As with any GNU/Linux distribution, exact figures for use are hard to come by for Famelix. However, other users of the distribution include 62 military units, and schools and digital inclusion centers throughout South America. On its home site, the distribution has had more than 22 million downloads -- at least 14 million of them in the last 12 months, thanks mainly to the first releases to support German, English, and Italian in addition to the original Spanish and Portugese. By any standard, the distribution seems a success.
- Home media system runs open source Linux
A company called Fiire is shipping a home automation, media control, and security system based on the open source LinuxMCE distro. Built around a dual-core AMD Athlon X2-based box called the Fiire Engine, the Fiire system also includes FiireStation thin clients and a Z-Wave-based FiireChief controller.
- Buntu Family Theater [video]
- PCLinuxOS
- Comparing Linux USB flash disk distros
- CeBIT - Red Hat champions open source market education
- New Enhancements for Red Hat Enterprise Linux
F/OSS
GPUs
Leftovers
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Google as a 'Bullshit Generator' Disguised as Intelligence
- It'll probably cause Google to get sued a lot, both by individuals and companies
- As Expected, Google in the UK Now Experiments With Slop Instead of Web Search
- At this point more people ought to stop and think: Does Google's search engine deserve trust?
- Sabotaging Linux on Behalf of Microsoft With UEFI 'Secure' Boot (De Facto Remote 'Kill Switch'), Then Defaming, Stalking and Harassing Critics of 'Secure' Boot for 12 Years, Then SLAPPing Their Spouses and Them
- The sorts of stubborn lunatics we've been dealing with
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- Stability and Reliability, Backward Compatibility
- I don't fancy relying on social control media as "sources"
- What "the News" Looks Like in 2025
- The "says" (or "sez") phenomenon
- History Will Be Distorted, Sometimes Intentionally, Under the Guise of Intelligence (Manipulated/Curated Slop)
- Militarised misinformation or military-grade chaff is a national security threat, even domestically
- Financial Engineering Companies: A Company Worth 4 Trillion Dollars Would Not Borrow 100+ Billion Dollars at Interest Rates Like Today's
- Many headlines perpetuate the lie Microsoft had just 2 waves of layoffs
- Microsoft is Googlebombing "Linux" While Paying Former News Sites to Publish SPAM
- How much lower will IDG sink?
- The Data You Don't Give Away is Your Advantage
- stop sharing data that does not need to be shared
- Being Obedient or Doing the Right Thing
- The world always changes for the better because of people who think "Outside the Box", not the cogs
- Gemini Links 01/08/2025: Happy Hacking Keyboards and New Gemini Arrivals
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 31, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, July 31, 2025
- Moving on in Techrights, Geeks Gonna Geek
- In the coming weeks we plan to focus (as we explained last week) on patents, GNU/Linux issues, and the occasional philosophical essays
- Slopwatch: Google News Has Lost the Plot
- Almost the majority of articles returned for "Linux" are fakes
- Links 31/07/2025: Australia Restricts YouTube Access, Personal Privacy at Risk
- Links for the day
- Links 31/07/2025: Spotify Collapses and Spotify Now Forcing Some Users to Undergo Face-Scanning
- Links for the day
- A Lot of Supposedly "Successful" Businesses Are Just Debt-Racking Vessels Without Any Prospects of Financial Sustainability
- The probability of bankruptcy of any business is more than 0%
- theregister.com: The Voice of Microsoft US?
- It basically sold out
- Yes, You Can Love and Adore Things Whilst Also Criticising Them
- Is society being divided and groomed/primed to be resistant to constructive criticism?
- Links 31/07/2025: War in Ukraine, Security News, and Cyberattacks Against Journalists on the Rise
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 31/07/2025: Fake Money and Gemini Diaries
- Links for the day
- An Illusion and Cult Worship of Magnitude (Ubiquity as "Victory")
- GNU has been around for over 40 years and it'll likely continue to exist for another 40 (in some form)
- Google: From Pointing to Relevant Sites to Pointing to Social Control Media to Actually Parroting Social Control Media as "Facts"
- Google has become a misinformation company
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, July 30, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, July 30, 2025
- How to Report Apple Layoffs Without Saying the "L" Word
- don't look for the "L" word
- Wall Street Does Not Care About Microsoft's Impending (August) Layoffs, It Believes Lies From Microsoft, Whose Debt Grows Rapidly
- If Microsoft is doing so well and swimming in money, why so many cuts (about 29,000 layoffs so far this year)?
- Wayland Considered Harmful (to GNU/Linux Adoption)
- it's not limited to games
- My Experience With Judges Has been Positive, But We Must Still Pursue SLAPP Reform in the United Kingdom
- We believe it'll be a "feather in the cap" if we can help change laws in the UK to better protect investigative reporters
- Slopwatch Makes the Web Better
- Remember what happened to BetaNews?
- Slopwatch: Google News is Pumping in Lots of Web Traffic Into Fake Sites That Say "Linux"
- somewhere between 30% and 40% of today's "news" about "Linux", as seen by Google News, is LLM slop
- Links 30/07/2025: Climate Calamities Highlighted, Kyrgyzstan Crackdown on Expression/Freedoms
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 30/07/2025: Watson’s List of Limits, Lysenko 2000
- Links for the day
- Riot for peace & Love: Catholic Influencers and Digital Missionaries welcome Jubilee of Youth
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
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- When people deviate from "the norm" they typically get ridiculed and dismissed as "crazy"
- Links 30/07/2025: Tea Class Action and Google Killing the Web With Slop
- Links for the day
- Last Month Our IRC Community Turned 17
- Funnily enough we never missed a single day when it comes to logging
- "The Unix Kernel"
- Linux was inspired by MINIX
- The Register Relays Microsoft Marketing, Dubs That Marketing "Research"
- Hours ago they did a "Microsoft sez" piece
- Dealing With Sociopaths, Liars, and Cranks
- A dysfunctional society such as this would never develop
- Not Owning Mobile Phones
- It's not about resistance; it's common sense
- Google 'Search' is Fast Becoming No Better Than Social Control Media Infested With Bots
- Google emerged almost 30 years ago as a company looking to organise the Web and direct people towards informative pages. That Google is dead.
- PCLinuxOS Had Functional Backups Before the House Fire, the Site Will be Restored in New Webhost
- This is the direction we want for GNU/Linux, not some IBM sales strategy
- Gemini Links 30/07/2025: Two Sides of Me and "Hooked on Cosmic Voyage"
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Will Continue Resorting to Crimes in Order to Keep GNU/Linux Usage Down
- It is a real problem and we'll revisit it later this week
- GAFAM 'Revolving Doors' at The Register and a "Bribe Price List"
- "an analyst at Microsoft"
- Microsoft Rapidly Shrinking (No, It's Not About Efficiency, It's About Unbearable Debt)
- We'll soon see how much debt grew in the past quarter
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, July 29, 2025
- IRC logs for Tuesday, July 29, 2025
- Corruption is the Standard Operating Procedure at the European Patent Office (EPO)
- The EPO is a dictatorship that stains Europe
- Local Staff Committee Munich (LSCMN) at the European Patent Office (EPO) Requests an Urgent Meeting to Avoid Abolishing the Office
- This is dictatorship led by the most corrupt
- Slopwatch: Fake 'Linux' 'Articles' and Spamfarms/Slopfarms
- at least 5 fake articles in one day
Comments
LinuxIsFun
2008-05-23 07:05:46
The founders of the Digital Standards Organization, and others, will sign the Hague Declaration on 21 May 2008 in the Hague. The signing ceremony will be held in the Dutch Royal Library.
Any updates on this....???????????????
Roy Schestowitz
2008-05-23 07:10:38
There have also been some interesting E-mails on the ODF Discussion List, such as this one from half an hours ago:
On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 7:37 PM, marbux
> The more interesting part to me was Phipps' closing:
> "Of course, I might also reflect on the fact they are finally doing > exactly what Stephe Walli said they ought to do to kill ODF.
This is potentially so huge I can't even get my mind around it. Why would Microsoft do this? What is in it for them? How will they seek to turn it to their advantage?
Some suggestions as to why:
1) because they are being investigated by the EU for their coercion in getting OOXML passed.
2) because they want to extend, embrace, and extinguish:
http://stephesblog.blogs.com/my_weblog/2005/12/how_microsoft_s.html
3) because they recognize that they have lost some important ground the format wars, and that governments really do resent being forced to use MOOXML the way that Microsoft forced it on them with proposed ISO 29500.
4) because they succeeded in using dirty procedural tricks to get MOOX approved as an ISO standard, and now they see that they need to get Microsoft reps on standards bodies if they are going to control and ultimately subvert those standards bodies as they did with ISO.
IMHO, we really need to all bookmark Stephen Walli's blog below, and read it frequently, and maybe even read it aloud to one one another occasionally at meetings, because we are not out of the dark as long as Microsoft has billions to burn to defend its monopoly. I have often heard it said that the rational monopoly will, at some point, be willing to spend the provable future value of the company minus one dollar defending its monopoly status. They owe it to their shareholders to be as vicious as we all know that they have been for decades now.
> If one reads the linked piece from 2005 by former Microsoft exec > Stephen Walli, >
Let's all remember what Microsoft did in staking the ISO vote; and how it packed rooms to block out Sun and IBM participation in Spain. We have one an important procedural step, but the competition for open document standards is only just now beginning. Please remember, too, what a Microsoft Exec once said about stacking panels:
http://boycottnovell.com/2008/01/30/evangelism-is-war-memo/
Thanks to Roy Schestowitz for uncovering and posting that revealing "Evangelism is war" presentation by James Plamondon, Technical Evangelist, Microsoft Developer Relations Group, which is linked above.
Expect more procedural tricks from Microsoft. Exercise caution in watching meeting agendas and lists of participants. Here is a cut-and-paste from Roy Schestowitz's posting of Microsoft Evangelist James Plamondon's screed on how to stack panels:
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I have mentioned before the "stacked panel." Panel discussions naturally favor alliances of relatively weak partners — our usual opposition. For example, an "unbiased" panel on OLE vs. OpenDoc would contain representatives of the backers of OLE (Microsoft) and the Backers of OpenDoc (Apple, IBM, Novell, WordPerfect, OMG, etc.). Thus, we find ourselves outnumbered in almost every "naturally occurring" panel debate.
A stacked panel, on the other hand, is like a stacked deck: it is packed with people who, on the face of things, should be neutral, but who are in fact strong supporters of our technology. The key to stacking a panel is being able to choose the moderator. Most conference organizers allow the moderator to select die panel, so if you can pick the moderator, you win. Since you can't expect representatives of our competitors to speak on your behalf, you have to get the moderator to agree to having only "independent ISVs" on the panel. No one from Microsoft or any other formal backer of the competing technologies would be allowed -just ISVs who have to use this stuff in the "real world." Sounds marvellously independent doesn't it? In feet, it allows us to stack the panel with ISVs that back our cause. Thus, the "independent" panel ends up telling the audience that our technology beats the others hands down. Get the press to cover this panel, and you've got a major win on your hands. Finding a moderator is key to setting up a stacked panel
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