Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 20/08/2009: GNU/Linux Beats Vista 7, Shadowgrounds Survivor is Coming



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • Linux vs Windows 7
    And this is where Linux can make a big difference. There's nothing in Windows 7 that Linux can't do, and in most cases, do it better. Our machines are quicker and more efficient. Our desktops are more innovative and less static. Our apps are more powerful, cheaper and less partisan, and Linux security has never been better. But best of all, we have complete control over the future of Linux, and it's success or failure at the hands of Windows 7 is in our hands.


  • PS3 Slim - No more Linux? Ahh, but for how long...
    I'm saying it early - I foresee that the PS3 Slim will having Linux running on it within a few weeks of the launch.




  • Games

    • 42 Hot Free Linux Games (Part 2 of 3)
      To be eligible for inclusion in the list below, games again needed to satisfy the following requirements:

      Free to play (no download charge, no monthly charge)

      Does not require Wine to run. Wine is a compatibility layer for running Windows software.

      Not in the early stages of development


    • Shadowgrounds Survivor from Igios is now GOLD !
      LGP Announced that Shadowgrounds Survivor from Igios is now GOLD. It has gone to replication and will be available in around 2-3 weeks. Survivor will be available both as a boxed product everywhere, and as a downloadable and rentable game from our download partners.


    • Quake Live at 1Ghz, 256Mb
      That’s Crux, by the way. I expected laggy performance and skipping graphics. But framerates are exceptionally good, although I didn’t find a way to show a number on screen. I’m not a huge first-person shooter fan, but it’s fun to try out.






  • K Desktop Environment

    • kmymoney 1.0, positioning
      Once again: cheers to the KMyMoney devs and I hope you all managed a small celebration to commemorate your milestone and the great gift you have delivered to the world! :)


    • on feature requests
      The source of the material was a thread on the kde-devel mailing list where feature additions for KDE 4 was brought up, and in particular features that were in KDE 3 that are not in KDE 4.

      [...]

      I want to see the good ideas float to the top and get the attention they deserve (e.g. implementations) and the good ideas that need to be prioritized for later still get the attention they deserve so nobody feels neglected.







  • Distributions

    • PCLinuxOS 2009.1 Minime Review
      What I liked most in this distribution:

      1. Inclusion of Update Notifier and Copy2Ram option. 2. Availability of OpenOffice 3.1, Firefox 3.5.2, Artha and many other useful packages in the repo. 3. Bloat-free attitude of Minime like its predecessors. 4. Adherence to KDE 3.5.10 + 2.6.26 kernel. 5. Stunning default wallpaper, bootsplash + ksplash.


    • UserOS Extreme 9.04 - coming to October 2009 PC User
      In less than two weeks, you’ll be able to give our latest operating system a go - UserOS Extreme 9.04. Based on the recent Ubuntu 9.04 release, we’ve built the new operating system from the ground up. You’ll be able to read in the October 2009 issue exactly what we did but we took a new approach to the operating system. It’s not based on an existing distro.




    • Red Hat Family







    • Debian Family











  • Devices/Embedded

    • 5 Reasons to Get Excited about Linux on the Netbook
      All that being said, you don't have to buy a netbook with Linux pre-installed to enjoy what this "alternative" OS has to offer. There are several versions out there which you can try today, no purchase required. And there are even more soon-to-launch distros which really get us excited.








Free Software/Open Source

  • Three Free Issues of BSD Magazine in .pdf Format
    Karolina at BSD Magazine wanted me to let you know that she has posted three free .pdf issues online. The three cover FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. Apparently BSD Magazine has survived a publishing scare and will continue for the foreseeable future. I may also have an article for FreeBSD out soon.


  • Quick and Dirty MySQL Performance Troubleshooting
    What are the first things you should look at after learning of a sudden change in MySQL server performance?


  • Community work in the framework project – Part 1
    Today I want to start a little overview about the current work of the framework project community members. Fortunately we have some volunteers from RedFlag 2000 who work on several projects


  • Durian is Coming: Blender's Third Open Movie Project
    Blender third open movie project, code-named “Durian” is ramping up to production, and time is running out for the pre-sale campaign if you want to get your spot in the credits. This time the project is focusing on an adolescent audience with an epic-fantasy setting and a female protagonist (my son aptly dubbed this the “Chicks in Chainmail” genre). The only art yet available from Durian itself is the series of banner ads (by concept artist, David Revoy), but an impressive creative team has already been announced.




Leftovers

  • MSI ditches Intel for AMD
    Russian tech site 3DNews review has reviewed the x610 X-Slim series laptop even before it's been officially announced by MSI. The reviewers discovered that the CPU change has put a big dent in performance and driven down battery life to two hours for the sake of a small cost saving.


  • Internet slowly wakes up to PayPal's quiet fee hike
    PayPal made some policy changes in June, but it's likely that you haven't heard much about them until very recently. That's because the company quietly slid in extra fees that will affect nearly all users but failed to be transparent about the changes. Now, the Internet is slowly discovering what happened, and no one is happy about it.


  • Town Hall Protests: Astroturf 2.0?
    Some Democrats have blamed the chaos on astroturf operations: fake grassroots groups funded by special interests. But are the forces whipping up the anti-health care frenzy really astroturf—or a new form of corporate-funded campaigning?




  • Censorship/Web Abuse

    • Censorship or Copyright Infringement? Flickr Takes Down "Obama as Joker" Photo
      Los Angeles residents recently began seeing a new sort of Obama poster plastered across their city. Instead of promoting "hope," these posters feature U.S. President Barack Obama wearing the Joker's clown makeup from the Batman movie "The Dark Knight." Even those outside of L.A. have likely seen this image somewhere as it soon took on a viral nature, appearing both online and in other cities across the country.








  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • BSA Softens Anti-Piracy Message
      The alliance, consisting of about 80 companies — including Apple, Microsoft and Adobe — is the counterpart to the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America.


    • Striking a balance with copyright
      The various monopoly privileges misnamed ‘intellectual property’ (copyright and patent) are relatively recent creations, historically. Both of them derive form something called the ‘Statute of Anne‘. More directly, the copyright and patent laws in the United States derive from a clause in the Constitution which explicitly stipulates that they should only last for a ‘limited time’, and are explicitly required to promote “science and the useful arts”. (Article 1, Section 8.)


    • On Plagiarism, Scholarship, and Community Knowledge
      “During the course of this long volume I have undoubtedly plagiarized from many sources–to use the ugly term that did not bother Shakespeare’s age. I doubt whether any criticism or cultural history has ever been written without such plagiary, which inevitably results from assimilating the contributions of your countless fellow-workers, past and present. The true function of scholarship as a society is not to stake out claims on which others must not trespass, but to provide a community of knowledge in which others may share.” -F. O. Matthiessen, American Renaissance 1941.










Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day



Jin Sato, father of humanoid robots 01 (2005)



Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Where Slop Meets Ghostwriting: It's a False Analogy
It's a false analogy
Slop Technica: Ars Technica Seems Like Repeat Offender, a Part-Time Slopfarm
The culprits are repeat offenders, but the publisher will never admit this in public
Where Microsoft's Bing Cannot Even Reach 1% "Market Share"
Looking at "I" countries
Links 16/02/2026: Barack Obama Responds to Racist Cheeto and Benjamin Mako Hill Studies Online Communities
Links for the day
 
Resisting IBM and EPO Corruption
Rise up against EPO dictatorship next week
Links 17/02/2026: Why OpenClaw is Very Sleazy and Ars Technica Exposed as Hub of LLM Slop (Credibility Destroyed Overnight)
Links for the day
Benj Edwards (Ars Technica) Used Fake Articles to Promote Ponzi Scheme for Conde Nast and Its Client (Marketing)
What Ars Technica and Conde Nast do here helps defraud the general public
Only One in 50 Saudis Would Use Microsoft for Search, Almost Same as Would Use Russia's Yandex
If statCounter is to be trusted
Microsoft's "AI" Concerns Are All Indian (or Low-Paid Workers Who Work Extra Hours Unpaid)
portraying charlatans and frauds like they're some kind of visionaries and luminaries
Microsoft Turned Bing Into Censorship Machine of China, But Bing Is Pegged at a Mere 2% in Asia, Yandex is Bigger
Expect many Bing layoffs some time soon (like in past years)
Just Like The Register MS, Conde Nast's Ars Technica Has Just Publicly Admitted That It Published Fake Articles (Slop) Made by LLMs About Serious Subjects
Conde Nast might shut Ars Technica down to escape the bad publicity/association
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Way Too Slow to Respond to Financial Fraud at Law Firms, in Effect Helping Those Law Firms Defraud Many More People (Fleecing Clients)
Who will hold the SRA accountable for this?
Techrights Became a Hub for News That IBM/Red Hat Doesn't Want You to See (and Pays Mainstream Media to Distract From)
the more viciously the notorious organisation attacks the reporter, the greater the interest in what the reporter has to say
EPO's Central Staff Committee on Fourth Technical Meeting, Two Days Before First of (At Least) 4 Winter Strikes at the Second-Largest European Institution
“future orientations on the salary adjustment procedure”
IBM's Collapse Continues, Half of EU Countries to Have Mass Layoffs, "IBM Clearly Disinvests From Europe" Says IBM European Works Council
Recent publication
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, February 16, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, February 16, 2026
Gemini Links 17/02/2026: Alpenglow Industries' Closure and Gemini Server Issues
Links for the day
The Southern California Linux Expo (“SCALE”) or SCALE 23x Becomes Microsoft
It's not supporting the event, it is buying it.
Microsoft to Focus on Name-Dropping Buzzwords to Distract From Declining Business, IBM RAs (Layoffs) With Staff Stack-Ranked
Calling everything cloud or reclassifying as "AI"
Another EPO Strike One Week From Now, Local Staff Committee Munich to Discuss It This Week
Campinos MIA while Office staff goes on strike at least 4 times
Gemini Links 16/02/2026: Task Completed by Avoidance and "Playing Again With Akkoma"
Links for the day
Happy Birthday (or Anniversary) to SoylentNews
"Happy Birthday SoylentNews"
Techrights' Architecture
Stability is the main goal
IBM Reduces the Thresholds for Acceptance (and the Salaries)
Are chatbots good enough as IBM staff?
When It Comes to Rust, Keep All the Eyes on the Ball (Technical and Legal Perils, Sustainability Questions)
It's not about security or politics
Linux Foundation Continues Falling Off a Cliff in Geminispace
Gemini Protocol will turn 7 this summer
Links 16/02/2026: cURL’s Daniel Stenberg Asserts That Slop is DDoSing Free Software, But Still Uses a Plagiarism and GPL-Violating Blender (Microsoft GitHub)
Links for the day
The Techrights Community Never Needed Money, Only Goodwill
We accomplish things by a track record of suppressed facts
"AboutCode" is a Microsoft Proxy and Microsoft's Acquisition of the OSI Advances Via OSI Moles
presenting direct evidence anybody can verify
Social Control Media is Just a Digital Weapon
Social control media is not social and not media
They Will Call Smart People "Luddites"
Is society "seeing the light"?
Microsoft Amutable Already Reveals That Its Focus Is Not Linux, It'll Promote "Remote Attestation"
This is basically an attack on Software Freedom, even if they toss around the brand "Linux"
More People in Chad Move to GNU/Linux
Last year we began to see GNU/Linux rising there - a trend which continues this year
Dr. Andy Farnell on How Universities and Culture of Education Got Crushed by "Technofascist Nightmare"
Farnell says he "already soft-quit in [his] mind"
Debt of Broadcom Grew by More Than 50%, Broadcom is Deeper in Debt Than Google
Expect many more cuts
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 15, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, February 15, 2026
Links 15/02/2026: Slop, Politics, and Gemini
Links for the day
Small is Beautiful (in Cascading Style Sheets/Inheritance Rules)
If done correctly, pages can take a tenth of a second to fully load
Microsoft Has Fallen to New Lows in Hong Kong This Year
That Windows "market share" falls there is perhaps expected
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raised About 1.5 Million Dollars This Winter, Almost 50% More Than in All of 2024 Combined
Verbal advocacy goes a long way
Spread the Word About EPO Strikes and Patent Injustices in Europe
Corruption in Europe is a real thing
The Register MS is Promoting Slop, Promotion Connected to Microsoft (Trying to Replace Judges With Microsoft)
marketing spun as "science"
He Did Not Have Enough Souls
A lot of the subjects we cover here no other site dares touch
"Mix Vale" is a Slopfarm
3 "articles" about "ubuntu"
Links 15/02/2026: Roy Medvedev Dead at 100, Rise of "YouTube Politicians"
Links for the day
Links 15/02/2026: How Alexey Navalny Was Executed by Putin, Erdogan Helping Iran
Links for the day
IBM Fedora Keeps Promoting Slop, Red Hat Has Been Turned Into Chaff and Trash to Help IBM's Stock (With "AI" Storytelling)
Red Hat's Fedora is an old brand (20+ years). It no longer stands for what it meant to people in the Fedora Core days (I was a Fedora user back then).
What IBM Said About 2026 Layoffs and What's Happening in Practice
t'll leave IBM at the very bottom, in due course (customers will notice something profound has changed)
Gemini Links 15/02/2026: "Already Midway February" and Loadbars Remembered
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 14, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, February 14, 2026