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

IBM Effect at Confluent: Mass Layoffs and IBM's Business Conduct Guidelines (BCGs) Said to be Violated
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SLAPP Censorship - Part 16 Out of 200: Detailing the Actors and Explaining Techrights' Own Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Network
For those who have not followed our story
Microsoft "hiding behind bigger news of war, Epstein, other companies' layoffs"
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Joerg Jaspert (Debian Account Manager/DAM) personally approved Raphael Hertzog's wife Sophie Brun
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Letter 'A' prohibited by Code of Conduct extremism
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Spoiler: Diversity & Debian means different things to different people
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Admits Failures and Criticism of Inaction on SLAPPs
many if not all solicitors and solicitor firms in the UK are in effect unregulated
Archiving or Preserving Pages About IBM Layoffs
Layoffs at IBM and the media does not talk about these
ABC, the American National Broadcaster, "Now Publishes Slop"
If the "big media" absorbs slop, it'll no longer be trusted and therefore not read/watched by the public
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Gemini Links 19/03/2026: "Aktion GPT-4" and "Kill All Descendants"
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"AI" 15 Times in Short 'Article' From The Register MS. And The Register MS Got Paid to Publish It.
gets paid to do this
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Lots more to come
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Worse yet, the mainstream media spreads lies about it right now
IBM Has Turned Red Hat and Fedora Into Slop
This is IBM policy
IBM is Being Robbed, Companies and Jobs Are Destroyed
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In Confluent Layoffs, IBM Vapourises a Quarter of Its Workforce (IBM Buys Something That It Destroys Already)
In the past, such things were typically referred to as "media blackout"; now it's just "the norm".
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 18, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 18, 2026
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the basic facts (this has aged well, except the times/ages/numbers)
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Not only did Google news link to a slopfarm; it linked to three run by the same team!
Links 18/03/2026: "Venture Capitalist Warns That It’s All About to Come Crashing Down" Due to Slop Bubble, "Birdwatching for Fun and no Profit"
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IBM Red Hat is Still Promoting Restricted Boot Which Restricts Users' Control Over Their Computers
Red Hat under IBM is a total catastrophe
Arvind Says... Something Something "Hey Hi" (the State of Today's Media)
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New Post Has Just Explained How IBM Gets Robbed by the People Who Fail IBM
Their plan for IBM is a personal plan
Slop-Spewing GAFAM LLM That Knows Nothing and Understands Nothing, It's a Stochastic Parrot That Cannot Even Figure Out Tux Machines is a Community That Started in Tennessee 22 Years Ago
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Cusdeb Makes New Presentation About Where GNU Hurd (Still a Possible Linux Replacement) Stands in 2026
coming from a generally RMS-friendly account
Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Librarians, Phone Anxiety, Growing 'Small' Net, and Slop Versus Software Engineering
Links for the day
Estimates That IBM to Lay Off Close to 10,000 Workers in 2026 (Not Counting People Pushed Out)
There's still chatter about Confluent mass layoffs
Smug Threat by Garrett to Put My Family and I in Prison Doesn't Prove We Did Anything Wrong, It Only Proves He's Truly Desperate to Stop Further Publications That Embarrass Him
his reputation is poor in the United States
systemd Increasingly Microsoft Project, Controlled by Microsoft and Slopware
Cannot allow choice
What IBM Meant to Red Hat: "Proprietary Bundling, Restricted Source Access"
Anyone or anything that joins IBM likely shortens its lifespan
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Slop Is Plagiarism, Not (Vibe) Coding, and It's Not Automated, It Doesn't Save Money
Reject misnomers, explain what's actually happening
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What is happening to Europe???
EPO Demonstration Happening Right Now, Later This Week Things Will Only Escalate Further
The SUEPO The Hague Committee wrote to staff this morning
Sophie Brun, Raphael Hertzog & Debian sexual conflicts of interest
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
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Links for the day
A Step Close to Shutting Down the European Patent Office (EPO)
Not going to work all month long
EPO Staff Demonstration Today
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Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Brazilian SYN Attacks and BGP
Links for the day
LibreLocal Also Coming to Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, and Spain
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Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 17, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 17, 2026
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For those who never before saw a SLAPP, they basically make many demands
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So the main question is, did IBM just fire 800 people?
"Vibe-forking" and Why It'll Ultimately Fail (Hype on Top of Hype)
Code made with LLMs sucks; converting solid, human-tested code into slop only complicates matters and increases risk
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LLM Slop With "Linux" in the Domain Names
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Links 17/03/2026: Microsoft Windows Broken by Samsung, Afghanistan-Pakistan War Escalation
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Gemini Links 17/03/2026: Newcomers and False-Positive 'Slop'
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Héctor Orón Martínez & Debian shadow candidate pressure on Sruthi Chandran
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 17/03/2026: American Fentanylware (TikTok) Investors Implicated in Kickbacks, "Big Oil Knew It Was Wrecking Louisiana’s Coast"
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For Third Time in a Week The Register MS Runs Google SPAM That Paints Google as an Ally of Women (Which is False, They're Womanisers)
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British Justice Minister Sarah Sackman Blasts Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)
The "legal industry" is due for "some reckoning"
GAFAM Deprecating Old Videos ("Content") by Removing the Support for Their Format for No Good Reason
"Security" is not a valid excuse
Credit/Debit Cards Have Long Been Called Plastics, Over Time They're Becoming More Like Pure Plastics
They cost less than a dollar to manufacture
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The EPO's workforce was meant to be capable of speaking many languages and have extensive experience in the sciences
People Who Attacked Techrights Also Attacked My Mother
Picking on old ladies because you don't like Free software advocates is never OK
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CentOS, unlike Fedora, was meant to be long supported and solid
Social Control Media is Cancel Culture (Companies Like Facebook Also Punish/Ban Accounts for Mentioning "Linux" and Lobby for Anti-Linux Legislation)
The masters of Social Control Media decide what ideas can and cannot be expressed
Over at Tux Machines...
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