Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 14/09/2009: Best Buy Backlash, Many New GNU/Linux Releases



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



  • Are you ready to Protest?
    Contact the people at Best Buy and Office Depot. I mean think about it anyone can sit in front of a keyboard and type something that exposes the obvious falsehoods! And what will happen? That depends on how many individuals actually choose to participate in letting these businesses know that this practice is unacceptable and that you will be taking your business elsewhere.

    And I will even make it easy for you by providing you with a link to the page that you need.

    Complain to Office Depot

    Complain to Best Buy

    And feel free to post your complaint to Best Buy in your comments this will encourage more Linux users to get on board and send in a complaint. And pass this on.


  • Best Buy's Geek Squad votes union
    Can you imagine how much management bonuses would have to fall in order to pay workers a fair wage and train them properly? The horror! If you look at how well it reacted the last time the notion was floated, it just shows that Best Buy's management cares - just not about its employees.

    Friends on the inside tell us that Best Buy prefers to promote Geek Squad personnel from sales to technical because it finds it easier to teach a sales droid to follow a trouble-shooting flowchart - especially if it has lots of pictures and not too many big words - than to indoctrinate a seasoned, knowledgable technician to upsell bling and push expensive extended warrantees.

    See why it is afraid of unions? Standards, training, fair wages, fair hours, and in general, being good to employees could wreak havoc on Best Buy top management's stock options for several quarters.

    From what we understand, Best Buy management is desperately trying to keep a lid on this 'problem' and wants to keep it from 'snowballing'. One brave soul described management as "freaked out".


  • Another Microsoft horror story, the Huntington Indiana public library
    The library in Marion, Indiana, just 15 miles or so south of me, uses Linux. Not only do they use Linux, they use a distribution based on the free Fedora Linux called Userful Discoverstation which uses terminal multiplexing. This allows one tower to power 10 workstations with their own monitors, keyboards, and mice. This is not only much better for the environment than having 10 boxes running their own copy of the OS, it saves on the electric bill, and they don’t have to buy licenses from Microsoft. (You could set up a free Linux distro to get the same effect, Userful just makes it easier).


  • On the web at warp speed
    Chrome OS is designed primarily to work with applications such as e-mail, word-processors, calendars and the like that are stored in the cloud rather than on a user’s hard-drive. Google has already developed the software, called Gears, that lets a browser run such web-based applications. Gears is built into Google Chrome but can just as easily be added to other browsers.


  • Recover data with Linux
    When you're used to the world of Windows or OS X, Linux can seem a little unforgiving.

    Not only does command-line access hand over the complete keys to the manor to any unwitting user with access to the administrator's account, there's rarely a safety net should things go wrong.




  • Desktop

    • Linux in the Corporate Environment on the Desktop
      For those of you who don't know what Linux is, there are plenty of articles explaining its history to a great extent, but essentially, its an alternative Operating System that runs on computers capable of running Windows. There are multiple variants of Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian) but essentially the core of the system is very similar and from a desktop interaction perspective, there are some common interfaces to them all. Gnome and KDE being the two dominant GUIs.






  • Server







  • Kernel Space

    • How Important Is The Wayland Display Server?
      Last November we detailed the Wayland Display Server, which came about as a lightweight alternative to the X.Org Server and leveraged the latest Linux graphics technologies (primarily kernel mode-setting), and is designed elegantly with the rendering and compositing all being done by Wayland. Quite a bit of work was going on with this project early on to the point of running two X Servers within Wayland and then talk of a Clutter back-end for Wayland, but over the summer there has not been much to report. However, with the KMS page-flipping ioctl going into the Linux 2.6.32 kernel -- which is used by Wayland -- there should be some renewed activity with this project shortly.


    • A 30,000 Line Patch For Mesa Brings Geometry Shaders
      Zack Rusin has been working on a lot of Linux graphics code lately from an OpenCL state tracker to other Gallium3D state trackers like X-Video / EXA. On top of this, he has just formally announced his work on bringing Geometry Shaders to Mesa.








  • Applications

    • Max Payne - Welcome to despair
      Max Payne was definitely a revolution in its time, when it was released back in 2001. Even today, Max Payne is a great title. The graphics is quite reasonable, but most importantly, the unique quality of the gameplay remains virtually unmatched. I play the game every now and then, fighting my way through yet another career as the bitter police detective Payne.

      If you have the mental capacity to separate computer games from real life, Max Payne is an excellent pasttime activity, especially if it's stormy or rainy outside and you can't go for a nice little hike. Channel all that pent up frustration from sitting locked in a tight cubic all day hammering on the keyboard, into annihilating the New York underground. In that regard, Max Payne is the perfect stress relief.


    • FLOSS Weekly 86: Ardour
      Ardour, the digital audio workstation and recording software.








  • Desktop Environments

    • GNOME Group Photo
      Finally had time to upload my GCDS photos to Flickr. The GNOME group photos are included in this album.


    • LXDE: LXDM and Trash support
      Some cool news for any LXDE users.

      The first one, LXDE developers finally started to develop their own Display Manager, that means that soon we’ll need no more the very heavy GDM or the no more developed SLIM.




    • KDE

      • Spiffying up the interactive console
        Since people quickly jumped to various questions about the look and feel of the interactive console, I figured I'd give a small update today about it. After working on a few things around it, I ended up implementing the buttons as actions, a toolbar and using a text editor part if available (and falling back to the plain text editor widget if none exists).


      • Dropping remote content and wallpapers
        The first feature, which is mostly thanks to Sebastian (I just did some janitorial work on the patch), is the ability to drop remote content onto a Plasma::Containment such as a desktop activity or a panel. Plasma, via KIO, tries to figure out what you are dropping and then offers a set of matching widgets, if any, to create for that content.


      • Side effects of using QtWebKit for desktop apps
        Integrating the web into desktop apps is now incredibly easy thanks to Qt WebKit. Qt WebKit also allows us to embed any Qt widget inside the html. This feature makes it extremely tempting to develop full blown desktop applications using Qt WebKit – your interface is entirely designed using html/css (instead of .ui) and you as a C++ developer decide what parts are best done in Qt/C++ and embed them into the html page.


      • kde - first commit!
        So, after waiting for a few days, I got a reply from KDE's sysadmin team, and I'm in. My first patch is also now in -- thanks much to Martin for comments, review, and assistance.












  • Distributions

    • Trisquel 3.0 STS "Dwyn" has landed!
      We are proud to announce the Trisquel GNU/Linux 3.0 release, codenamed Dwyn. It is the first of a new series of short term support releases that include highly updated software, improved performance and better hardware compatibility, and that will now accompany the long term support 2.x Robur branch. The 3.0 version will be upgraded to 3.5 in six months, and will get updates for another six months. The 2.2 LTS version, released a few days ago, will get security updates until 2013.


    • Bluewhite64 Linux 13.0 Features KDE 4.3.1
      Attila Crăciun announced yesterday the release of Bluewhite64 Linux 13.0, a Slackware-based distribution that runs natively on AMD/Intel's 64-bit processors. Many changes and upgrades have been made, and, along with those, come new features and improvements over the older Bluewhite64 12.2.


    • Absolute Linux 13.0 Switches to LZMA-Compressed Packages
      Paul Sherman announced the release of Absolute Linux 13.0, bringing this lightweight Slackware derivative up-to-date. Because of the important system-level changes that happened in Slackware 13, the Absolute Linux developers had a hard time making all their customizations work with this new base. However, they managed to get their IceWM and PCManFM modifications in sync, and all the script utilities working, for this 13.0 release of Absolute Linux 13.0.


    • Release Notes for CRUX 2.6
      This page discusses the relevant changes introduced in CRUX 2.6. Everybody upgrading from the previous release is advised to carefully read the following notes.


    • Hymera 20090910


    • Absolute 13.0.1 released
      Bug fix release corrects two issues:

      Add user utility corrected (had failed to start due to importing module that is no longer used.)


    • Tiny Core 2.3.1


    • Kahel OS. Do IT Right.
      Dear Fellow Open Source Enthusiasts and Linux Advocate cum "Passionistas":

      The Advent of one of the Filipino Contributions has dawned to the IT World. Kahel OS.

      At first, i wish to write "... The advent of one of the significant and relevant Filipino Contributions has dawned to the IT World. But it would only be significant if IT's goal will be attained and relevant if users may realize IT's value in the long run.

      Kahel OS is not just an Operating System so to speak. IT is not just a Technology Product on a Linux and Open Source Platform added to the thousands of FREE Distros already available in the community. IT does not explicitly want to be different or to be set apart from the rest. However, among others, we simply would like Kahel OS (just like our team) to be the embodiment of our IT Values and Philosophy.




    • Red Hat Family







    • Debian Family

      • Ubuntu On Your PS3 – Ready Made Games Emulation!
        Earlier in the year, the guys at Gizmodo put together a fantastic guide to get your PS3 running Ubuntu. With the release of the new Slim model and inevitable rush to dust off our old consoles, it is a good time to revisit the article. In the words of John Mahoney….


      • Should Ubuntu “Software-Store” Be Renamed?
        Of course, there is nothing wrong with the option to do this, and any paid application will face a tough time when up against free and just-as-capable application of the same ilk. Yet some feel it will distort the user experience of Ubuntu – and perhaps lead open-source dev’s away into solely “paid” development.










  • Devices/Embedded

    • NEC works with Wind River for Linux on portable A/V devices
      Developers looking to use Linux in portable devices such as multimedia players and mobile televisions, could be helped by a collaboration between NEC Electronics Corp. and Wind River.




    • Phones

      • Nokia backtracks, will allow customized Linux phones
        Nokia this morning reversed its seeming stance on excluding carrier customization from Maemo-based smartphones like the N900. Despite an executive claiming Nokia would at least partly follow the Android and iPhone models of giving less control to carriers over software in the OS, the company now says the argument is "simply incorrect" and that there are "many customization points" for carriers to alter the platform.


      • Review: Pre - Palm Strikes Back
        Once upon a time Palm claimed the most loyal developer base among smartphone and handheld manufactures. Its 30,000-strong catalog of apps for the Palm OS was the envy of Palm's rivals. With the webOS, the company is basically starting from scratch.


      • Motorola Cliq: Is Android Becoming the Cell Phone's Linux?
        As there is no longer one true Linux, but a slew of what are called "distros," it looks like Android is destined to follow suit. Sure, Google will always be associated with any device that is running it, but now that Android is starting to take steps towards maturity, it is time for the company to lovingly take a step back and watch it grow.






    • Sub-notebooks











Free Software/Open Source

  • Protect Your Network With an Open-Source Firewall
    It the rare IT person who doesn't sometimes run into a situation where they are helping a client or organization who has more IT needs than budget. Often it's the rule and not the exception. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you need a decently robust and full featured firewall and have a budget approaching zero, I have just the solution for you: SmoothWall Express.


  • Market Parallels – Cloud and Open Source?
    Any new technology market has its own lifecycle and rhythm. From mainframes, through smartphones, there’s the early years, the rapid growth, some slowing down and inevitably a decline. Some technologies never go away completely (e.g. mainframes), while others never really get a foothold (insert your own example here).




  • Government

    • FOSS.IN: Wind of Change
      Quite a few of you have been asking the question “So what big changes can we expect in FOSS.IN this year? What eggs are you breaking this year to make an omelette?” The former is a reference to the fact that we have changed our “small, regional event” every year, tuning things so that it met the larger objectives of FOSS.IN.


    • FOSS.in turning from Linux/FOSS only event into more general hacker conference
      As can be seen from the FOSS.in/2009 "Omelette Post", in addition to the regular FOSS.in schedule until 5pm every day, there will be additional hacker talks until 10.30pm, which might not necessarily be directly connected with FOSS.








  • Programming

    • Russia's New Holiday: Programmer's Day
      Unofficially Programmer's Day celebrated in the world for many years at the 256 th day of each year. The number 256 is chosen because it is the number of integers that can be expressed using a single eight-byte, and also is the maximum degree of 2, which is less than 365.









Leftovers

  • Images from Refurbished Hubble




  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • A copyright black hole swallows our culture
      Librarians call it the 20th-century black hole. The overwhelming force is not gravity but copyright law, sucking our collective culture into a vortex from which it can never escape.


    • Google Fights Book Backlash
      Google Inc. said Thursday it would allow rivals to sell access to the digital copies of millions of out-of-print books it has amassed, but the move did little to appease critics of the Internet giant's digital book plans.








Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day



Jim Hogg teaches GNU Linux to high school kids 01 (2008)

[an error occurred while processing this directive]



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

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft Staff Explains How Microsoft Swindled Employees and Avoided Paying Out Severance Pay (Microsoft Hasn't Much Money Left in the Bank)
This is a classic way to avoid paying workers
Techrights Should be Even Faster Now
We're now better off
Richard Stallman (RMS) Gave 3 Talks in India in Less Than a Week
In India this month we've not seen a single negative comment about RMS
Microsoft Mass Layoffs Without Severance Pay Reported Hours After Microsoft Reported Weak Numbers and Microsoft Stock Fell
Microsoft has a bloodbath this month
Another Slew of Fake Articles About 'Linux' and 'Security' From Brittany Day at linuxsecurity.com (Spamfarm/Slopfarm)
linuxsecurity.com is basically a pariah and parasite. It lessens the incentive to write real articles about "Linux" by generating fake ones to outrank the originals.
 
Links 31/01/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Microsoft, Sweden Again Fails to Protect Critics of Violence
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux" and More (Latest Roundup Featuring BetaNews, Janus Atienza, and Brittany Day From Guardian Digital, Inc)
LLM slop season
"Not one of us" by Dr. Andy Farnell
Elon Musk has brought embarrassment to nerds and technologists
Gemini Links 31/01/2025: "Bulletin Buble" and "Why Blog?"
Links for the day
Static Site Generators (SSGs) Pay Off: Vastly Faster Sites, Much Smaller Hosting Bills
success story for SSGs
Of Note: Linux Foundation Has Already Let Linux.com Rot for About 4 Months (No Activity)
there's no campaign aside from marketing spam there
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 30, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, January 30, 2025
Indian Data Biases statCounter For or Against "Linux"
In statCounter, the GNU/Linux increases and decreases are deeply tied to what it does with data collected in India
The Corporate Media Pretends That Facebook ("Meta") Has Performed Well, But Its Debt Doubles Every 2 Years Despite Mass Layoffs
That same media also helps parrot misleading financial claims
Microsoft's Debt Surged by More Than 6,000,000,000 Dollars in Just 3 Months
numbers released hours ago
The Sheer Irony of Microsoft Proxy Accusing Others of 'Stealing'
Wherever DeepSick's data came from, Microsoft (or its proxy) is in no position to issue criticism.
The Difference a Decade (and GAFAM Money) Makes
Credibility cannot be purchased
[Meme] The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Critics Because Its Message is Effective
Applying to others the same standards one is willing to violate?
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raised $422,000 (Another $22k in the Two Weeks After Campaign Ended), Proving That Truth and Justice Tend to Find a Way
10,000+ dollars a week even without campaigning for more funds
Faking Revenue Increase by Buying Your Own Products and Services (Through Scams and Scammers Like Scam Altman)
Is this what society deserves? Media that instead of exposing corruption has chosen to participate in it and profit from it?
Links 30/01/2025: Fentanylware (TikTok) Causes Deaths, FBI Seizes Domains
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/01/2025: Action vs Inaction, Gopherholes, and More
Links for the day
Links 30/01/2025: Microsoft Wants Convicted Felon to Give Fentanylware (TikTok) to It (After Making a Phonecall Asking for That in 2019), "Moving Away From Google's Ecosystem"
Links for the day
Jack M. Germain (LinuxInsider) Seems to Have Turned to LLM Slop, Graphics Slop, and B2B SPAM
LinuxInsider is barely active anymore
Links 30/01/2025: Amazon Layoffs and DeepSeek Panic
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/01/2025: Chaos Reigns, E-mail, Searching
Links for the day
IBM: Many Thousands of Layoffs in 2025
If 2025 is expected to be the same, then perhaps about 20,000 IBM workers will no longer be there
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, January 29, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, January 29, 2025
Google: Your Only Option is Google YouTube (Coming Soon: Mandatory DRM and Attestation?)
Digital Restrictions (DRM) to follow? Only for "approved" (attestation) browsers?
Mastodon Was Always Biased (Just Like Twitter After Abandoning Chronological and Neutral Timelines in Order to Become More Like Facebook)
So bury-brigading and click-farming control what people see
Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Falls to Only 0.4% of the Total in Geminispace
Geminispace does not need to outsource trust
The Munich-Based EPO is Still Using a Platform That Promotes the Far Right and Rehabilitates Nazism
Active Twitter account
Links 29/01/2025: Dismantling Public Health in the US, Air Busan Plane Up in Flames (South Korea's Air Disasters Streak)
Links for the day
Announcements and Administrivia
This week we're going out for two days in a row to celebrate an achievement that's very respectable
Gemini Links 29/01/2025: Japan, GTD, and More
Links for the day
Sir, Yes, Sir. The Life of EPO Patent Examiners.
If working for the EPO makes it harder to sleep at night, take action
How the EPO Pressures Staff Into Minting More Monopolies (Patents), Even Illegal Ones That Harm Europe and Ultimately Dismantle the Rule of Law
insights into the pressure examiners are under
LLM Slop Machines Are Not a Win for "Open Source" and If They Get Cheaper, It's Even Worse
If some program that claims to be "Open Source" pollutes the Web with fake articles (Microsoft SPAM and fake "Linux" articles), whose win is it?
Links 29/01/2025: Data Privacy Day and Growing Tensions in Europe
Links for the day
Nazi Twitter (aka "X") Became a Troll Site That Lets People Buy a Blue Tick While Its Boss Actively Promotes Neonazi Politicians
the intellectual level of people who infest the Web through "Twitter" or "X"
This is Why They're So Afraid of Richard Stallman (He Tells People the Correct History)
Then they post about it to Microsoft's LinkedIn
Richard Stallman Speech in Bengaluru, "Silicon Valley of India"
62 years have passed since his "young nerd" days and he's still at it
Claim: Facebook Deletes Posts of IBM Red Hat Critics
As always, follow the money (advertisers)
Links 29/01/2025: Climate Crisis and "It’s time for the Xbox to fade away" (Microsoft Lose)
Links for the day
Links 29/01/2025: Buying Groceries During a Trade War, Political 'Retro'
Links for the day
More Illegal Patents at the EPO, Legality of Granted European Patents No Longer Matters to the Office
breaking the law for profit
Network Improvements Tomorrow
"Network maintenance" down in London
Sharing is Caring (But Advocating Copyleft Makes You a "Target")
GPLv3 does not close all the loopholes which the "Affero" helps close
Articles About Free Speech at Facebook
'Facebook vs Linux' story is now receiving a lot more media coverage
We Were Right About stallmansupport.org Making an Error by Joining Social Control Media. mastodon.social Suspends stallmansupport.org.
From what we can guess, accounts can be banned by some oversensitive admin or a mob of users ("bury brigades")
"Latest Technology News" in BetaNews Still LLM Slop and SPAM Composed by LLMs (It's Basically a Spamfarm Disguised as a News Site)
Only a fool would visit BetaNews in search of actual news
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, January 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, January 28, 2025
The EPO's Corruption, If It Remains Untackled, Helps the Far Right and Enemies of European Unity/Solidarity
Do not negotiate with evil
The Web, Including Wikipedia, Gets Filled With Lies About Bill Gates, Added by Bill Gates and His PR Team
Of course Wikipedia is funded by Gates
Facebook Banning Linux Sites (or People Who Link to Linux Sites) is Another Symptom of the Web's Demise
The state of media on the Web is really bad; Social Control Media amplifies the badness, as Facebook serves to show
Gemini Links 29/01/2025: Neovim Telescope and Writing Less
Links for the day