Links: GNU/Linux Desktop Merits Noted, Canonical Spreads Proprietary IBM Software
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2010-07-21 15:47:00 UTC
- Modified: 2010-07-21 15:47:00 UTC
Summary: Further catch-up with GNU/Linux news (mostly from last week)
GNU/Linux
Currently, Linux systems take the very high end machines (any machine more powerful than a fully tricked out MacPro {read supercomputers and mainframes}) and the very low end machines (phones, routers, palm-tops, PVRs).
There's almost nothing that desktop Linux can't do. A modern Linux desktop is probably a better choice for 95% of the heavy Internet service using population than the big commercial behemoth that dominates the desktop. I'm not saying Windows doesn't have its place or that it doesn't do the job for a lot of people, but Linux is better, faster, stronger, safer, and sexier than anything else out there. It's cool. It rocks. It dramatically increases your sex appeal. And if you've got a 64 bit processor instead of 32, that goes double. What more do you want?
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Fun
You’ve seen the wobbly windows, you’ve seen the cube, you’ve seen the raindrops. Compiz is just a bunch of useless eye candy right? Wrong. While the flashy effects get most of the attention, Compiz is a top-notch window manager in its own right. In fact, it’s got so many workspace and window management tools that many people use Compiz for years without ever knowing about some of the most useful features. This guide will cover each of the best window management plugins for Compiz and explain how each can be used to create a more productive desktop, with or without wobbly windows.
Linux, which I'm using at the moment, comes with a pretty standard blue-themed Gnome desktop common to several distros- Debian, Mandriva and Fedora- distinguished only by a branded wallpaper.
It's a simple and elegant theme, but over the last few days I've been customising my desktop, changing the theme and icons. The new theme is a dark one which I think suits my laptop with its grey-bordered screen.
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Desktop
Even I have done it. I don't think you can be a Linux blogger without having done at least one post about how this year is the year the Linux desktop will take over the world. However, no matter how many people seem to write about it. The year the Linux desktop takes over the world always seems to fall through the cracks. Sometimes I think that there must be some Pinky foiling the Linux Brains plans :)
But! The pundits cry, Linux is gaining market share every year. Surely it will win the Linux desktop prize soon. Nay! Say the naysayers, at the rate Linux is gaining desktop market share even those not born yet will have one foot in the grave before Linux has any significant rating. Which one is right?
GNU/Linux has the answer to these annoyances, and it is this: they are simply not there. Why? Because the software is written by developers that are not trying to sell you something.
It's an old joke by now that this year will be the year of the GNU/Linux desktop – just like last year, and the year before that. But now there's a new twist: that this year will be the year of the GNU/Linux smartphone – with the difference that it's really happening.
That's mainly being driven by the huge success of the Linux-based Android system, but it's not the only open source system here. There's also webOS and MeeGo, both of which have their loyal fans. What that means is that whichever of these takes off, the open source world will benefit.
[...]
If Baidu does come out with its own Android rival, that could help to achieve two things. It would finally take open source into the Chinese mainstream, and help to ensure that Linux unequivocally becomes the world's leading operating system for smartphones - if not on the desktop.
Almost all school children in Portugal are becoming familiar with using open source, including the Linux operating system, says Paulo Trezentos, founder of Caixa Mágica Software.
By the end of this year, the company's eponymous Linux-based operating system will have been installed on 890,000 school PCs and school laptops, he says. "In a country with a population of 10 million, this means that Linux is reaching the majority of the young people."
In the almost 20 years since Linux was first released into the world, free for anyone to use and modify however they like, the operating system has been put to a lot of uses. Today, a vast number of servers run Linux to serve up Web pages and applications, while user-friendly versions of Linux run PCs, netbooks, and even Android and WebOS phones.
One incredibly useful way that Linux has been adapted to the needs of modern computer users is as a "live CD," a version of the operating system that can be booted from a CD (or a DVD or, in some cases, a USB drive) without actually being installed on the computer's hard drive. Given the massive RAM and fast CPUs available on even the lowest-end computers today, along with Linux's generally lower system requirements compared to Windows and Mac OS X, you can run Linux quite comfortably from a CD drive.
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Server
Canonical is offering enterprises a chance to try cloud computing via a virtual appliance that bundles Ubuntu Linux with the IBM DB2 Express-C database running on the Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) public cloud platform.
The free appliance, which features Ubuntu Server Edition 10.04, also can be deployed in private cloud configurations.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Free Software Foundation Subpoenaed by Serial GPL Infringers
- These attacks on software freedom are subsidised by serial GPL infringers
- Publicly Posting in Social Control Media About Oneself Makes It Public Information
- sheer hypocrisy on privacy is evident in the Debian mailing lists
- Frans Pop suicide and Ubuntu grievances
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Workers' Right to Disconnect Won't Matter If Such a Right Isn't Properly Enforced
- I was always "on-call" and my main role or function was being "on-call" in case of incidents
- A Discussion About Suicides in Science and Technology (Including Debian and the European Patent Office)
- In Debian, there is a long history of deaths, suicides, and mysterious disappearances
- Federal News Network is Corrupt, It Runs Propaganda Pieces for Microsoft
- Federal News Network used to be OK some years ago
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- Links 01/05/2024: FCC Takes on Illegal Data Sharing, Google Layoffs Expand
- Links for the day
- Links 01/05/2024: Calendaring, Spring Idleness, and Ads
- Links for the day
- Paul Tagliamonte & Debian: White House, Pentagon, USDS and anti-RMS mob ringleader
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Jacob Appelbaum character assassination was pushed from the White House
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Why We Revisit the Jacob Appelbaum Story (Demonised and Punished Behind the Scenes by Pentagon Contractor Inside Debian)
- If people who got raped are reporting to Twitter instead of reporting to cops, then there's something deeply flawed
- Red Hat's Official Web Site is Promoting Microsoft
- we're seeing similar things at Canonical's Ubuntu.com
- Enrico Zini & Debian: falsified harassment claims
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- European Parliament Elections 2024: Daniel Pocock Running as an Independent Candidate
- I became aware that Daniel Pocock had decided to enter politics
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, April 30, 2024
- IRC logs for Tuesday, April 30, 2024
- [Meme] Sometimes Torvalds and RMS Agree on Things
- hype around chatbots
- [Video] Linus Torvalds on 'Hilarious' AI Hype: "I Hate the Hype" and "I Don't Want to be Part of the Hype", "You Need to Be a Bit Cynical About This Whole Hype Cycle"
- Linus Torvalds on LLMs
- Colin Watson, Steve McIntyre & Debian, Ubuntu cover-up mission after Frans Pop suicide
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Links 30/04/2024: Wireless Carriers Selling Customer Location Data, Facebook Posts Causing Trouble
- Links for the day
- Links 30/04/2024: More Google Layoffs (Wide-Ranging)
- Links for the day
- Fresh Rumours of Impending Mass Layoffs at IBM Red Hat
- "IBM filed a W.A.R.N with the state of North Carolina. That only means one thing."
- Mark Shuttleworth's (MS's) Canonical is Promoting Microsoft This Week (Surveillance Slanted as 'Confidential')
- Who runs Canonical these days? Why does Canonical help sell Windows?
- What Mark Shuttleworth and Canonical Can to Remedy the Damage Done to Frans Pop's Family
- Mr. Shuttleworth and Canonical as a company can at the very least apologise for putting undue pressure
- Amnesty International & Debian Day suicides comparison
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- [Meme] A Way to Get No Real Work Done
- Walter White looking at phone: Your changes could not be saved to device
- Modern Measures of 'Productivity' Boil Down to Time Wasting and Misguided Measurements/Yardsticks
- People are forgetting the value of nature and other human beings
- Countries That Beat the United States at RSF's World Press Freedom Index (After US Plunged Some More)
- The United States (US) was 17 when these rankings started in 2002
- Record Productivity and Preserving People's Past on the Net
- We're very productive these days, partly owing to online news slowing down (less time spent on curating Daily Links)
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, April 29, 2024
- IRC logs for Monday, April 29, 2024
- Links 30/04/2024: Malaysian and Russian Governments Crack Down on Journalists
- Links for the day
- Frans Pop Debian Day suicide, Ubuntu, Google and the DEP-5 machine-readable copyright file
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Axel Beckert (ETH Zurich), the mentality of sexual violence on campus
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- [Meme] Russian Reversal
- Mark Shuttleworth: In Soviet Russia's spacecraft... Man exploits peasants
- Frans Pop & Debian suicide denial
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Hard Evidence Reinforces Suspicion That Mark Shuttleworth May Have Worked Volunteers to Death
- Today we start re-publishing articles that contain unaltered E-mails
- The Real Threats to Society Include Software Patents and the Corporations That Promote Them
- The OIN issue isn't a new one and many recognise this by now
- Links 30/04/2024: OpenBSD and Enterprise Cloaking Device
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Still Owes Over 100 Billion Dollars and It Cannot be Paid Back Using 'Goodwill'
- Meanwhile, Microsoft's cash at hand (in the bank) nearly halved in the past year.
- [Teaser] Ubuntu Cover-up After Death
- Attack the messenger
- The Cyber Show Explains What CCTV is About
- CCTV does not typically resolve crime
- [Video] Ignore Buzzwords and Pay Attention to Attacks on Software Developers
- AI in the Machine Learning sense is nothing new
- Outline of Themes to Cover in the Coming Weeks
- We're accelerating coverage and increasing focus on suppressed topics
- [Video] Not Everyone Claiming to Protect the Vulnerable is Being Honest
- "Diversity" bursaries aren't always what they seem to be
- [Video] Enshittification of the Media, of the Web, and of Computing in General
- It manifests itself in altered conditions and expectations
- [Meme] Write Code 100% of the Time
- IBM: Produce code for us till we buy the community... And never use "bad words" like "master" and "slave" (pioneered by IBM itself in the computing context)
- [Video] How Much Will It Take for Most People to Realise "Open Source" Became Just Openwashing (Proprietary Giants Exploiting Cost-Free or Unpaid 'Human Resources')?
- turning "Open Source" into proprietary software
- Freedom of Speech... Let's Ban All Software Freedom Speeches?
- There's a moral panic over people trying to actually control their computing
- Richard Stallman's Talk in Spain Canceled (at Short Notice)
- So it seems to have been canceled very fast
- Links 29/04/2024: "AI" Hype Deflated, Economies Slow Down Further
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 29/04/2024: Gopher Experiment and Profectus Alpha 0.9
- Links for the day
- [Video] Why Microsoft is by Far the Biggest Foe of Computer Security (Clue: It Profits From Security Failings)
- Microsoft is infiltrating policy-making bodies, ensuring real security is never pursued
- Debian 'Cabal' (via SPI) Tried to Silence or 'Cancel' Daniel Pocock at DNS Level. It Didn't Work. It Backfired as the Material Received Even More Visibility.
- know the truth about modern slavery
- Lucas Nussbaum & Debian attempted exploit of OVH Hosting insider
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Software in the Public Interest (SPI) is Not a Friend of Freedom
- We'll shortly reproduce two older articles from disguised.work
- Harassment Against My Wife Continues
- Drug addict versus family of Techrights authors
- Syria, John Lennon & Debian WIPO panel appointed
- Reprinted with permission from disguised.work
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
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- IRC logs for Sunday, April 28, 2024
- [Video] GNU and Linux Everywhere (Except by Name)
- In a sense, Linux already has over 50% of the world's "OS" market