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Links 3/8/2010: MeeGo 1.0 IVI for Cars, OLPC Partners in Sri Lanka





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • Linux Journal Insider - September 2010


  • Giving Credit Where Credit is Due


    As Michael said, proper use of a credit card requires a level of discipline. Some people get along very well with credit cards, while other people have difficulty in budgeting their purchases. If you're the sort of person who feels comfortable maintaining a credit line, the Linux Fund (or BSD Fund) card is one way in which you can support open source without making a direct donation. Simply buying groceries, purchasing clothes or paying bills with a Fund card will help, in a small way, to support community events and various open source projects.


  • Consider open source appliances for backup
    Backup used to be simple in SMB environments: You slapped on your tape and autoloader, scheduled backup in the backup application, and set it to run. Occasionally you would test to see that it actually did run. Most of the time it worked; when it didn't you could troubleshoot the problem and make sure backup ran that night. No harm, no foul.




  • Kernel Space

    • What's new in Linux 2.6.35
      Measures to support the power saving mechanisms of AMD graphics chips, network code optimisations for multi-core processors, features for de-fragmenting the working memory and an improved support of the power management and turbo features offered by modern processors are KL 2635 Logo among the highlights of the new kernel version.


    • Intel Releases PowerTop 1.13 With New Features
      While it may have seemed like PowerTop was idling by for a while without a new release or any major advancements to this open-source utility for analyzing power consumption to find programs causing more wake-ups than necessary and to provide other power savings tips on Intel-based Linux systems, a new release has emerged. Intel released PowerTop v1.13 recently and it adds a few new features to the power table along with a number of bug-fixes.






  • Applications







  • Desktop Environments



    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • [Plasma] in case you missed it ...
        # tons of work on Plasma Mobile, which can not only make phone calls now but which has an innovative and common sense approach to interacting with desktop widgets even on those tiny screens. Marco is doing some amazing work, including screencasts. It's Sunday today and guess what I see on the commit logs as they roll past my screen? Yep, Marco hacking on Plasma Mobile. Commitment, baby, commitment! :)


      • writing a plasma shell
        We get asked from time to time "Why Plasma?" or "What is the purpose of libplasma, exactly?". Or we get compared to other projects out there, even though there are only passing similarities. (I have yet to find another single project that approaches this problem space in the same way Plasma does; either Plasma is fairly unique or I'm just not looking hard enough. :) I have my stock answer about a scalable, repurposable interface component system with a high degree of data/visualization separation that emphasizes scripting, etc.










  • Distributions

    • 4 Educational Linux Distributions
      Today, we'll review 4 different desktop distributions specifically designed for educational and academic use.


    • Ubuntu vs. Red Hat: Who really contributes the most to Linux
      I also think that for a long time there's been too much emphasis on coding. The people who popularize Linux, the people who write about Linux, the people who run LUGs (Linux User Groups) and community Linux shows, and the businesses that have committed to Linux also deserve credit.

      Yes, the people who write Linux are vital, and Red Hat is the clear leader in producing code — but it's not just about who writes the code. If you look at the bigger picture, I think Canonical deserves a lot of the credit as well for Linux turning into a grown-up family of operating systems.


    • Healing old wounds
      Red Hat’s success in proving a viable business model around a distribution was a very significant milestone in that quest, for all of us. I don’t mean to diminish that achievement when I point out that it’s come at the cost of dividing the world into those that buy RHEL, and those that can’t or won’t. Red Hat’s success is well deserved, and our work at Canonical is not in any sense motivated by desire to take that away. Red Hat is here to stay, there will always be a market for the product, and as a result, we all have the reassurance that our contributions can find a sustainable path into the hands of at least part of the world’s population.

      Canonical’s mission is to expand the options, to find out if it’s possible to have a sustainable platform without that dividing line. We know that our quest would not be possible without your pioneering, but we don’t feel that’s riding on anybody’s coat-tails. We feel we have to break new ground, do new things, add new ingredients, and all of that is a substantial contribution in turn. But we don’t do it because we think Red Hat is “wrong”, and we don’t expect it to take anything away from Red Hat at all. We do it to add to the options, not to replace them.


    • GNOME Study Shows Red Hat Desktop Development Lead


      At last week’s GUADEC (GNOME Users’ And Developers’ European Conference), held in The Hague, Netherlands, Neary Consulting published the results of a very interesting GNOME Census study exploring “who develops GNOME.” Of course, readers will already know that GNOME is the default desktop environment for Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, as it is for many other desktop Linux distributions, such as Debian and Ubuntu.


    • Reviews

      • Distro Hoppin`: Pinguy OS
        Pinguy gained a deserving spot inside my Distro CD/DVD wallet. I will not hesitate to recommend it to anyone who wants a fresh, friendly and featureful Linux OS. More experienced users will most likely diss it for shoving all these applications down their throat, but if they'll give it a look or two, they might appreciate the effort.


      • Benchmarks Of The Gentoo-Based Calculate Linux Desktop
        The benchmarks we ran across Calculate Linux Desktop, Ubuntu, Sabayon, and Fedora were OpenArena, World of Padman, 7-Zip, LAME MP3, FFmpeg, x264, OpenSSL, GraphicsMagick, Himeno, NAS Parallel Benchmarks, Apache, C-Ray, PostMark, Gzip, and Parallel BZIP2. All of this testing was done by the Phoronix Test Suite, which supports automated testing on the aforementioned distributions plus plenty of other distributions and Unix-like operating systems.








    • PCLinuxOS/Mandrake/Mandriva Family

      • Mandriva paywalls
        As this video suggests, trying to get users to pay for things which in other distros "just work" is the sign of a bad business model. Technically they're perfectly within their rights to charge for Gstreamer or other software components, since it's kosher to charge for free software if that's what you want to do. However, they would be much better off if the paying element was concentrated on product differentiating applications or services.








    • Debian Family

      • Debian Developer Conference Under Way in New York City
        The tenth annual Debian Developer Conference has opened in New York City. DebConf 2010 is the first time the event has been held in the United States.


      • DebConf 10: Day 1
        The first day of DebConf is known as Debian Day. While most of DebConf is for the benefit of people involved in Debian itself, Debian Day is aimed at a wider audience, and invites the public to learn about, and interact with, the Debian project.




      • Ubuntu



        • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 204
          In This Issue

          * The Open Source Community Responds to Dave Neary's GNOME Census Work Presentation at GUADEC * Ubuntu Global Jam: Start Your Engines! * Ubuntu 10.10 Alpha-3 coming next week * 10.04.1 Release Schedule Update * Fixing Ubuntu Software Center Descriptions * New Kubuntu website is live! * Ubuntu Font Beta: now with added Bold * Ubuntu News Team – Needs You!! * Ubuntu Stats * Monthly Reports * LoCo Council meeting time change * Ubuntistas, the magazine of the Greek LoCo * Ubuntu Q&A community in Shapado - progress * Ubuntu Hour in Bangalore * Became members of Ubuntu Colombia * Come to the Ubuntu side, we have badges * Limerick Ubuntu hour a success * Second San Francisco Ubuntu Hour * Ubuntu China LoCo Team resigning and nomination meeting * Launchpad News * Dear Ubuntu Community - Thank You * My Motivation for Doing Opensource * Cleansweep Update! * This week in design – 30 July 2010 * Design by enthusiasm * In The Press * In The Blogosphere * 10 reasons why your kids should be using Linux * Canonical fluffs one-click Ubuntu cloud stack * GNOME 3 not ready yet, release pushed back to 2011 * Using ALSA to Control Linux Audio * Try Out Opera Mini In Ubuntu * Latest ATI Video Driver Has Support for Ubuntu 10.04 * Ubuntu Server makes gains at SUSE Linux' expense * bzr-svn 1.0.3 announced * bzr-git 0.5.2 announced * Whitelisting Advances with New Bouncer App * Dell to Continue to Sell Ubuntu Systems, Just Not on Its UK Website * TurnKey Linux: GNU high school: teaching kids by contributing to open source * Full Circle Magazine Issue 39 is available * Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings * Monthly Team Reports: July 2010 * Upcoming Meetings and Events * Updates and Security * UWN Sneak Peek * and much much more!


        • Ubuntu Needs a New Sound Theme
          We want to reduce the number of sounds you'll hear on a default Ubuntu installation, with an emphasis on making sound a usability feature instead of an annoyance. So we're clipping out things like 'button-pressed' and 'service-logout', and working towards shorter and less intrusive, more refined audio set.


        • Ubuntu 10.10 To Ship With Firefox 3.6


        • Ubuntu Business (Part Two)
          Matthew Barker, of Canonical’s Corporate Services told us that Canonical, a private limited company, has offices in London, Boston, Montreal and Taiwan, and well over 300 staff in twenty-five different countries. Some of their customers who have deployed Ubuntu include Qualcomm, University of York, NHS, T-Mobile, French Gendarmes and LVM Versicherungen.




        • Flavours and Variants

          • In Search of the Perfect KDE4 Distro – 3 Linux Mint 9
            Part three of this series, and I am writing this from Linux Mint 9 KDE4. Already I am feeling very at home with it, and already after working heavily with quite a few KDE distros in a short timeframe I begin to realise some things that I find wrong with them are KDE specific.

            Is Linux Mint 9 the KDE nirvana I am looking for?

            This will only be a short writeup, my full review on Linux Mint 9 KDE will follow later in the week…



          • Jolicloud: The future is HTML 5
            Tariq Krim, the co-founder of web portal company Netvibes, has a new project that takes open source and the cloud into the ever-expanding portable-computing market.

            The French entrepreneur's latest venture is Jolicloud, a Linux distribution that bears as much resemblance to a modern smartphone operating system (OS) as it does to a traditional desktop OS. Jolicloud, which targets the netbook market in particular, has a launcher that is built in HTML 5 and a core cloud-based service that allows the user to back up and synchronise chosen apps between multiple installations.


















  • Devices/Embedded





    • Phones





      • Nokia/MeeGo

        • MeeGo 1.0 IVI For Your Car Is Released
          MeeGo 1.0 for netbooks was released back in May (and an update already released to that) while a month ago there was an early release of MeeGo 1.1 For Handsets released with the official release coming later in the year with MeeGo 1.1 for netbooks. Today "MeeGo 1.0 IVI" has been released and this is designed for in-vehicle infotainment systems.










    • Sub-notebooks

      • One Laptop Per Child Finds New Partners in Sri Lanka Test Run
        One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) has had its fair share of critique and controversy, but if any of that is putting a damper on the project, someone forgot to tell its founder, MIT Media’ Lab’s Nicholas Negroponte--now he's partnered with IT consulting group, Virtusa, which has decided to run user scenarios and tests to help improve the software and hardware behind OLPC.










Free Software/Open Source





  • BSD

    • Welcome!
      Welcome to the PC-BSD blog! Here we hope to keep you up-to-date with what’s happening with the PC-BSD operating system and what features are in the works. We also want to hear your comments and feedback so we can find out what is useful and interesting to PC-BSD users and become aware of any pain points or requests for new features.








  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC







  • Openness/Sharing





    • Open Hardware

      • Arduino: The Documentary, a Movie About Open Source Hardware
        The Arduino is a type of open source hardware that we covered in The Atlantic in January. "Using an Arduino is fairly straightforward: buy a board (ranging from about $19 to $65) and attach it to a personal computer via a cable. Then load instructions into the Arduino's processor via the personal computer," William Gurstelle explained. "Once programmed, the Arduino makes decisions based on the information transmitted by whatever sensors you've hooked up, and does something corporeal, such as turn on or off the motors, displays, valves, and lights attached to it."












  • Programming

    • August Project of the Month: Wireshark


      We’re thrilled to honor network protocol analyzer Wireshark as August’s Project of the Month, one of SourceForge’s longest-lived projects. Originally named Ethereal, its been under development for more than 12 years and is used by companies like Google and Citigroup.


    • Too Smart for Git
      Gerrit acts as an intermediary between developers and the origin repository. You send commits to Gerrit and it holds them in purgatory until they are signed off on by another developer. Then, if the commit applies cleanly to the branch, Gerrit applies it. Otherwise, it asks you to upload a merge commit, which is where the fun really starts.








Leftovers





  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • Project Vigilant and the government/corporate destruction of privacy
      Uber is the Executive Director of a highly secretive group called Project Vigilant, which, as Greenberg writes, "monitors the traffic of 12 regional Internet service providers" and "hands much of that information to federal agencies." More on that in a minute. Uber revealed yesterday that Lamo, the hacker who turned in Manning to the federal government for allegedly confessing to being the WikiLeaks leaker, was a "volunteer analyst" for Project Vigilant; that it was Uber who directed Lamo to federal authorities to inform on Manning by using his contacts to put Lamo in touch with the "highest level people in the government" at "three letter agencies"; and, according to a Wired report this morning, it was Uber who strongly pressured Lamo to inform by telling him (falsely) that he'd likely be arrested if he failed to turn over to federal agents everything he received from Manning.










Clip of the Day



GNOME Shell Workspaces



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Recent Techrights' Posts

When You're Evil and You're Publicly Attacking Something, That Something Will Become More Popular
when an oppressor becomes openly oppressive and does anything to squash/censor critics, the outcome will typically be detrimental to the oppressor
 
Claims of Mass Layoffs at IBM (in Finance)
IBM tries hard to maintain an illusion of normality - to the point of viciously censoring critics and whistleblowers.
The Slop Bubble (Pyramid Scheme) is Becoming Bigger and Everyone Should be Terrified (Its Implosion Will Cause More Damage)
there's no plan for a turnaround
Microsoft and Apple Lose Ground to GNU/Linux in the United States
This contributes a lot to the international curve
Escaping Ads
When users do not want ads, then no ads should show up, period
For Second Year in a Row Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) Loses Money (Over $3,000,000 Lost in 2 Years), Bradley M Kuhn Steps Down as Treasurer
lost almost $600,000 last year
Microsoft/GAFAM Operating at a Loss
Microsoft has financial problems
Nigel Farage crisis: Taylor Swift & Jeffrey Epstein both shunned cryptocurrency bosses
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
statCounter Now Sees GNU/Linux "Market Share Worldwide" at 9.21%, Soon 10%
If this data is more or less accurate, it's time for panic at Microsoft
Rumours of Impending Mass Layoffs in IBM's Yorktown Office, Impacting the LLM (Slop) Staff
Bubbles never last forever, hence their name
Links 10/08/2026: "Long COVID Linked to Lasting Damage in The Brain's Dopamine System", Microsoft’s Weather App Uses Over 1,000 Megabytes of RAM
Links for the day
Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) Does Not Support Women, It Imitates Authentic Organisations, Embraces Misogynists, Then Projects
They try to monetise for personal gain at the expense of unpaid volunteers
Links 10/08/2026: "Against Oligarch" and "The Invisible Women"
Links for the day
Social Control Media Deathwatch: After Nearly a Million Posts Sent EchoFeed Shuts Down
EchoFeed is hardly unique
When the LLM Chatbots Industry (Trillions in the Red) Quits Paying the Media for FOMO
fear of missing out, or FOMO for short
Microsoft Killing Morale
branding the process “inhumane” and “demoralizing”
Google's "AI Overview" as Proprietary Censorship Engine and Gatekeeper
People do not choose to use this, Google is just shoving that in people's faces, encouraging laziness and misinformation
SLAPP Censorship - Part 145 Out of 200: They Tried Hard to Hide the Fact Their Client Had Been Sued, Twice Even
A month ago Brett Wilson LLP tried to take my wife "to the side" (in effect isolated) to make her an offer
statCounter: GNU/Linux Up to 8.95% Globally
So the estimates are being "corrected" upwards, not downwards
Explaining How Someone Attempted to Cancel RMS This Year (and Failed)
The process itself involved debunking some falsehoods
Microsoft's "XBOX Ranks Last", IBM is Headed for Extinction
If Microsoft cannot dominate its own "home turf", what prospects are there elsewhere?
DebConf6 fight denied by Google artificial intelligence
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 09, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, August 09, 2026
Gemini Links 10/08/2026: A Mild Monday, Sleepy Saturday, OUYA, and Moving to GNU/Linux
Links for the day
Links 09/08/2026: US Blackouts (Energy Wasted), Slop to Evade Accountability, and Software Patents Framed as "Hey Hi"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/08/2026: Parakeets in Britain and Rant About 'Modern' Washing Machines
Links for the day
Links 09/08/2026: Social Control Media Weaponises Immigration, Europe Suffers Severe Drought, and "Internet of Stuff" Explained
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 144 Out of 200: The "Hired Guns" ("Media" at BW) Shrank Almost Three-Fold Since They Sued Us in 2024
No wonder they're so visibly outnumbered
10 Days Ago Red Hat Formally Terminated Employment of About 500 Technical Workers (the Media Didn't Mention This)
IBM has nothing left to do except fire people (in secret) whilst attacking sites that give these people a voice
Freenode Continues to Shed Off Servers and Users, Good Thing We Abandoned It
you cannot sell communities. It leads to chaos
Daniel Pocock in the Sunday Times (Today)
Expect the attacks (from Pocock's haters, motivated by envy) to intensify
Controlling One's Platform
We need to strive for or actively pursue a Web where everyone has their own platform/s and where censors ("moderators") have no direct control over these platforms
Improving the Static Site Generator (SSG), Fixing Bugs
Next month the site's SSG turns 3
Gemini Links 09/08/2026: Meatballs (1979), Gopher, RSS Experiment
Links for the day
2026: The Year Richard Stallman Came Back to American Campuses
There's more on the way
IBM's "Next Step" Program
Apparently close to 1,000 people being laid off by IBM wasn't worth reporting
XBox is Rotting Away, Technical Issues for Second Time in Two Weeks
XBox is dying
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 08, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, August 08, 2026
Red Hat is in Need of a 'Jolla', as an IBM-Controlled Red Hat is Becoming Like the Microsoft-Infiltrated Nokia
Dying fast, partly by design
Gemini Links 08/08/2026: Gigs, Poems, SREs, and Shared Passion
Links for the day
If GNU/Linux Rising is Just "Bots" (It's Not, Many Surveys Show the Same), Why Does Microsoft Rush to Lie About System Requirements of Vista 11?
The real reason is, GNU/Linux is rising
Kompromat Tactics in GNU and Linux
Kompromat as a concept was covered here in the past in relation to Microsoft
SLAPP Censorship - Part 143 Out of 200: After Nearly 10 Attempts to Settle With Us and Over a Million Pounds Spent on Lawyers and Barristers
We are in no particular hurry
20 Years and 43 Years
GNU/Linux is not just code, it's a philosophy, licence (copyleft), and community
GNU/Linux Turns 43 Next Month, Many Distros Actively Maintained
A lot of Debian-based distros are still actively maintained (we talk about this in IRC this evening), so the stability of the Debian Project is important
Links 08/08/2026: GAFAM Colonialism "Paved Over Protected Wetlands", Slop Companies Hoard Software Patents as Debt Soars to Trillions
Links for the day
Links 08/08/2026: "Palantir Paid No Federal Income Tax" and "Who's Responsible for This Mess?"
Links for the day
Retained: The Time IBM's Red Hat Tried to Hijack or Take Offline Site of Critics, Failed on All Grounds (Meritless Action Intended to Harass Critics)
Replicated from adrforum.com
IBM's 'Final Solution': Censor Sites Not Controlled by IBM, Sites Where Dissent is Expressed
IBM has no culture of free speech
More Mass Layoffs Coming IBM's Way (Ones IBM Cannot Hide, Cannot Convince Enough People to Leave or Unjustifiably PIP Them When They Say No)
The company that was like a "father of modern computing" is now stingy when it comes to travel. Not a good sign.
What Will it Take for Mainstream Media to Report Silent or Secret Layoffs at IBM?
"Silent" or "secret" sometimes because the media won't cover them
Is the Future of IBM Red Hat Temporary Staff, Contractors?
They want cheap, obedient lemmings
Gemini Links 08/08/2026: Tribute to Lloyd Center, Radio Amateurism, Homeworlds
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, August 07, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, August 07, 2026