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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

The "Alicante Mafia" - Part II - Breakout of Discontent This Winter in Europe's Second-Largest Organisation
So far we've caused a lot of panic and stress inside Team Campinos
The "Alicante Mafia" - Part I - An Introduction to the Mafia Governing the EPO
Are some people 'evacuating' themselves to save face?
At Microsoft, "Firing People is a "Cheat Code" to Pump the Stock Short-term But They Are Literally Destroying the Company's Soul Long-term."
They frame layoffs as a "success story"
Google News Poisons Its Own Index With More Slopfarms (Including "filmogaz")
Naming and shaming lazy slobs who rip off other people using LLMs can work, eventually
Naming Culprits in Switzerland
Switzerland is highly secretive about white-collar crime
Sanitised Plagiarism as "AI" (How Oligarchy Plots to Use Slop to Hide or Distract From Its Abuses, or Cause People Not to Trust Anything They See/Read Online)
This isn't innovation but repression
Recent Layoffs at Red Hat (2026 the Year of Ultimate Bluewashing)
I found it amusing that Red Hat's CEO has just chosen to wear all blue, as if to make a point
 
Over at Tux Machines...
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IRC Proceedings: Friday, January 16, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, January 16, 2026
Great Reset at IBM, the Company That Pulps Red Hat
In 2026 many workers are RTO'ed, PIP'ed, and at Red Hat many have effectively 'left the company' and now start afresh as "IBM" staff
J.H.M. Ray Dassen & Debian, Red Hat, GNOME unexplained deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 16/01/2026: "Porting My Main Website Over to Gemini" and Seeed Studio DevBoard
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IBM Stacked and Ranked Badly, Maladministration Dooms the Company
Now they stack people up for PIPs and layoffs ("RAs")
Links 16/01/2026: UK Royal Family's "Legal Team Accused of Dishonesty, Fraud and Misconduct", OSI Still Controlled by Microsoft (the OSI's Spokesperson is on Microsoft's Payroll, Not Interim Executive Director, Deborah Bryant)
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Writing About Corruption
Fraud is everywhere
The B in IBM is Brown-nosing and Buzzwords (or Both)
International Buzzwords Machines
IBM's 'Scientific-Sounding' Tech-Porn Won't Help IBM Survive (or Be Bailed Out)
Who's next in the pipeline?
IBM Was Never the Good Guy
its original products were used for large-scale surveillance, not scientific endeavours
The Bluewashing is Making Red Hat Extinct (They All Become "IBM", Little by Little)
IBM does not care what's legal
Slopfarms Push Fake News About Microsoft Shutdown, 30,000+ Microsoft Layoffs Last Year Spun as Only "15,000"
The Web is seriously ill
Countries Take Action Against Social Control Media and 'Smart' 'Phones', Not Slop (Plagiarised Information Synthesis Systems or P.I.S.S.)
None of this is unprecedented except the scale and speed of sharing
Sites That Expose Corruption Under Attack, Journalism Not Tolerated Anymore (the Super-Rich Abuse Their Wealth and Political Power)
Sometimes, albeit not always, the harder people try to hide something, the more effective and important it is for the general public
Links 16/01/2026: Social Control Media Curbs in Australia Underway, MElon Still Profiting by Sexualising Kids 'as a Service'
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More People Nowadays Say "GNU/Linux"
We still see many distros and even journalists that say "GNU/Linux"
LLM Slop on the Web is Waning, But Linuxiac Has Become a Slopfarm
I gave Linuxiac a chance to deny this or explain this; Linuxiac did not
More Signs of Financial Troubles at Microsoft, Europe Puts Microsoft Under Investigation
The end of the library is part of the cuts
Team Campinos Talks About SAP Days Before EPO Industrial Actions and a Day Before the "Alicante Mafia" Series (About Team Campinos Doing Cocaine)
EPO staff that isn't morally feeble will insist on objecting to illegal instructions
Pedophilia-Enabling Microsoft Co-founder Cuts Staff
Compensating by sleeping with young girls does not make one younger
Microsoft Shuts Down Campus Library, Resorts to Storytelling About "AI" to Spin the Seriousness of It
Microsoft is in pain
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Back to Advertising the Talks of Richard Stallman
A pleasant surprise
Stack(ed) Rankings and Ongoing Layoffs at Red Hat and IBM (Failure to Keep Staff Acquired by IBM)
IBM is mismanaged and its sole aim is to game the stock market (by faking a lot of things)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 15, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, January 15, 2026
Gemini Links 16/01/2026: House Flood and Pragmatic Retrocomputing Dogfooding
Links for the day
Links 15/01/2026: Starlink Weaponised for Regime Change (by Man Who Boasted About Annexing South American Countries for Tesla's Mining), Corruption in Switzerland Uncovered by JuristGate
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Linuxiac May Have Reverted Back to LLM Slop (Updated Same Day)
Is he back off the wagon?
GAFAM and IBM Layoffs Outline
a lot of the layoffs happen in secrecy and involve convincing people to resign, retire, relocate etc.
Links 15/01/2026: Internet Blackouts, Jackboots Society in US
Links for the day
Coming Soon: Impact With EPO Cocainegate
Will Campinos survive 2026?
The Last 'Dilberts' or Some of the Last Salvaged (Comic Strips Which Disappeared Shortly After They Had Been Published)
Around the time the creator of Dilbert went silent he published some strips mocking TikTok and usage of it
The Creator of Git Probably Doesn't Know How to Install and Deploy Git
Nobody disputes this: Mr. Torvalds created Git
Slop is a Liability
Slopfarms too will become extinct because people aren't interested in them
GAFAM is a National and International Threat to Everybody
GAFAM is just a tentacle in service of imperialism
EPO People Power - Part XXXVI - In Conclusion and Taking Things Up Another Notch
They often say that the law won't deter or stop criminals because it's hard to enforce laws against people who reject the law
Running Techrights is Fun, Rewarding, and Gratifying
In Geminispace we are already quite dominant
Red Hat is Connected to the Military, Its Chief Comes From Military Family (From Both Sides)
The founder of Red Hat's parent company literally saluted Hitler himself (yes, a Nazi salute)
Don't Cry for Gaslighting Media in a Country Which Loathes the Press
my wife and I received threats for merely writing about Americans
Red Hat (IBM) is Driving Away Remaining Fedora Users
I've not used Fedora since Moonshine
Robert X. Cringely Has Already Explained IBM's Bullying Culture (Towards Its Own Staff)
IBM is a fairly nasty company
Proton Mail compromise, Hannah Natanson (Washington Post) police raid & Debian
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, January 14, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, January 14, 2026
Gemini Links 15/01/2026: "Ode to elinks", envs.net Pubnix and Downtime at geminiprotocol.net
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