Bonum Certa Men Certa

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



[an error occurred while processing this directive]



Recent Techrights' Posts

Media Gaslighting Dooms the Media
this "AI" gaslighting is done because publishers get paid to do so
GNU/Linux at 4% "Market Share" (Even According to Steam Survey)
Another milestone
Ahead of Mass Layoffs Microsoft Tries to Rebrand or Redefine XBox (Because the XBox is Tentatively Dead)
2026 will be the last year of XBox in all likelihood
Richard Stallman (RMS) Announces His Georgia Talk 2.5 Weeks in Advance
A lot earlier than usual
 
Gemini Links 07/01/2026: Looking at 2026, Linux Anti-Minimalism, Diode Function Generators, and Inkscape
Links for the day
Projection Tactics - Part I: What is "Serious Harm"? Or Whose?
the most serious harm was done to us
Links 07/01/2026: More Signs XBox the Console is Dead/Dying, Convicted Felon Repeats Threats of Greenland Annexation
Links for the day
EPO People Power - Part XXVII - Science- and Principles-First Journalism About Issues That Matter
journalism became so shallow that nowadays it can be replaced by bots
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, January 06, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, January 06, 2026
Gemini Links 06/01/2026: Collective Responsibility, Pico2DVI, and TV Detox
Links for the day
Microsoft Loves Freedom, Democracy... and Linux? No, Microsoft Laying Off Because "Microsoft Loves Linux" Was Failed Posturing, Its Former Staff Moves to GNU/Linux
"What are the running totals for IBM and Microsoft layoffs?"
Mozilla's Assisted Suicide, Assisted by GNOME
Firefox is meant to get better all the time, but instead it gets worse
Links 06/01/2026: Neglect of the Elderly, Abandonment of International Laws
Links for the day
Links 06/01/2026: More Reports Point to Mass Layoffs at Microsoft (Later This Month), Greenland/Denmark Cautions the Dictator Who Illegally Invaded Venezuela
Links for the day
Internet Policy/Net Reality: You Must Never Ever Rely on Google (no "S.E.O." Either)
Stack Overflow is dying
Dr. Andy Farnell on Technology That Harms People (and Lack of Regulation Which is Needed to Address This Problem)
Dr. Farnell's article is long but well worth reading
GNU/Linux Rising to 5% in Cameroon and It's Hardly the Exception
"AI" is just a smokescreen as losses pile up
Rumours: Microsoft to Lay Off 12,500-25,000 Workers Soon (Tentatively Wednesday, 15 Days From Now)
"Layoffs are coming third full week of Jan. Likely 21st but these things can move around a bit based on last minute developments."
EPO People Power - Part XXVI - European Media Has Become Part of the Problem
it is as clear as daylight that Cocainegate is real
IBM 2026 "Organizational Change/s" Means Layoffs Resume Soon, Some Claim "Forever Layoffs."
It's about "narrative control"
Microsoft Layoffs in January 2026
Get ready
Google Still Boosting Slopfarms
Slopfarms will probably all perish as soon as Google News quits sending them visitors
Links 06/01/2026: Cryptocurrency Scam Emails and Greenland's Fear of Getting 'Venezuelad'
Links for the day
Links 06/01/2026: DIY Projects and Inertial Music
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, January 05, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, January 05, 2026
To The Register MS, ARM Means Microsoft Windows (Follow the Money)
the Free software community can campaign and run sites (like the one below), but it cannot afford to bribe so-called 'news' sites like Microsoft and its OEMs do
IBM's CEO Makes No Sense
"IBM CEO Aravind Krishna on what’s really driving tech layoffs"
Links 05/01/2026: Tensions in Korea, Ukrainians See "Double Standard" in a US Russia-Style Invasion
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/01/2026: Farewell to CBS Reality, Being On-Call, Digital Ad Spendings
Links for the day
Remember That Nobel Prizes Are All Named After the Inventor of Explosives (Even a "Nobel Prize for Peace")
These rewards are only as valuable as the reputation they earn for themselves
Baidu and Yandex Have Overtaken Microsoft in Asia
how about all the Bing layoffs?
Googlebombing for Bill Epsteingate
Maybe the slopfarms too can help him cover up
Of Course GNU/Linux Has Reached All-Time High in Africa in 2026
Africa will, on average, gravitate towards Free software or whatever costs less
From GNU/Linux Boosting to Slop-Boosting Career
It is sad to see someone who devoted many years of his life producing GNU/Linux stories stooping down to this "AI" boot-licking
IBM Buys, Then Disposes/Sacks, the Staff (That It Paid For)
Any money gained is spent buying some more companies to add/join up their revenue, even if the debt surges and there's little integration going on (misfits absorbed)
Time for Microsoft to Rebrand to Fit the Vapourware (Ponzi Scheme)
something between Meta and Alphabet
Links 05/01/2026: Slop Ruining Children's Minds, "Complicity of the Press in US Violence"
Links for the day
Microsoft's Windows Falls Below 20% in the UK
After a lot of years of advocacy and hard work
The Real GNU Anniversary (Not Manifesto or Announcement) is Today
the development, not the manifesto
GNU/Linux Usage Said to Have Doubled in Oceania
it's hard to discount or dismiss Oceania as a bunch of "coconut islands"
There's No Such Thing as "AI Godfather", Stop Repeating This Pure Nonsense!
Infantile or corruptible media that plays along with slop or uses slop will perish
Gemini Links 05/01/2026: "Poverty and Hunger", "Entrepreneurial Family", "Abandoning Obsidian for Logseq"
Links for the day
Links 05/01/2026: A Shrinking Canadian Economy, Brigitte Bardot's Environmentalism Recalled, Unredacted Epstein Files
Links for the day
Microsoft Allegedly Uses Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) to Hide the Massive Scale of Company-Wide Layoffs
Just like IBM; they meanwhile talk a bunch of nonsense about "AI" to distract from their commercial calamity
Battles Are Won in the Court of Public Opinion
Many "systems" rely on the mere perception or appearance of legitimacy
No, Writing Isn't in Decline, Some of the Large and Centralised Platforms Are
Slop isn't really competition, just a passing fad and pure noise
GNU/Linux Share in Mongolia More Than Doubles
they probably lack any genuine excitement for "hey hi PCs"
Whistleblowing is About Understanding Boundaries and Risks
The bottom line is, people typically find out the truth at the end
EPO People Power - Part XXV - While EPO Managers Snort Cocaine the Staff Compiles 'Insurance Files' to Expose EPO Corruption
In this increasingly authoritarian world we need more whistleblowers
"The European Patent Reform" That Represents a Gross Violation of Laws, Constitutions, and Conventions (in Order to Make the Rich Even Richer, Mostly Outside Europe)
How far and how long will EPO corruption go?
The Reputation Issue Is Not Our Fault
Trying to squash words (and people) merely diverts more attention to them
GNU/Linux Distribution "Ultimate Edition" Fixes Its Web Site (Apparently Compromised Months Ago)
they dealt with the issue before media shame and a catastrophe of trust
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, January 04, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, January 04, 2026