Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 16/11/2010: Debian 6.0 is Coming, OpenRespect.org Criticised



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



  • Desktop

    • Windows Legacy Apps vs. Linux Desktop Adopters?
      In a previous article on Linux-Window desktop competition, I shared my thoughts on why desktop Linux shouldn’t focus on competing with Windows. Not because Linux can't compete, but because Linux can stand its ground on its own merits without being held against Windows for comparison. I believe most groups within the Linux community can agree on, despite their differences on other issues.

      Now let's ask a bigger question. Is it not possible that the real culprit that prevents people from trying new platforms like Linux is actually due to legacy software and familiarity with the Windows desktop? Seems plausible that the above hurdles could be a common challenge faced by prospective Linux adopters, does it not?




  • Applications



  • Distributions



    • Red Hat Family

      • Attention class! Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA)


        Red Hat is urging system administrators to up their skill sets with a new base-level certification aligned to the key tasks required of Red Hat Enterprise Linux system administrators.


      • Fedora

        • Upgraded to Fedora 14
          I just did a preupgrade upgrade from Fedora 13 to Fedora 14. The only hitch is that it didn’t find enough space to download the installer ahead of time so that had to be downloaded after the the reboot. Everything went off without a hitch. My absolute cleanest upgrade ever. Dual screen worked, nothing had to be uninstalled. None of the repos had to be disabled. All my usual programs work. I haven’t tried Blender yet, that’s tomorrow. The first thing I noticed was that the OpenOffice.org icons have changed again. This is the third time, I think,since I’ve been using Linux.


        • Fedora 14: Strong follow-up to 13 still suffers from same niche appeal
          As far as Linux is concerned, there are distributions that are ready for the masses (Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Linux Minut) and there are distributions whose appeal doesn’t go much further than a niche of users. Fedora Linux, however, is a distribution that seems to want to vacillate between target audiences. At one point Fedora wants to reach out to a massive scope of users. At the next point Fedora seems to focus on a far, far smaller audience. And it seems this vacillation happens just about every release.






    • Debian Family

      • Debian 6.0 Homestretch Just Around Corner
        Neil McGovern, Debian release team member, wrote to the Debian Development Announce mailing list, "It's time for another release update as we move, like a glacier, inevitably and unstoppingly towards the release."


      • Canonical/Ubuntu

        • Make it really easy to fix bugs on Ubuntu
          One of the best things that anyone ever said was, "not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap". Mr Glass was probably talking about writing, but his words could well have been aimed squarely at any well-established software development process.


        • New Introduction To Ubuntu 10.10


          I’ve recorded a new screencast introducing Ubuntu 10.10. This video gives beginner Ubuntu users a brief tour of the operating system, and covers installing updates, proprietary drivers, customizing appearance, and installing software via the Ubuntu Software Center as well as with downloaded *.deb files, all in less than 10 minutes. Enjoy!


        • OpenRespect.org: a bid to deflect criticism of Ubuntu?
          In today's climate, when spinmeisters are trying to gain ascendancy in the FOSS world and are succeeding to a large extent, Torvalds' comments would not go down well. The man was clearly not showing respect - which, as Stephen Colbert would say, is today's word.

          But the topic of respect is raised only when it suits people to do so. Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution has been under siege recently, for its decisions to adopt a new interface and also a new X server. Some of the criticism has been rather, shall we say, pointed and direct.

          Now suddenly, Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu community manager - the spinmeister-in-chief - has come up with an initiative to try and create respect within the FOSS community. Why? Well, Bacon feels that all the aggressiveness in the community is not of much help in what the community is trying to do.


        • Natty Community Team Plans
          With every cycle, part of my responsibility is to understand the needs of the Ubuntu community, understand the needs of some of the key stakeholders to my team, and to plan what the team will work on throughout the next cycle. Recently I have been asking the team (Jorge Castro, Daniel Holbach, David Planella, and Ahmed Kamal) to reach out to the community to get a feel of needs, and flesh out their goals in a set of blueprints. I then reviewed and accepted a set of blueprints ready for the cycle. I think this is a good, solid chunk of work and will make some inroads into some key areas.


        • Flavours and Variants

          • Linux Mint 10
            Summary: Linux Mint 10 adds some helpful tweaks and improvements to an already great distro.

            Rating: 5/5












Free Software/Open Source



  • 55 Open Source Replacements for Popular Multimedia Software
    Open source multimedia software clearly has remarkable growth potential. Statistics reveal that multimedia grabs a huge percentage of the time most users spend with their PCs and smartphones. Hulu has 30 million viewers a month. Netflix now accounts for 20 percent of U.S. Internet traffic in the evening. According to NPD Group, 30 percent of U.S. music consumers listened to streamed music in August. As of June, consumers had downloaded more than 5 billion songs from iTunes, and they watch 50,000 movies through the service every day.


  • An Open Source Toolkit for Your Small Business
    Whether your small business has been around for years or you’re just starting out, it simply makes good sense to use open source software for everything from managing your office network to putting together slide decks for your next client presentation. Open source software is inexpensive (and often free!), secure, and easy to customize to the unique needs of your company. Unlike many commercial applications on the market today, you can even find in-depth, no-cost tech support from within the user community.


  • Should Companies That Use Open Source Software Pay a Tithe?
    Just about every startup on the planet benefits from the use of open source software--everything from database software PostgreSQL to the Apache web server--which is free to use.

    Weinberg's idea is simple: reckons companies that make a profit with the help of Free and Open Source Software should return a tenth of their profit to the open source community, to help solve problems with some open source projects.


  • Web Browsers

    • Try the uzbl browser if you're tired of feature bloat
      Give it a shot. Talk to its community in the #uzbl channel on the freenode IRC network if you need some help getting started. See if you like it. If not, go back to a big, sophisticated browser, if that is what you prefer. To tell you the truth, I am actually using Chromium, Firefox, and uzbl about equally right now, switching between them; I have not entirely given up on those big and sophisticated browsers myself, at least so far. I think you owe it to yourself to see if you like your browser small and simple, though.




  • Oracle





Leftovers

  • 'Super-secret' debugger discovered in AMD CPUs
    A hardware hacker has discovered a secret debugging feature hidden in all AMD chips made in the past decade.

    The password-protected debugger came as a shock to reverse-engineers who have hungered for an on-chip mechanism for performing conditional and direct-hardware breakpoint operations. Although AMD has built the firmware-controlled feature into all chips since the Athlon XP, the company kept it a closely guarded secret that was only disclosed late last week by a hacker who goes by the name Czernobyl.


  • Is AMD Having Second Thoughts About Killing Off ATI Brand?


  • Nvidia CEO: We're Done with Chipsets
    Share/Save

    One thing we appreciate about Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang is that he typically doesn't pull any punches. Rather than dance around marketing speak and typical PR rhetoric, the outspoken CEO gets straight to the point, oftentimes in a very candid manner. More recently, Huang got on the topic of chipsets, seemingly putting an official end to that part of Nvidia's business, Xbit Labs reports.


  • Security







Clip of the Day



Intel on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6



[an error occurred while processing this directive]



Credit: TinyOgg

Recent Techrights' Posts

An American War on GNU/Linux, Software Freedom, and British Investigative, Science-Based Reporting - Part III - Very Strong Legal Basis for an Appeal
The case is now being escalated to a Foreign Secretary and former Deputy Prime Minister
No Slop Found in RSS Feeds, Only in Google News
No slopfarm will survive for very long, certainly it'll go bust as soon as readers (if it had any) know what it is
What the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and Action Fraud UK Have in Common
Don't let London become the world's "crime capital"
Dr. Andy Farnell on How GAFAM, NVIDIA and Others Lie to People Via the Sponsored Media to Prop Up Lies Under the Guise of "AI"
Lots of key aspects are covered
 
Attacks on Techrights Make Techrights Stronger and Attract More Whistleblowers to Techrights
The harder they attack us, the more productive we become
The Register MS Has Just Taken Money From Google (Where the Former Chief Editor Now Works) for Femmewashing and Ponzi Scheme Promotion
now The Register MS not only promotes a Ponzi scheme but also bags money to pretend Google respects women
People at IBM Are Still Smart Enough to Understand What's Really Going on
"I would never refer someone to work at IBM that I liked! I hope all of you have reviewed IBM on Glassdoor."
European Patent Office (EPO) to "Eventually Eliminate the Tasks Performed by Formalities Officers"; EPO Run by People Without Experience in Patents
full paper
RMS is 73 Next Week
Richard Matthew Stallman (RMS) turns 73 exactly 7 days from now
Iran & FSFE: blackmailing women, from football to the French Government (CNIL)
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Police investigations, lawsuits & Debian leader election candidate shortage
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Richard Stallman (RMS) Has Defeated Cancel Culture, a Mostly American Phenomenon
RMS is talking now
Links 09/03/2026: Many Security Breaches and a Pandemic of Censorship
Links for the day
People Who Work or Worked at IBM Hate It
bluewashing is only the first step
Richard Stallman (RMS) Talks in 30 Minutes, Next Stop Bern (Last Stop)
We assume he'll travel back to Boston after that
IBM's Fedora as a Booster of Slop Disguised as Code or Computer Programs
Maybe we should also stop seeing a doctor and instead ask chatbots about symptoms?
Richard Stallman (RMS) Talk Five Hours From Now
there is growing recognition for what he really did for everybody
EPO Strike 10 Days From Now, Planning Assembly Tomorrow, Last Couple of Strikes Had High Participation Rates (1,500-1,600 Staff Went on Strike)
The next strike is in 10 days' time and then there will be another strike
Links 09/03/2026: GAFAM Outsourcing, "MAGA Political Meddling" in EU, Indonesia Bans Social Control Media for Children Under 16
Links for the day
Using Slop (and Slop in Articles) to Attack Copyleft 'on Budget'
This article is pure BS from an anti-GPL and anti-RMS 'activist'
Why The Register MS Sold Out to Microsoft: They're Losing Lots of Money, The Register MS is Bleeding to Death, Based on Its Own Financial Records
With over 6 million pounds in debt (nearly 10 million US dollars) we guess it's likely some other company will take over the site (if it deems it worthwhile)
Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 7 Out of 200: Like With the Serial Strangler From Microsoft, Misuse of UK-GDPR to Try to Hide Embarrassing Facts
They do and say really bad things, then allege it's a "privacy violation" to mention those things
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 08, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, March 08, 2026
Gemini Links 09/03/2026: Exponentials and Tailscale
Links for the day
Sloppyleft
Article by Alexandre Oliva
Hard to Replace 'Human Touch'
The reason many people insist on using GNU
Richard Stallman Gives Talk in 20 Hours at Ostschweizer Fachhochschule Campus in Rapperswil-Jona
The talk is in English
The Slop Companies Gamble at Our Economy's Expense and They Know It's a Losing Bet (So It's a de Facto Robbery)
The crash of this bubble isn't just inevitable, it's already happening and receding sporadically because of false announcements about money that does not actually exist (to "buy time")
Suppressing Speech by Blackmail, the Iran Story
When Debian wanted to stage a seemingly legitimate election it needed to have more than one candidate running; so eventually the female partner of a geek rose to the challenge (had no coding skills at all, no technical history in Debian) and lost to the "incumbent German"
Too Focused on Buzzwords the Media is Paid to Saturate the Collective Mind With
Just because companies do really bad things in the digital realm does not imply "AI" or follow from "AI"
Discrimination and Prejudice Against Female Journalists
we can shame people who attack a reporter on the grounds of gender
An American War on GNU/Linux, Software Freedom, and British Investigative, Science-Based Reporting - Part II - Trying to Put People in Prison for Committing the Act of Journalism
This is abuse of process
Attack on Copyright and Copyleft by Code Conversion Is Nothing New, It Predates Slop (Code Produced by LLMs) by Several Decades
Even back in the 90s many people converted programs from one language to another. That could invalidate copyleft (and copyright), which already existed
Almost a Slopless Weekend for "Linux"
Let's hope slop will come to an end or sites will cease linking to slop
Insiders Explain Why IBM is Dying and the Inherent Culture Problem
There are many ways to shave this IBM cat
Links 08/03/2026: Microsoft Lost $400 Million on "Project Blackbird" and Half the States Sue Over Illegal Tariffs
Links for the day
Links 08/03/2026: Cisco Holes Again and "Blatant Problem With OpenAI That Endangers Kids"
Links for the day
Activism/Journalism in Our Blood
one must fight for one's principles
Gemini Protocol in Its Prime
What's particularly neat about Gemini Protocol is that it's fast and cheap
Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 6 Out of 200: Intentionally Misnaming Women, People Who Offered to Testify That They Too Had Been Subjected to Similar Abuse
Today it is International Women's Day
Even Fedora Leadership Cannot Figure Out the Microsoft Kill Switch/Back Door, 'Secure' Boot
It does not actually enhance security
Bruce Perens: Richard Stallman "Has Achieved His Goal"
Stallman's next talk is tomorrow
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 07, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, March 07, 2026
Gemini Links 07/03/2026: Buying Woodland, Indra 1.3.0 Available, and LLM Exhaustion
Links for the day
The Harder They Attempt to Take Down This Site (and Take Away Liberties), the More People Will See This Site
We'll carry on as usual, as from sunlight comes justice
An American War on GNU/Linux, Software Freedom, and British Investigative, Science-Based Reporting - Part I - A Matter of National Security
Those people are Americans who try to advance the interests of American corporations by weaponising courts abroad
Why They Always Try to Shoot the Messenger (When the Message Harms Profits)
A matter of economics
Coinbase - Like Block - is in Huge Trouble, Its Debt Nearly Doubled in Half a Year
The real reason Block is collapsing is its debt
Starting Another New Series This Evening, It's About American Folly
today commences a series long in the making (years)
Nations Stand to Benefit From Gender Equality and Increased Participation by Women
International Women's Rights Day starts in about 6 hours in the UK
Microsoft is Losing It, Now It's Censoring Its Critics and Sceptics
Whether the measurements made by statCounter are accurate or not, the trends (long-term) typically make sense
WIRED (Conde Nast) Reviews Are Paid-for Marketing Spam, They Change Dates on Old 'Articles' to Make Them Look Relevant and New
The Web is fast becoming a burial ground for ads, trash, spam, and slop
Gemini Links 07/03/2026: Humour, Chilling, and Oversized 'Phones'
Links for the day
Cyber|Show by Andy and Helen Recommended by Techrights and Tux Machines
If your time is limited and you look for informative essays and shows (audio)
Links 07/03/2026: CJEU to Finally Examine Behaviour of the Illegal and Unconstitutional Unified Patent Kangaroo Court, Creative Commons (CC) Hosts Open Heritage Statement Event in Amsterdam
Links for the day
Microsoft's Thailand Problem
It's definitely not Windows
New Lows for Microsoft in Micronesia
GNU/Linux has shown some growth there too
Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 5 Out of 200: Clearly Not a Security Professional/Expert, Only Ever Pretending to be One
"The Claimant says he is “a computer security expert”, but his background and his track record in the education sense (genetics) does not support this assertion."
Links 07/03/2026: Fuel Already Running Low and "Economic Crisis of the Iran War"
Links for the day
The Corporate Media Repeated the Lies Told by Jack Dorsey ("AI" Hype), Now It Does the Same for Larry Ellison
Disregard the hundreds of headlines that say mass layoffs at Oracle are due to "AI" something
The Free Software Community is Gaining Momentum as Its Importance is More Broadly Realised
As long as "trendy" technology goes in a negative direction there will be a growing portion in society looking for alternatives
Spooking or Chasing Away Women (From Computer Science)
The status quo discourages women from even trying to study Computer Science and related disciplines
"IBM Has Changed So Much in the Last Decade to the Point It's Completely Unrecognizable."
IBM is a dying, rotting company with a morbid culture
The Register MS, Sponsored by Communist Party of China (CPC)
What will happen when the bubble crashes the economy?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 06, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, March 06, 2026
Gemini Links 07/03/2026: Coffee Problem, Marchintosh, Learning, and "Selectively Disabling HTTP"
Links for the day