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Links 21/8/2011: Fusion Garage Makes Android Tablets, GNU IceCat 6.0 is Released





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • Crossword Puzzle of Some Linux Distros...


  • Desktop

    • Installing Linux on old PC’s Part 2
      In part one I showed you that you could install a linux distro on a new computer and transplant it into a 386 computer in a short amount of time and with little effort. Now it is time to move on to bigger and beefier machines like 486′s, Pentiums and better.

      I am going to break this quick tutorial down into sections based on installed RAM. While this won’t be a “how to” for all old PCs in the world I hope to at least send you in the right direction. I will mention a few distributions mainly for the super low ram machines. Its not my intent to start a distrubution war, and I have not personally sat down with every single one to make a educated assessment. However, you’re more than welcome to chime in.


    • Students! Don't get scammed for back to school computer shopping.
      There are only a few more weeks left before students go back to school and technology companies are gearing up for one of the most busiest seasons of the year.

      Even though having a laptop is not mandatory for college or university studies, students often justify the purchase by saying that they need it desperately for school. I have worked in several large computer stores that have back to school specials for students and let me tell you that its all about revenue and scamming the customers. These large computer stores want to extract as much money as possible from customers and are willing to go the distance in confusing students and their parents in order to make that extra profit. For example, I was told shamelessly straight to my face when buying a netbook that the company does not make a lot of money from the sale of a laptop and that I should purchase something else on top.


    • Why are we still waiting for affordable laptops / netbooks / tablets for schools?




  • Audiocasts/Shows





  • Kernel Space

    • ARM'ing Linux
      The ARM chip architecture is emerging to become an extremely popular one for embedded and mobile devices. It’s also an architecture that has had some issues when it comes to Linux.

      Speaking at the LinuxCon conference this week, Linux creator Linus Torvalds detailed his frustrations with ARM. Coincidentally this week, Canonical, the lead commercial sponsor behind Ubuntu Linux, announced ARM support as part of the upcoming Ubuntu 11.10 release.

      “I think that ARM is very promising,” Torvalds said. “The problem is that ARM doesn't have a standard platform.”

      In Torvalds’ view, ARM is a 'hodgepodge' of companies making random pieces of hardware. He noted that on the kernel side, Linux has tried to support alot of ARM.


    • Graphics Stack

      • An Open-Source Mobile Linux Graphics Stack?
        The mobile device landscape, particularly for those devices running Linux, is quickly evolving. Just in the past few days, Google bought Motorola, Qualcomm open-sourced the remainder of their Gobi API for controlling modems, and HP ended off all their webOS devices, among other changes. But will the future mobile Linux device landscape deal with more open-source drivers, particularly when it comes to graphics?






  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments



    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Disable Akonadi in KDE SC 4.7
        How to avoid the Akonadi PIM framework of KDE is a very frequently asked question. Akonadi is started when logging into a default KDE session – and includes a mysql server – this is a bit of a waste of system resources since (in my personal estimation) the majority of KDE users won’t use Akonadi for anything at all.


      • KDE:Active:Devel introduced
        The past week, when working on the Mesa packages for Plasma Active, I might have caused some headache since I broke the compositor in Plasma Active with a few packages I uploaded for easier deployment on test devices. It was not more than an annoyance, because kwin gracefully falls back to non-composited mode in case of graphics problems. In order to get a bit more stability into our deployment process, I’ve now set up a subproject called KDE:Active:Devel under the KDE:Active project on the Open Build Service (OBS) which we use to build the Balsam packages. As we’re moving, development-wise into the stabilization phase for Plasma Active One, this makes testing new things a lot easier, just by switching to the same package from the :Devel branch. Conversely, this means that if you install packages from the :Devel subproject, you should really know what you’re doing. On the bright side, it’ll be easier to keep regressions out of the packages that are deployed on most users’ machines.


      • Plasma Active on OpenGL ES


      • For A Superior Music Player Try Amarok
        Amarok is a full featured music player that works on most popular operating systems. And now Amarok comes in over 45 different languages and counting. With Amarok you can listen to the music you love or find new music easier than ever. Amarok now has better performance, stability and speed. Automatically integrate with MusicBrainz music library and update your library information with no hassle at all. And you can discover music files on your network just as easily. Find Amarok in your Ubuntu software center or type these commands into your terminal.


      • Twinkle – KDE Soft-phone using the SIP protocol


      • Fedora 15 KDE - How to upgrade to KDE 4.7




    • GNOME Desktop

      • Gnome shell starting to become my favourite
        I have several different computers, running Gnome 2, Gnome 3, Unity and Mac OSX. New interfaces always take a while to get used to, so after the initial launch of Gnome 3 and Unity the “classic” Gnome 2 interface was still my favourite to get my work done.


      • Why I won't be using gnome shell or gnome 3
        When KDE4.0 was released I knew the KDE world would lose some users. I also assumed the other desktop devs would take note, but I guess my assumptions were wrong.. Gnome3 includes the exact same mistakes.






  • Distributions



  • Devices/Embedded





Free Software/Open Source



  • Web Browsers



  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • Oracle v Google
      When Oracle sued Google over Android/Linux, Oracle’s shares were around $31 and had a little uptick. Now it’s down to $25, off 20%. At that time Google was around $480, had a build to $620 and is now back where it started, even, more or less. If that’s any indication, Oracle’s claims are not worrying investors much.

      It’s a different story on the blogosphere. Detractors are claiming Google is an evil thief of ideas and worse. The facts are that Android/Linux contains little or nothing from Java and so copyright claims are weak and 88% of the patent claims of Oracle re-examined by USPTO so far have been rejected.


    • Seven Free LibreOffice Extensions You Should Know About
      When the Document Foundation released LibreOffice 3.4.2 earlier this month, the big news wasn't so much that a new version was out. Rather, the big news was that LibreOffice had officially become enterprise-ready, according to its developers.




  • CMS



  • Healthcare

    • OpenEMR achieves full ONC certification
      It's official! OpenEMR has passed all ONC certification tests as a fully qualified emr that can be used to attest for incentive moneys. The official posting: http://onc-chpl.force.com/ehrcert/EHRProductDetail?id=a0X30000003mNwTEAU&retURL= appeared on the website 2011/08/19.




  • Programming

    • The Kotlin Programming Language
      Kotlin is a new JVM language under development by JetBrains. That's the company that makes IntelliJ IDEA, the well-regarded Java IDE. According to JetBrains, the main design goals behind this project are: to make Kotlin compile as fast as Java, make it safer than Java, i.e. statically check for common pitfalls such as null pointer dereference, make it more concise than Java by supporting local type-inference, first-class functions (closures), extension functions, mixins and first-class delegation, etc; and, keeping the useful level of expressiveness; and make it way simpler than the most mature competitor—Scala.


    • Lightning: Automating An Eclipse RCP Build


    • LinuxCon: Are Application Developers 'Weanies'?
      During Linus Torvalds talk at LinuxCon he took the time to call application developers 'weanies' and said that they weren't 'real men' like kernel developers.

      It's a description that Marten Mickos, the CEO of Eucalyptus (and former CEO of MySQL) does not agree with. During a keynote presentation at LinuxCon, Mickos explained his vision of the new world order in which the cloud and virtualization dominates.




  • Standards/Consortia





Leftovers

  • Losing the HP Way
    The news of course is that HP plans to buy for $10 billion Autonomy, the UK business analytics company, while dropping the WebOS product line acquired only a year ago and eventually dumping the entire HP PC business. What this is intended to accomplish is to move HP firmly into the enterprise market, away from consumers, while shifting the company’s center of gravity in the direction of Europe. It’s the end of HP in all but name.


  • Cablegate





  • Finance

    • The Real Reason the SEC Has Been Shredding Documents For Decades
      What should we make of the new revelations by Securities and Exchange Commission attorney Darcy Flynn (background here, here and here) that the SEC has been shredding documents for decades?

      As many commentators have noted, the SEC did this to cover up fraud on Wall Street.




  • Privacy





Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 28/08/2025: Chatbots Distorting/Fabricating History and Also Driving Suicide
Links for the day
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Resists Software Freedom, Even by Attacking Its Own
The OSI is compromised
 
Richard Stallman (RMS) Talk in Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress Will be Remote
This past week RMS received lots of accolades online
The Register MS (Run by Microsoft Operatives): Free Software is Putin, Hence Evil and Dangerous
The current editor in chief is an American Microsofter, the previous one went to work for Google (US)
Gemini Links 28/08/2025: Back in Japan and Why "Hacker News" Sucks
Links for the day
A Much-Needed Wake-up Call to Users of Wordpress.com, Blogspot, Substack and All Those Other Outsourced (and Centralised) Platforms
There are several lessons in there
The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com, Slopfarms in Google News, and More
Some readers of ours end up sending us links that are from slopfarms, not realising those are slopfarms
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Katrina Memories and Google Versus Software Freedom
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2025: Police Against Media Freedom in the UK, Energy-Hungry Countries Targeted by China
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows Fell to All-Time Lows in Egypt This Summer, Vista 11 Adoption Decreases While GNU/Linux Increases
Vista 11 is going down rather than up
Links 27/08/2025: Microsoft Demoralises Staff With Slop Demands, Leaving Mastodon Explained
Links for the day
12 Hours Ago The Register MS Published a Fake (Paid-for) Article, But This One for a Change Did Not Promote a Ponzi Scheme
There are also Free software alternatives, but they don't pay The Register MS for "synthetic" so-called 'journalism'
More People Need to Call Out and Put a Stop to Serial Sloppers
Unless slopfarms are stopped, people will read and share Microsoft propaganda made by chatbots
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Headphones and Tartarus
Links for the day
Morale at Microsoft is Terrible (Proprietary Plagiarism Machines Have No Future, LLM Slop is a Bubble)
The slop sceptics/critics are going to have lots of "told you so" moments
GNOME "governance issues, staff reduction, etc." amidst Albanian whistleblowing and women trafficking
Notice the connection to Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and GNOME
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 26, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 26, 2025
Richard Stallman (RMS) Was Right About "Sideloading" in 1996
We now have computers that treat booting GNU/Linux like an act of "Sideloading"
Panama: Windows Down From 97% "Market Share" to Less Than 30%
In 2009, Windows was measured at 97.24% (compared to 62.32% right now or less than 30% if one also counts Android)
The UEFI 9/11 - Part I - Introduction to Impending Catastrophe (Microsoft Preventing People From Booting Non-Windows Systems)
eight-part series
Why Techrights is Slow Today (Bot Floods)
We don't know if those bots are connected to LLMs (we have not checked), but that is a possibility
Slopwatch: DDoS Slop, LinuxBSDos.com Spam, and Slopfarms in Google News, Including webpronews.com
Among the news we also found fakes, albeit not so much today
Links 26/08/2025: "Ballooning Debt" in France and "Transnational Repression in the UK"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/08/2025: Listening to Alcest and Google Doing Evil (Users Installing Software is "Sideloading" and Prohibited)
Links for the day
Links 26/08/2025: DNS Tampering and TikTok Layoffs
Links for the day
Microsoft's Windows "Market Share" Overestimated
Microsoft's income sources are shrinking
We Shall See...
My wife and I are hardly the first victims of Brett Wilson LLP
This New Determination on a Case Echoes the Modus Operandi of Microsoft's Serial Strangler vs Techrights (Its Online Decision/Judgment Says Truth and Public Interest Defend the Publisher)
Noel Anthony Clarke hopefully has enough money left to pay his victims, which include the publishers
Going Offline
There was life before the Net
The Register MS Has Apparently Shut Down Its Office
It is basically a fake address on the face of it
There Are Also Expectations of IBM Layoffs Very Soon With "Narrative Control."
Some of them mention Red Hat and how IBM failed to achieve anything substantial with that acquisition
After at Least Two Rounds of Mass Layoffs in August Microsoft Said to Have "September Layoff Confirmed - Performance Based"
Those "M5 level meetings" sound plausible
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 25, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 25, 2025