Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 30/11/2011: Lenovo and Android, CyanogenMod 7





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



  • Server





  • Kernel Space



  • Applications



  • Distributions



    • New Releases



      • Clonezilla live clone system with multi-restore
        Version 1.2.11-23 of the Clonezilla live CD has been released with an updated software collection. Based on the unstable branch of Debian (known as "Sid") from 28 November, this update to the open source clone system for hard disk partitioning and duplicating includes the 3.1.1-1 Linux kernel, version 0.2.38 of the Partclone partition image utility and Gdisk 0.8.1




    • Debian Family



      • Derivatives



        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu team questions Distrowatch share slide figures
            Ubuntu developer Michael Hall has questioned the latest data from Distrowatch, which suggests that it is slipping in popularity when compared to rivals such as Linux Mint.


          • Flavours and Variants

            • Does Linux Mint 12 Measure Up?
              After a fairly routine release with Linux Mint 11, the team is back with a new look and a lot of changes in the offing. As with any release with a major overhaul, Linux Mint 12 has some hits and misses.

              We took an early look at Mint 12 after the team pushed out the first release candidate. As far as the look and feel goes, there's not been a lot of changes with Mint 12 since the RC. But now that the release is final, let's take a look at some of the changes and see whether you should be rushing to upgrade or install Mint 12.












  • Devices/Embedded



    • Phones



      • Android

        • In the Mobile OS War, Can Android Ice Cream Sandwich Save Google's Lead?
          If your answer to which mobile device operating system has the most market share is “iOS,” this article will set you straight. Google, with its open source Android OS and multiple manufacturer strategy (which leverages HTC, Samsung, and Motorola to create Android phones), has managed to take the lead in terms of market share, capturing 45% of users in the US alone.


        • Android signage system includes 10.2-inch touchscreen
          I Display announced an interactive digital signage computer that runs Android 2.3. The I View Android is equipped with a 10.2-inch, 1024 x 600 resistive touchscreen that swivels on an optionally battery-powered base, a microSD slot, a USB 2.0 port, and Wi-Fi, says the company.






    • Sub-notebooks/Tablets

      • Lenovo unveils three new Android tablets--5, 7, and 10 inchers
        Lenovo is hoping to shake up the tablet market with three new devices scheduled to hit its home base of China as early as December.


      • Wait Two Years and See How Android Is Doing on Tablets
        The funny thing is, these sentiments echo the reactions that Android itself got shortly after its release. As recently as March of 2009, everyone was questioning why there weren't more smartphones running Android, including us. And what happened just before March of 2009? Mobile World Congress did. This is the conference where everyone decides what is going to succeed and fail each year on the mobile front, but in 2009, people who saw few Android phones and pronounced Android dead were dead wrong. Android is now flourishing.


      • Lenovo spins two Android tablets, one five-inch smartphone
        Lenovo announced three dual-core Android gadgets destined for China: a five-inch LePad S2005 I smartphone, a seven-inch LePad S2007 tablet, and a 10.1-inch LePad S2010 tablet. In the U.S., meanwhile, AT&T announced the 4G LTE-ready LG Nitro HD smartphone, featuring a dual-core 1.5GHz processor and a 4.5-inch display with Galaxy Nexus-like 1280 x 720 resolution.


      • CyanogenMod 7 Hacked Onto The Kindle Fire, Let The Modding Madness Begin!
        The $199 Kindle Fire just took one step closer to instant fame. XDA-Dev member, JackpotClavin, managed to flash CM7 onto the Fire using ClockworkMod. The result is a Fire running a custom build of Android and a whole lot of excited fanboys.








Free Software/Open Source



  • New Open Source Search Engine YaCy Gives Users More Online Control
    A new open source search engine has been launched to take on Google, Bing and Yahoo.

    The YaCy, backed by free software activists, comes with desktop software and allows users to index search results on their own. The search engine developers believe it makes the platform much more accurate and more difficult to censor.


  • FBSOTD: Benefits of ‘Open Source’ software
    In Tuesday’s Facebook story of the day FOX 31 fans wanted to know how they can benefit from open source projects.

    'Open Source' software is a code open to computer programmers who each have the option to make adjustments.

    Computer technicians say sometimes the software can be better than original programs, because they have a whole community contributing information.


  • New Open Source Search Not a Google Killer
    Even a company with Microsoft’s financial muscle has failed to make a major dent in Google’s position as the world’s search engine of choice. But a group of European online activists are apparently trying to create a D.I.Y. alternative. Or at least that was what was being reported.


  • Web Search By The People, For The People: YaCy 1.0
    The YaCy project is releasing version 1.0 of its peer-to-peer Free Software search engine. The software takes a radically new approach to search. YaCy does not use a central server. Instead, its search results come from a network of currently over 600 independent peers. In such a distributed network, no single entity decides what gets listed, or in which order results appear.


  • Events

    • Google I/O 2012 developer conference extended
      Google has announced that its 2012 Google I/O developer conference has been extended from two to three days, and will now take place from 27 to 29 June 2012 at the Moscone Center West in San Francisco. In a Google Code blog post, Product Marketing Manager and Developer Monica Tran says that the company "recently received an unexpected opportunity" to add another day to the event and choose to do so based on feedback from attendees of last year's conference.




  • CMS



  • Funding



  • Project Releases



  • Openness/Sharing

    • Why We Chose 'Open Science'
      The Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle grew out of a simple question I posed in 2002 to a constellation of top people in the field: What's the most useful thing we could do to propel neuroscience forward? The consensus became our inaugural project—a comprehensive, molecular-level, three-dimensional map of the mouse brain to show precisely where every gene is active, or "expressed." It was the first step on a long road to understand how genes function in the human brain, knowledge that will point to ways to better diagnose and treat brain ailments.




  • Programming

    • NetBeans 7.1 nears as release candidate arrives
      Oracle's NetBeans developers have published the first release candidate of version 7.1 of their IDE. NetBeans 7.1 is due for final release on 14 December and introduces support for JavaFX 2.0, the UI toolkit that Oracle is planning to release as open source and incorporate in a later release of Java.


    • What's Exciting About LLVM 3.0 & The New Clang
      LLVM 3.0 with the adjoining Clang update is the first major update to the Low-Level Virtual Machine since the LLVM 2.9 release last April. LLVM 3.0 was scheduled for a November release (but it was delayed slightly) and marks the point of deprecating LLVM-GCC in favor of DragonEgg, which allows for LLVM optimizers to be used with the mainline GCC compiler front-end via a unique plug-in. Other interesting changes for LLVM 3.0 are listed below.






Leftovers



  • Security



    • Netfilter developers working on NAT for ip6tables
      Patrick McHardy has announced the release of patches for the ip6tables IPv6 packet filter under Linux on the netfilter project's developer mailing list. The patches allow the software to replace the address information in IPv6 data packets with different information as an implementation of Network Address Translation (NAT). McHardy says that the netfilter NAT patch modifies the source code, which previously only worked with IPv4, to suit IPV6, making targets such as SNAT/DNAT or MASQUERADE, REDIRECT and NETMAP available to the IPv6 packet filter. The developers have also converted the FTP and SIP NAT helper modules to support IPv6.






  • Finance



  • Censorship

    • EU Court of Justice: Censorship in Name of Copyright Violates Fundamental Rights
      The European Court of Justice just rendered a historic decision in the Scarlet Extended case, which is crucial for the future of rights and freedoms on the Internet. The Court ruled that forcing Internet service providers to monitor and censor their users' communications violated EU law, and in particular the right to freedom of communication. At a time of all-out offensive in the war against culture sharing online, this decision suggests that censorship measures requested by the entertainment industry are disproportionate means to enforce an outdated copyright regime. Policy-makers across Europe must take this decision into account by refusing new repressive schemes, such as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), and engage in a much needed reform of copyright.






Recent Techrights' Posts

Workers Fly Away From IBM's Red Hat (This Year a Lot of Red Hat Staff is "IBM")
The stock (share price) of IBM says nothing about what actually goes on
Links 02/01/2026: Science, Patent Maximalism, and Public Domain Day
Links for the day
Gemini Links 02/02/2026: Books, Scams, and mkscript (a Script to Make Scripts)
Links for the day
Strong Start for GNU/Linux This Year
based on statCounter
More Tools, Factorising Code
If some things in the site of Gemini capsules don't behave as expected, then that's likely due to a bug
State of Tech Journalism in 2026: Follow the Money
in order to understand what motivates an opinion piece one must follow the money
 
The More Buzzwords a Corporation Resorts To...
buzzwords are a fool's way to compensate for or disguise a lack of knowledge
So You Should Definitely Call it "Slop" and Stop Saying "AI"
with more XBox/gaming layoffs being imminent the blowback will be fun to watch
Why Are We Still Using Voting Machines?
Voting machines still seem to me like an infantile cargo cult and an act of salesmanship (like various security theatre rituals at airports)
"Works for Me!"
Who knows best?
Why IBM Workers Like Techrights (Same Reason EPO Workers Do)
IBM will likely be a daily theme (high rate of recurrence)
In 2025 We Contributed to the Headlessness of the OSI, But It's Not Over Yet
By airing some 'dirty laundry' about the OSI last year we contributed to its current state
Africa's Largest Population Sees Diminishing Impact of Windows
less than 1 in 10 Web requests in Nigeria comes from Windows
Russia Cuts Finnish Cables ("Hybrid War"), Finland Cuts Off Microsoft
the birthplace of Linux
Free Software is More Naturally Inclusive
large, intolerant, violent companies get painted as a glorious example of United Colours of Benetton
Europe in 2026: Over 5% GNU/Linux, Not Counting Chromebooks
2026 has started strongly
Slopfarm Says Microsoft's "Biggest Business" is the 'Business' Where It Loses Tens of Billions of Dollars
TOI still pretends to have a lot of output
At the Start of January 2025 Microsoft President Said Microsoft Would Spend 80 Billion Dollars on "AI" Data Centres. That Didn't Happen. Microsoft Laid Off 30,000 Workers, Debt Surged.
Maybe this coming Monday Microsoft will come up with more false promises and vapourware
Links 02/01/2026: Insurrectionist Attacks Musicians Critical of Him With Lawfare, Project Gutenberg Now Has Over 75,000 Books
Links for the day
Decline in LLM Slop About "Linux" is a Good Start for 2026
When the only remaining proponents of slop are slop, which is pretty much what's happening right now, the bubble is popping
EPO People Power - Part XXII - Contact Officials and Inform Your National Representatives (Delegates) of the EPO's Cocainegate
Europe's largest media intentionally covers up serious scandals in Europe's second-largest institution
Slopwatch Still Dead, Not Enough LLM Slop About "Linux"
this is the desirable thing
LibXML2 Will Carry on (Without or With the Name "LibXML2")
The proprietary software boosters are projecting
Gemini Links 02/01/2026: ThinkPad, SHARP Zaurus, Lagrange Handheld Support
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 01, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, January 01, 2026
Links 01/01/2026: "Biophobia" and Renewed Effort to Locate MH370
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/01/2026: Bot Accounts Online and Reading in 2025
Links for the day
IBM’s and Red Hat’s "Operation Evolution initiative" Just Long, Fancy Term for Bluewashing, Redundancies, Layoffs
Gerstner is still alive, but he's shorter and more arrogant
Designing a Better Mousetrap or Tools for the SSG
Static Site Generators (SSGs) - unlike all modern Content Management Systems (CMSs) - are so simple that extending them is easy
Links 01/01/2026: 1930 Works in the Public Domain, Electricity Pricing 'a Mystery'
Links for the day
Firefox is Toast Because It Got Toasted by Mozilla
Firefox cannot keep above 2% and hasn't been able to for quite some time
Ignore the LLM Slop and the Noise, Microsoft is in a Death Spiral
So what does Microsoft have left to sell?
Red Hat is Vanishing Before Our Eyes
With some Red Hat staff "transitioning" we wonder if it's an HR hack, wherein they "reset the clock" on employment duration so as to lessen severance obligations
In 2025 Microsoft Lost Palau
Palau now has GNU/Linux at steadily high levels
Microsoft Mocked UNIX/Linux for Not Handling Dates After 2038, Microsoft Breaks Down on 2026!
Only a truly moronic company would design it that way
Another New Year's Resolution: Public Domain Sources, Credits
In addition to our first one
Combatting Slop Images (and ClownFlare)
we won't use or reuse slop images
The End of Red Hat
expect many more layoffs soon
A New Year's Resolution: Maximal Transparency
We'll do our very best to be transparent about everything that's going on, even legal matters
Gemini Links 01/01/2026: 2025 Comes to a Close and Capsular Gemlog Manager
Links for the day
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raised About 1.3 Million Dollars in the Past Couple of Months!
the FSF's Board now has 10 people in it
2026 IBM Phaseout of Red Hat
Red Hat won't fare any better than most IBM acquisitions
Microsoft Budget Issues, XBox Thrown Under the Bus
They're cutting budget. Soon they'll cut the staff.
Only Hours Into the New Year People Already Discuss the Next Round of Layoffs at Red Hat/IBM
2026 will be another tough year for Red Hat and IBM
EPO People Power - Part XXI - Europe's Second-Largest Institution Became a Corrupt For-Profit Company Run by Drug Addicts
it'll be the demise of the Rule of Law in Europe and maybe a death blow to the EU (eventually), not just the EPO
Another Very Productive Year Commences
"a total of over 17,000 pages in a year"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, December 31, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, December 31, 2025
Fiji: GNU/Linux Has Risen From Almost Nothing to Almost 5% in Recent Years
It's not as small as people are led to believe
Gemini Links 31/12/2025: Blogosphere is Growing and New Year Begins
Links for the day
Recruiters Don't Use Microsoft LinkedIn, Spammers Use LinkedIn
One of my best friends, a university professor, lost all of his life's savings due to Microsoft LinkedIn
You've Only Wasted Your Life in Social Control Networks
In a sense, social control media is a giant delusion
2025 Was a Very Bad Year for Social Control Media
statCounter sees a gradual demise in Social Control Media access
Don't "Go Paperless", Go Paperful [sic] (for What Really Matters)
Why should we favour paper use sometimes? Well, many reasons.
Complexity Considered Harmful: We Used to Run an Operating System on 64KB of RAM, Not 64GB of RAM (a Million Times More)
"Initially confined to single-tasking on 8-bit processors and no more than 64 kilobytes of memory"
The Slop Industry is Failing So Badly (Mountains of Debt, Losses) That It's Merging With the SPAM Industry
we reckon that Google will eventually delist all slopfarms, recognising they're just a form of SPAM
Links 31/12/2025: Cheeto Pushing for More Wars, ‘Security is a Shared Responsibility’
Links for the day
Enshittification of Postal Services Isn't Technological Advancement
Societies that say the aim is to "go digital" and eliminate paper trail aren't advanced; they're moving backwards
IBM Starts 2026 a Much Smaller Company (Not Homage to Gerstner)
People who get bluewashed out of their job (or bluewashed into unemployment) are gagged by NDAs
XBox is Likely Dead Already, But the Threat It Posed to Us All for Two Decades Isn't Over
"the Xbox was never about gaming and merely served as a test bed for DRM in commodity systems."
Ahead of 2026 Mass Layoffs at Microsoft the Tree Gets Shaken to See Who 'Falls' (Resigns/Retires)
"We had a quiet meeting last week about budget realignment. No one said layoffs, but it’s clear where the focus is shifting."
Almost 6,5000 Pages in 2025, Aiming Higher in 2026
if we can keep focused, then quantity will increase
Microsoft XBox Having a "Dog Ate My Homework" Moment: No New Console Until 3 Years From Now... Because "RAM Prices"
Who will ever remember this in 2028? Nobody.
Gemini End of Year Capsules Tally (Based on Lupa) Shows About 10% Growth
What a difference a year makes
Gemini Links 31/12/2025: New Resolution, Reverse Hexdump, and Programming Languages
Links for the day
Dr. Andy Farnell Explains Why Chatbots Became Dishonesty on Top of Dishonesty (Hiding Usage of Dishonest Salads of Words)
new article from CyberShow
Links 31/12/2025: Nvidia Faces Bubble-Bursting Moment, Saudi Oil Money Pumped Into Chatbots to Keep the Energy Waste Going (Circular Financing Again)
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's First Talk in a U.S. College Since 2018
Greetings from Georgia Tech!
EPO People Power - Part XX - Why António Campinos Chose to Put His Cokehead Friend on 'Sick Leave'
EPO Cocainegate will be covered for months to come
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, December 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, December 30, 2025