Links 4/12/2011: GNOME 3.4 and Torvalds, More GNU/Linux Games
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2011-12-04 23:41:01 UTC
- Modified: 2011-12-04 23:41:01 UTC
[
I'm on vacation for a week starting now]
Contents
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Applications
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As the digital age progresses, the amount of data we produce each year is growing quickly. There was a time when we could fit all of our personal digital data on a few floppy disks, but many of us now have hundreds of gigabytes or photos, music and documents that we need to backup and protect. Backing up our data locally is important, but any good backup plan should also include off-site backups. “The Cloud” has promised us infinite, cheap storage where we can save our ever-growing data. Online cloud backups should be a part of your overall backup plan, but it’s important that your data is secure, encrypted, and backed up automatically. Here are a few online backup tools that aim to make cloud backups easy for users.
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Instructionals/Technical
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rsnapshot is a backup tool written in Perl that utilizes rsync as its back-end. rsnapshot allows users to create customized incremental backup solutions. This article will discuss the following: the benefits of an incremental backup solution, rsnapshot's installation, its configuration, and usage examples.
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Games
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Thanks to the Humble Bundle i’ve discovered also this nice game: Dungeons of Dredmor.
It’s a classic Rogue-like game, you have to move your hero in 10 level of dungeons where you’ll fight against terrible monsters, to get new equipment, skills and fight the big bad Evil guy, from the official site:
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I really like this game. It was 2001 when Mucky Foot Productions (not existing anymore) released this game. I played it a lot of times, and i never got tired of it. Beautiful music, funny characters, great landscapes. Ladies and gentlemen, a strategic game called... StarTopia!
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There's three days left to the Humble Introversion Bundle that offers up a collection of DRM-free, multi-platform games at whatever price you wish, but how is this Linux game sale performing?
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Hard to believe, but after 12 years of community development, the guys from the open-source engine based on Bungie's Marathon trilogy Aleph One have finally released a version called 1.0!
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Metagolf Linux game innovatively combines platforming action and golf. The gameplay style is really unique where upto 4 players can play on same screen with one golf ball to complete various objectives of different levels.
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Desktop Environments
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Yesterday Gnome project announced a site called Gnome Extensions which makes it easier to find and install extensions. A lot of useful Gnome 3 extensions already existed, but not much was known about it until LinuxMint popularised them. It seems Linus Torvalds has tried the extensions and is now liking it. He posts on his Google + page, "Hey, with gnome-tweak-tool and the dock extension, gnome-3.2 is starting to look almost usable."
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GNOME Desktop
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There are a lot of people that don't like the changes brought to the Linux desktop with GNOME 3. Among those people is none other than the father of Linux himself, Linus Torvalds.
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In an effort to slim down and improve its cross-platform capabilities, the developers of the Chrome browser and ChromeOS itself appear to be shifting away from Gtk use.
This bit of information was quietly pointed out earlier in the month on the Aura window manager pages for the Chromium Projects. Chromium is the open source implementation of Chrome and ChromeOS, and Aura is the new window manager and shell environment that will support the various interface elements on these implementations.
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Marlin is a relatively new file browser for GNOME somewhat similar with Nautilus when it comes to features, but with a different default interface.
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New Releases
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€· Announced Distro: VectorLinux 7.0
€· Announced Distro: Clonezilla Live 1.2.11-23
€· Announced Distro: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Alpha 1
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PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family
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Debian Family
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Derivatives
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Canonical/Ubuntu
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Ubuntu is a complete desktop Linux operating system, freely available with both community and professional support.
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Ubuntu 12.04 named 'Precise Pangolin' has been released on 1st Dec,2011. This time Ubuntu 12.04 is based on Linux Kernel 3.2.0 relaese candidate 3. There are many more changes are done in the Ubuntu 12.04. It also support for APLS touchpads.
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Ubuntu team is running a pilot project called 'Ubuntu Friendly community hardware testing programme'. The goal of the program is to find if the hardware is Ubuntu friendly or not.
Members can run a test on "how well their systems work with Ubuntu, and submit this information to a website where data is aggregated and a useful 'friendliness' rating is generated for each model. This information is useful, for instance, in determining which systems work well with Ubuntu, and whether a particular hardware component is likely to work or give trouble," Daniel Manrique write on a mailing list.
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Flavours and Variants
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Since MATE is new, there’s not really a “new features” list for it. However, there are a couple of new features in Linux Mint 12 that also apply to MATE. Some things that are new apply only to GNOME 3 so I haven’t included them here. If you want to see those, please see the Linux Mint 12 GNOME 3 review that I did earlier.
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Linux Mint, the venerable Ubuntu based Linux distro, is in the news again. Linux Mint 12 codenamed "Lisa" is finally released. It based on GNOME 3.0 and runs GNOME Shell with some ingenious tweaks of its own. Detailed review of Linux Mint 12 "Lisa" OS. Read on.
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The week of Thanksgiving in the United States was a shorter week for some, but that didn't slow the progress of Linux. This past week, Linux Mint 12 was officially released, providing those that don't want GNOME Shell or Ubuntu Unity with an alternative take on a modern GNOME Linux desktop. As Mint freshened the Linux desktop, developers continued to push forward on KDE and the Linux kernel.
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Phones
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Android
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Android-x86, the famous port of Google's famous Android platform for the x86 (32-bit) architecture has just reached version 4.0.
Android-x86 is a Live CD Linux distribution created mostly for the Eee PC netbooks, but can also run on any other 32-bit (x86) platform.
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Sub-notebooks/Tablets
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This week there's been a lot of fuss about Amazon releasing source code for software on its Kindle devices, including the Kindle Fire. A lot of the hype we've seen is simply unwarranted; while you can download the source code that Amazon was legally required to publish, most of the software on the device remains proprietary, and every Kindle is still Defective by Design.
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This Android tablet can withstand five ft drops, water and dust ingress (IP65), and boasts the rugged military grade MIL-STD-810G rating. The Z710 can also operate in the coldest and hottest of environments, from -30 degrees C to +60 degrees C.
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The Apache Software Foundation has come under withering attacks lately, with accusations of its politics and bureaucracy getting in the way of its ability to foster open-source software.
The common rallying cry of the Apache attackers is GitHub, a source-control system that has almost blossomed overnight into the industry's top open-source code repository. But while GitHub clearly does offer a superior code-hosting alternative to Apache and other foundations in many respects, it is deficient in one of the most important ways: branding.
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There's a new release of the open-source Lightspark software for handling Adobe SWF/Flash support on the Linux desktop. New to Lightspark 0.5.3 among other changes is a working Microsoft Windows port.
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Events
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Over the last four years or so, I have attended numerous conferences in many different locations. It has been, really without any exceptions, an incredible experience. Conferences are one of the main ways that our communities come together and meet face-to-face—something that's important to counterbalance the standard email and IRC development environment.
In that time, I have also seen many different ways to organize, schedule, and produce those conferences, and, as is the case with free software projects, there are bits and pieces that conferences can learn from each other. What follows is my—fairly opinionated obviously—distillation of what works well and less well, which will hopefully be useful as new conferences spring up, or as existing ones plan for next year.
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Web Browsers
Chrome
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Google has been on a killing spree the last few months, whacking projects that are non-essential to the company strategy or that haven't caught on. Even though this has angered some users, Google is still stubbornly clinging to one of its biggest dogs to date: ChromeOS and the Chromebooks.
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SaaS
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Databases
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NoSQL data store CouchDB has become Hadoop’s latest convert with delivery of a connector tying together the two big-data architectures.
CouchDB user Couchbase has announced a certified Couchbase Hadoop Connector, developed with Hadoop shop Cloudera.
The connector potentially simplifies movement of data between the Couchbase Server, which Couchbase says is "powered" by CouchDB, and the Cloudera Distribution including Hadoop (CDH). Couchbase uses capabilities of CouchDB such as mobile and sync. Both CouchDB and Hadoop, meanwhile, are Apache Software Foundation (ASF) projects.
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Oracle/Java/LibreOffice
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Little over one month ago The Document Foundation announced their new online extension repository. At that time it had maybe a couple of dozen total extensions and templates, but now the number totals over 100.
A short note from Florian Effenberger expressed the projects pride and gratitude towards those who have been contributing. OpenOffice.org had a wide selection and many articles were devoted to the bounty. Today, LibreOffice is well on its way to closing the gap.
The extension site is easy to use because one can sort and search through the extensions. You can sort by LibreOffice version, or one of several criteria such as Highest Rated, Most Downloaded, or Newest. Extensions can also be filtered by category such as Language Tools or Writer-Extensions. And it doesn't require Javascript to function.
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Project Releases
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Genode, the interesting research (non-Linux) operating system developed on a unique framework architecture, recently experienced the release of Genode OS 11.11. This operating system, which brought Gallium3D support last year, now has a variety of virtualization modules available.
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Public Services/Government
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Microsoft beware: a major UK government department is to trial open source desktops
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Programming
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Copyrights
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Anti-piracy group BREIN is caught up in a huge copyright scandal in the Netherlands. A musician who composed a track for use at a local film festival later found it being used without permission in an anti-piracy campaign. He is now claiming at least a million euros for the unauthorized distribution of his work on DVDs. To make matters even worse, a board member of a royalty collection agency offered to help the composer to recoup the money, but only if he received 33% of the loot.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- EPO Staff Can Go Listen to Richard Stallman Next Week in Munich (Technical University of Munich, Rudolf-Diesel Hörsaal (MW2001) on Campus Garching at 18:00)
- "The talk is open to the public and attendance is free. Registration is not required."
- At IBM, Relocation Means Layoffs (Downsizing)
- Silent or 'invisible' layoffs?
- Dystopian Trends in Technology Make Richard Stallman More Relevant Than Ever
- It's good to see him attracting vast audiences
- Richard Stallman (RMS) Announced His Talk Less Than 24 Hours Before It Took Place and Still Filled Up the Auditorium at Sapienza Università di Roma
- Photos from yesterday evening [...] It looks like it was a very successful event
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- Slopwatch: UbuntuPIT, LinuxSecurity, Google News, and the Serial Slopper Brian Fagioli
- Nothing of merit here, just more slop
- Links 14/10/2025: Lack of Trust in Slop and "Retirement Challenges"
- Links for the day
- Rhonda D'Vine, Gerfried Fuchs, Pronouns & Debian pregnancy cluster
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Central Staff Committee of the European Patent Office (EPO) Warns That EPO Management is Robbing or Manipulating Pension Funds Again
- Faking "growth" is just about as bad as forgery
- Probably a Lot Worse Than LLM Slop: GNOME Tying Itself to Divisive Politics, Even Where It's Clearly Not Relevant
- Something has gone terribly wrong in GNOME
- Links 14/10/2025: Microsoft OneDrive Scanning Faces in Photos (Without Asking First), "OpenAI Says It Will Move to Allow Smut"
- Links for the day
- They Generally Don't Like Scholars, as They're Less Compelled or Pressured to Repeat What Corporations and Oligarchs Say
- People who loathe scholars have an agenda in mind that, unlike that of reasonable people, revolves around controlling people
- Belated New Article About Last Thursday's Lecture by Richard Stallman in Helsinki, Finland
- there are good reasons to pay with cash, not limited to privacy
- Attacking Richard Stallman Has Become 'Career Suicide'
- If you're going to viciously attack somebody, make sure your arguments are rock-solid
- Microsoft's Failing XBox Business Has Turned Games Into Funerals
- How does it feel to depend on Microsoft?
- Yesterday's "Distinguished Lecture" by Richard Stallman Possibly Attended by Close to 1,000 People
- The capacity of the place is about 900
- Slop Poisons Everything
- Imagine wanting to find what Torvalds has just said or what has just been released
- Taking Software Freedom 'Mainstream'
- interest in Software Freedom must have grown
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 13, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, October 13, 2025
- Gemini Links 14/10/2025: Ada Lovelace Day, Sony CLIE PEG-TG50 Review, Why to Avoid Network Solutions
- Links for the day
- The EPO's War on Techrights Was a Massive Mistake
- The EPO started the SLAPPs after we had published a few hundreds of articles; we've since then published close to 6,000 because the attacks on us emboldened insiders to help us
- General-Purpose Computers to Become Growing Area of Coverage
- Without them, we have little left for controlling our lives
- "They missed a great opportunity to shut up." -Jacques Chirac
- Brett Wilson LLP has been trying to cheat the legal system many times
- Harassment evidence: Switzerland, overcrowded fitness and yoga centers, incompetence and racism in accident response
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Vincent Danjean & Debian NXIVM collateral, blackmail risks
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- In Sweden This Past Friday Richard Stallman Explained Why Copyleft is Important
- And he didn't have to 'bash' BSDs, either
- IBM Layoffs Due to a Lack of Money and Company Debt Rising by Almost 10 Billion Dollars in 6 Months
- IBM didn't buy Red Hat for any ideological reasons; it was a fast "cash grab" for revenue
- Forbes Already Stopped Being a News Sites. Now It's a Spam and Propaganda Platform for "Paying Partners" (Companies).
- news from Forbes became very scarce
- Is the Second-Largest Institution in Europe (EPO) Gradually Becoming More Like a Sweatshop?
- Underpaid, unqualified, inexperienced and incompatible people are already recruited to replace veteran examiners
- The Register MS Has No FOSS Coverage Anymore
- The Editor in Chief is like a Microsoft plant
- Links 13/10/2025: "Toasty Subwoofer" and WiFi Speakers "Are About To Go Dumb"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 13/10/2025: iNaturalist and Tove Jansson’s Moominpappa at Sea
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Does Not Deny That Large Retailers Like Walmart, Costco and Target Are Giving Up on XBox (and Not Stocking It)
- No doubt XBox is in trouble and rumours suggest that more mass layoffs are imminent
- We'll Encourage Richard Stallman to Talk About Software Patents at the EPO Next Week When He Visits Munich (EPO Headquarters)
- Go listen to Richard Stahlmann
- Investigative Journalism Protects Society From Corruption, Crimes Against Women, Assaults on Civil Society
- "what is the point of men doing military practice to defend a system that is so rotten?"
- Swiss pimp usurping reputation of legendary Tissot boss Francois Thiébaud from France (BaselWorld, SWATCH Group SA)
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Paris 'Love Nest' & Debian Outreachy: from Lycée Lakanal to ENS Cachan, Cr@ns, nepotism
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Richard Stallman to Give Public Talk in 3 Hours, Then in the Technical University of Munich (Germany) Next Week
- Richard Stallman at TUM on 21.10.2025 18:00, MW2001
- Arnaud Parreaux lost case defending rogue employer
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Mathieu Elias Parreaux declared bankrupt in Switzerland
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Breakdown of the Rule of Law and Patent Law in the European Union (EU)
- The EPO cannot recruit suitably qualified patent examiners this way, let alone retain them
- Gemini Links 13/10/2025: Good Films, Wizard of Earthsea, Upgrading the Steam Controller's Stick
- Links for the day
- Leaks and Whistleblowers: Our Plan for Today
- Society simply cannot advance when too many people self-censor
- It's Not Justice When One Side Denies the Other Side the Ability to Even Speak
- At this stage, Brett Wilson LLP is in my humble opinion acting in contempt of the Court
- Links 13/10/2025: Australian Catholic University Uses Slop to Libel Students, Canada Threatens to Kill Beluga Whales
- Links for the day
- How Not to Silence Tux Machines (It'll Only Backfire, Badly)
- defending Microsoft while attacking this site
- Slopwatch: UbuntuPIT and Google News
- It seems abundantly clear that Google News and Google in general participates in the slop epidemic
- Vincent Danjean (not INTERPOL), Claire Bardel & Debian pregnancy cluster
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Christmas lynchings: Martin Krafft (madduck), Penny Leach (mjollnir) & Debian pregnancy cluster
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Gemini Links 13/10/2025: Birthdays and "Committee Unable to Contact Nobel Prize Winner"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 12, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, October 12, 2025
- The Same People Who Attacked Richard Stallman (RMS) Are Attacking Daniel Pocock to Discourage People From Listening to His Information
- Pocock is being demonised for the same reasons and by the same people who attack RMS
- Your Typical Anti-Richard Stallman (RMS) Cancellist
- "About the RMS cancellation"
- Richard Stallman (RMS) Has Announced His Talk in Rome Less Than 20 Hours in Advance (and on a Sunday)
- Why did he wait until the night before?
- We Are Safe in a Modern "Tech" Society, Right?
- People are safer if they control their own computing
- GNU Tools Cauldron Event in Portugal: Videos Now Available via Invidious
- Go have a look
- The Way Things Are Going, They May Soon Stop Saying "Web Address" and Instead Say "Chrome Address"
- The Web isn't built or based around open Web standards anymore. It's centered around user-agent.
- Microsoft as a Golden Cage
- "I was laid off by Microsoft and can't find a job. I'm weeks away from giving up my apartment and moving across the country to live with family."
- Weekend Discussion About How IBM's Bluewashing of Red Hat Will Cause "Enshittification" for Users
- "I worked at a software company that was acquired by IBM so I knew it was game over for RedHat the day they were acquired"
- Brett Wilson LLP Getting Sued by Its Very Own Clients, a Legal Story That Has Made the Mainstream News (Law360)
- Law360 or Law.com are about as mainstream as one can get in that "sector" (litigation 'industry')
- Slopwatch: GNU/Linux Sites That Became Slopfarms and Spamfarms
- The Web is a mess and "Linux" or "Ubuntu" sites became part of the problem
- Richard Stallman's Talk 25 Hours Away, Aula Magna Palazzo del Rettorato (CU001), Sapienza Università di Roma (Piazzale Aldo Moro, 5)
- The talk is 25 hours away and we see some QR code for it
- Gemini Links 12/10/2025: Watches, the Depression of 2026, Gamboling with Odds
- Links for the day
- Links 12/10/2025: 'False' DMCA Claims and Slop Facing Perils Again (the Hype Wears Off)
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Has Just Lost Privacy Case in Austria and Its Latest Moves Make a Complete Ban Seem Imperative
- Microsoft is not a software company, it's a spying agency that uses software to collect data
- The Register MS: Microsoft is the Security Expert, Not the Prime Culprit, So Buy More Microsoft
- This front page feature is devoid of any actual substance, it's just Microsoft copypasta
- Stefano Zacchiroli (Zack) & Debian pregnancy cluster
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Lucas Nussbaum & Debian pregnancy cluster
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Gemini Links 12/10/2025: "Palm Computering", Further Exploration of Slide Rules, and Key Takeaways from The Well-Grounded Rubyist
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 11, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, October 11, 2025
- Tomorrow: Founder of the Free Software Foundation and of GNU/Linux, Richard Stallman, Speaks in Roma (Rome), Italy at 4PM
- GNU/Linux is more important than ever in this dystopian world
- Microsoft and Apple Are Rare Topics in Geminispace
- in Geminispace it's rather safe to assume everyone is into BSD, GNU/Linux, and sometimes retro