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Links 23/12/2011: Daiwa (Bank) Selects GNU/Linux, Thunderbird 9.0





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • NEVEX’S Flint: More User Interaction, Linux Support in 2012
    Here’s an update on NEVEX Virtual Technologies, the start-up application performance solution provider that recently launched its signature CacheWorks platform. According to NEVEX Product Manager Andrew Flint, the company is planning to support Linux and VMware ESX environments and add new dashboards for increased user interaction in 2012.


  • Server

    • Linux Virtualization and Tired Open Source Myths
      The more things change, the more they stay the same. That is certainly true of anti-open source virtualization FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt). Linux virtualization is robust and enterprise-worthy, and is evolving rapidly. It is a threat to the established giants of virtualization.






  • Kernel Space



  • Applications



  • Distributions



    • Red Hat Family



    • Debian Family



      • Derivatives



        • Canonical/Ubuntu

          • Ubuntu 12.04 'Precise Pangolin' to Feature Power Management Improvements
            Ubuntu’s declining popularity was a hot topic on the Internet recently, with a number of sites using Distrowatch's annual web rankings to ring alarm bells for the popular Linux distro. But there were those who looked askance at these reports -- and quite rightly so, accusing them of grossly exaggerating the extent of Ubuntu’s alleged decline. Whatever be the true extent of its decline, the fact is Ubuntu is still a very popular Linux distro and Canonical will have another chance of redeeming itself with Precise Pangolin in a few months’ time.


          • Ubuntu Running On NOOK Tablet


          • Linaro brings Ice Cream Sandwich & Oneiric Ocelot together on ARM boards
            Open-source software engineering group Linaro has pushed out a build of Android Ice Cream Sandwich for low-cost development boards from Samsung and ST-Ericsson. The build supports hardware acceleration for Systems on a Chip utililzing ARM's Mali-400 graphics processor.


          • Ubuntu 11.10: Unity comes of age
            Has Canonical's controversial new desktop interface improved enough to not only be an amiable desktop for Ubuntu, but to fend off the competition from Windows 8?


          • Flavours and Variants

            • Linux Minted
              Yesterday I installed Linux Mint 12, almost officially the world's most popular Linux distro, made easy for simpletons such as myself. I was swayed by ZDNet contributor Jamie Watson, as he has detailed the progress of Linux Mint 12 thoroughly.

              It's kind of based on Ubuntu 11.10 'Oneiric Ocelot', with the main distinction being the inclusion of GNOME 3 and the beautifully crafted bridging of old and new features using Mint GNOME Shell Extensions. As they say themselves "It’s a brand new desktop but with traditional components."












  • Devices/Embedded



    • Phones

      • Switched On: Open source, open issues for webOS
        HP's decision to contribute webOS to the open source community represents, at the very least, a detour from the company's plans to "double down" on the operating system acquired from Palm, Inc. The good news for fans of the OS is that HP will continue to invest in the software's development, albeit probably not at the unsustainable rate at which it was going it alone.


      • Android









Free Software/Open Source



  • Twitter Releases Whisper Systems' TextSecure Android Code Under Open Source Licence


  • Twitter makes TextSecure Android security technology open source


  • LinkedIn open sources code from IndexTank acquisition
    Solid engineering talent is such a prized resource nowadays that many tech firms have taken to doing acqui-hires, which is the practice of buying a company for its employees rather than for its products or technology. But it’s not just startup founders and programmers who are benefiting from this trend — the open source community has been a winner as well.


  • LinkedIn Open Sources Search Engine
    Joining its fellow social-networking companies in the public release of internal code, LinkedIn has opened sourced software obtained in October with its acquisition of the IndexTank search-engine software provider.

    "We are looking forward to seeing IndexTank thrive as an open-source project," wrote LinkedIn director of engineering, and former CEO of IndexTank, Diego Basch, in a blog post announcing the release.


  • The Open-Sankor IWB Open Source Software
    Sankor program team will be at the British Educational Training and Technology Show (BETT) in London from January 11 to 14, 2012 to present Open-Sankor IWB Open Source software dedicated to universal interactive education and, concurrently, to open and free digital learning resource creation and sharing throughout an international ecosystem of connected teachers.


  • Events

    • 4th international FOSS conference from Dec 27


    • International meet on free software next week
      The International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (Icfoss) will organise the Fourth International Foss Conference, Kerala (Fossk4, http://fossk.in/4) from December 27 to 29.

      The event is being organised by the Icfoss and supported by the Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC), Delhi; the Computer Society of India; and the Institutions of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).




  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla

      • Thunderbird 9.0 Arrives, Via Mozilla's Rapid Release Cycle
        Mozilla has delivered the latest version 9.0 of its Thunderbird email and news client, a free and open source application that Windows, Mac and Linux users can take advantage of. You can get version 9.0 now, at this download site. Not everyone realizes that just as Mozilla has moved to a rapid release cycle for the Firefox browser, Thunderbird is being update much more rapidly than ever as well. Here are some of the enhancements in the latest version of Thunderbird.


      • Mozilla Releases Firefox 9.0 Into The Wild
        Mozilla has readied the 9.0 version of the Firefox browser for public download. In line with the product release, Mozilla confirms that an existing agreement with Google has been extended for at least three years to keep the search giant's technology closely tied to the browser.






  • SaaS

    • Ex-Google Man Sells Search Genius to Rest of World
      Srivas and crew are selling a product based on Hadoop, an open source incarnation of Google’s GFS and MapReduce platforms. But unlike its competitors, MapR is offering something that’s very different from the open source Hadoop project. The company spent two years rewriting Hadoop behind closed doors, eliminating what Srivas sees as major flaws in the platform.


    • OwnCloud Emerges As Open Source Competitor to Dropbox, Box.net
      If you've used popular cloud-based services for storing and sharing files, such as Dropbox and Box.net, you're probably familiar with how convenient they are, and how much they provide for free. In the past few days, though, an open source competitor to them, dubbed OwnCloud, has been getting a lot of attention. It's a Linux-based way to set up your own cloud computing instance, which means you don't have to have your files sitting on servers that you don't choose, governed by people you don't know.


    • Hadoop challenger works to add developers
      LexisNexis has worked for more than a decade to develop a large scale system for Big Data manipulation, and it believes that it has produced something that's better and more mature than the better known Hadoop technology.


    • New Relic Joins OpenStack Community to Provide Proven Application Performance Management for Organizations Leveraging Open Source Cloud
      New Relic, Inc., the SaaS-based cloud application performance management provider, today announced that it has joined the OpenStack(TM) community, a global collaboration of developers and technologists producing the open standard cloud-computing platform for both public and private clouds. Organizations deploying web applications on OpenStack can use New Relic to automatically monitor web apps in production and proactively identify and eliminate potential bottlenecks.




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

    • VirtualBox 4.1.8 brings fixes for 3D support
      VirtualBox logo The VirtualBox development team has released the fourth maintenance update to the 4.1.x branch of its open source desktop virtualisation application for x86 hardware. As a maintenance update, VirtualBox 4.1.8 has no new features but does include changes that improve overall stability while also addressing several bugs found in the previous versions.


    • Disgruntled employee? Oracle doesn't seem to care about Solaris 11 code leak


    • Oracle Revs Up Solaris Studio 12.3
      Software developers offered new code analysis tools and extra speed via advanced compiler technology


    • Non-profit launches new OpenOffice.org fork
      A few days after the Apache Software Foundation reiterated its claim on the OpenOffice.org trademark, another non-profit in Germany has decided to flaunt the ASF and the Apache OpenOffice.org incubation process by releasing a new version of the popular open source office suite: White Label Office 3.3.1.

      The new office suite, now available for download, appears to be a direct slap in the face of the ASF by the German non-profit Team OpenOffice.org e.V., which has proclaimed its mission to keep OpenOffice.org development alive.




  • Project Releases



  • Public Services/Government

    • UK Government Open Standards: The Great Betrayal of 2012
      And if you want any further proof that the UK Cabinet Office has given up trying to defend UK interests, and totally capitulated to the pressure of proprietary software companies


    • Govt CIO acts on open source omission
      The Australian Government's acting CIO has stepped in to ensure open source software is considered as part of one of the largest software tenders currently on offer in Canberra.

      The Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) has counselled the Parliamentary Services Department (DPS) over its compliance with the Government’s Open Source Policy after the DPS released a request for tender (DPS11097) to revamp its integrated library system (ILS).




  • Openness/Sharing



    • Open Data

      • Mapping rivers, streets and trash bins
        The idea is to create a free and open source map of the neighbourhood that everyone can use and share. We make use of the open source OpenStreetMap (OSM) project, and the first step is to figure out how much of the neighbourhood is already mapped. After this, mapping activity (who goes to which street and what kind of data to collect) can be planned out. Then comes the fun part of exploring little alleyways, noting down details of shops, street-names, speed-breakers, trees and even trash bins. After that we discuss interesting observations and upload the collected data back to the OSM website. Once the hard work is done we celebrate the free open source map of the neighbourhood!






  • Programming





Leftovers



  • Censorship

    • Has Apple gone too far?
      Apparently, Apple not only claims the right to censor what's available for download onto your iOS devices, but they also reserve the ability to pull it totally off of your device if it slips past their reviewers in the first place. This means no more Quickpick in the Appstore, on iCloud, or on your iPhone. I'll let that sink in for a minute...




  • Civil Rights





Recent Techrights' Posts

What Puts the Brakes on GNU/Linux Adoption on Laptops and Desktops is Monopoly Control (or Monoculture) Over the Distros
Distros that adopt systemd are controlled by IBM and GAFAM
Layoffs in Twitter, Facebook, and Microsoft's LinkedIn
There are silent layoffs at Microsoft this month
We Don't Depend on Google and Don't Care for Google
We have our own site search and we don't depend on Google to bring visits/visitors to us
Facebook Layoffs Due to Enormous Debt, Nothing to Do With "Hey Hi" Slop
The lies about "hey hi" in relation to layoffs will only contribute to further public resentment towards: 1) the media and 2) all the slop.
 
GNU/Linux Distro Builders Barely Paid Enough to Pay Basic Bills, Chief of "Linux" Foundation (Not Even Using Linux!) Increases His Own Salary by Over 50% in 5 Years
Salaries or compensation correlate with the ability to exploit people, not to create things
The "Zero-Sum" Fallacy
Fallacies like "zero-sum" - especially in the context of foreign affairs including war - are utterly ruinous
A Happy Birthday to Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman will turn 73
Jürgen Habermas is Dead, But the Politicised, Inherently Corrupt, Corporatised Court for Patents That He Inspired Is Not
In the news throughout the weekend
Mountains of Abuses of Process by Brett Wilson LLP on Behalf of Americans and Sometimes at the Expense of British Taxpayers
a virtual "limited liability"
linuxteck.com FUD by LLM Slop, ubuntupit.com Passes the Slop Baton
Unless they get back to doing long-form authentic articles, as opposed to slop, no good will come out of it
Links 15/03/2026: New Shortages, Lynx Populations Depletion
Links for the day
Sruthi Chandran & Debian Diversity, Favoritism, Hidden Conflicts of Interest
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
software in the public domain
Reprinted with permission from Alex Oliva
Links 15/03/2026: Slop "Bubble Driving Interest in Chip Alternatives" and Wildlife Erosion Reported
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 14, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, March 14, 2026
Change of Address at the Hired Guns, Address Removed
Companies tend to alter their 'shell structure' in anticipation of major action
The Good IBM Managers Have Flown Away, All That's Left is the Book-Cooking Loyalists
IBM is just cheating the SEC and shareholders. This seems to be the only thing IBM's management is nowadays good at.
Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 12 Out of 200: Months Ahead of Serial Strangler From Microsoft Who Helped Double the Lawsuits (Funded by Third Parties) as 'Revenge' for Exposing Crimes
In 2024 I sat down and wrote about what had been done to me and to my wife
Crime Comes in Many Forms
apparently the SRA is OK with stranglers of women in America bullying the media in the UK
commandlinux.com, linuxteck.com, linuxiac.com, and linuxsecurity.com are Slopfarms With "Linux" in Their Domain Name
once readers realise they read slop they immediately lose interest
Links 14/03/2026: Adoption of Slop Has Killed BuzzFeed, Russia Sees "Economic Gain From Iran War"
Links for the day
Patriotism is Conditional, If It's Unconditional, Then It's Like a Cult
My love for Software Freedom is only as strong as my love for Freedom of the Press
Links 14/03/2026: Mass Layoffs at Facebook ('Meta') and Sweeping Layoffs at Twitter (xAI), Social Control Media and Slop Are Only Debt
Links for the day
Wrong Time, Wrong Place (Digg)
Kevin Rose and Alexis Ohanian can relaunch Digg.com, but we doubt it'll work "this time for real!"
Universities Became Bad Places for Work
What happened to academia?
Reporting New and Suppressed Information is What Journalism is All About
In the domain of Free software, there are very few sites out there that offer exclusive coverage on community affairs and there are many gagging/censorship attempts
The Limits of Speech and the Rationale of Limitations
it seems to be part of an international trend
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 13, 2026
IRC logs for Friday, March 13, 2026
Gemini Links 14/03/2026: Goodness, AD534 Multiplier Module, and Extroverts Online
Links for the day
Atlassian Corp: We're Doing Layoffs Because of "Hey Hi"; Wall Street: Atlassian Corp is Just a Failing Business
Don't ask "the media"
Microsofters' SLAPP Censorship - Part 11 Out of 200: Cannot Censor His Spouse, Accusations Are Repeated Today
He already has a history of threatening to sue gay people in America; he cannot take criticism too well
Price of Storage, Price of Energy... What Next?
EPO workers are going on strike because their salaries don't keep up with price increases and tech companies without connections in "the channel" face long delays, low availability, and high prices (no "bulk" purchases), which further solidifies monopolies.
Don't Forget Red Hat's RTO (Return-to-office) Layoffs
How many people still remember that Red Hat did the same thing?
Reminder: Microsoft silent Layoffs by RTO (Commute Time and Lack of Comfort/Work Satisfaction) Already in Effect This Year
It's difficult to measure how many employees have already "left on their own" due to the RTO policy
Founder of IBM Ventures Has Just Quit IBM
Some people leave IBM and many people 'leave' IBM
Signs of Impeding Mass Layoffs - Not Just Quiet Layoffs - at Microsoft
Beneath the surface there are waves of layoffs and even entire teams are let go
Career Science and Academia as Corporate Propaganda 'on Tap'
article about surveillance
Veteran GNU/Linux Journalist Jack Wallen Tries Geminispace and Likes It
It'll turn 7 some time soon
Scheduled Maintenance Tonight
There will be similar work early next week
"Alternative to Microsoft Office" Must Use Free/Open Standards/Formats for Real Sovereignty
It would make sense for the EU to invest in its own workers and its own software projects, more so now that there are hostile countries both to the east and to the west
IBM Has No Clue How to Integrate Companies Like Red Hat
IBM is failing to respect this company's culture
Fake Articles From Sites With "Linux" in Their Name/Domain Name
we can at least hope that linuxteck.com made a decision to quit slop
Links 13/03/2026: New US Weapons for Taiwan, Pakistan Air Strikes Hit Kabul
Links for the day
Gemini Links 13/03/2026: Exhaustion and Smartphone Addiction
Links for the day
Friday the 13th & Debian Developers afraid to nominate in DPL elections
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 13/03/2026: Chatbot "Pentagon Contract" (Bailout) and Secret Service Ditches Slop Pusher
Links for the day
When Everybody Has a Right/Access to An Attorney/Lawyer (But Some Get Funding From Malicious American Corporations to Spend a Million Dollars on Many Lawyers and Several Barristers)
And send about 75 KG of legal papers to the residence of the "opponent"
European Qualifying Examination (EQE) Being Reduced to Pieces of Papers One Can Buy, Patent System Rapidly Losing Its Legitimacy
Welcome to the "new Europe"
Priorities in 2026
2026 is an interesting year
Willis Towers Watson (WTW) Producing More Propaganda for EPO "Cocaine Communication Managers"
The Local Staff Committee The Hague (LSCTH) has this new paper about Willis Towers Watson (WTW) and its annual EPO-sponsored propaganda, pretending all is well when things are clearly dire
Head of Microsoft Office and Microsoft 360 is Leaving Microsoft Amid Problems and Mass Layoffs
Microsoft is like a "legacy" company
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 12, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, March 12, 2026
Gemini Links 13/03/2026: "Someone to Take Over Antenna" and Random Seed/RNG
Links for the day