Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 27/2/2012: Linux 3.3 RC5, Orange and x86





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • Projects showcase Central La. students' interest in science
    The 12-year-old Pollock Elementary School pupil showed how he believes Linux is better than Windows at the Louisiana Region IV Science and Engineering Fair Saturday at Louisiana State University at Alexandria's Fitness Center.


  • Ten Things I Wish I Knew When Becoming A Linux Admin
    Ten years ago I installed Linux for the very first time. To be exact, it was Slackware 7, the best distribution at the time in my opinion. Since then I’ve come to favor Debian Linux as my favorite version…at least for my Linux servers. I like to have a solid core system installed that I can build from scratch, but this is for another time. This article is for you new Linux admins; here are the ten things I wish I knew when starting my Linux admin journey.


  • Desktop

    • GNU/Linux on the Desktop: Alive and Growing


      So, while Adobe and AK may believe GNU/Linux is dead in the water, the real reason for abandoning Flash on GNU/Linux lies elsewhere, likely the fact that Flash is a dead-end technology with HTML 5 ramping up. Killing Flash in 5 years is irrelevant for that reason.






  • Kernel Space



  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments

    • The Completely Blank Xfce Desktop
      The Xfce desktop environment comes with Xubuntu and is also available in the Xfce versions of Linux Mint, Fedora and other Linux distributions. Using Xfce, you can easily set up a highly functional but completely blank desktop - no icons, no menus, nothing. Just a blank screen or a favourite wallpaper, ideal for the user who hates distractions or loves simplicity. Here's how to do it.




  • Distributions



    • New Releases



    • Gentoo Family

      • Sabayon 8.0: slightly burnt dessert
        February 2012 brought us some fresh releases of Linux-based operating systems. These systems are not as big and famous as Ubuntu, Fedora or OpenSuSE, but still have a considerable army of fans.




    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat vs Oracle Linux Support: 10 Years Is New Standard
        The Linux chess match between Red Hat and Oracle now involves a showdown on long-term support strategies. Indeed, both Red Hat and Oracle recently extended their Linux support life cycles to a lengthy 10 years. The big potential winners are partners and customers that are trying to maintain long-term IT road maps involving Linux data centers.


      • Is It Time to Try on Red Hat?
        Software firm Red Hat Inc. (RHT) captured my attention this weekend as I was scanning through lists of stocks. This poor equity was largely abandoned in December by investors despite a strong earnings report. A mix of sky-high expectations and poor news from Oracle (ORCL) in late December had the security dropping close to $39 on extremely high trading volume. The kind of high volume that bottoms are built on.


      • Red Hat’s Cloud and Virtualization Win: More to Come?
        It’s a familiar story: Like so many other telecom services providers, CDLAN is trying to push into cloud services. For CDLAN, the path to SaaS and cloud services involves an open source twist: Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Is this a sign of things to come for Red Hat?






  • Devices/Embedded



    • Phones







Free Software/Open Source



  • Press Release: KuwaitNet to open source VPN platform
    KuwaitNET, a complete Internet solutions provider, announces the launch of VPNPlatform.org in an effort to give back to the open source community which has been a large driver of their business over the years.


  • Open source opens doors for Aussie start-up
    It's pretty rare for a start-up company to benefit from more than a decade of software development valued at about $2 million each year. Rarer still for one to land a six figure contract before it has even launched a commercial product.

    But that is precisely what Gold Coast-based Opmantek has done. The company was formed in October 2010 to acquire the commercial rights to the popular open source network management software Network Management Information System (NMIS), a product first developed in 1999 by one of Opmantek's founders, Keith Sinclair.


  • Events

    • GNUmed holds mini conference
      GNUmed has been around a while. Most communication happens via the mailing list. Not everyone is comfortable with mailing lists and users tend to stay away from it. That is why we are planning a get together in Leipzig, Germany.




  • Education

    • Nature Editorial: If you want reproducible science, the software needs to be open source
      Modern scientific and engineering research relies heavily on computer programs, which analyze experimental data and run simulations. In fact, you would be hard-pressed to find a scientific paper (outside of pure theory) that didn’t involve code in some way. Unfortunately, most code written for research remains closed, even if the code itself is the subject of a published scientific paper. According to an editorial in Nature, this hinders reproducibility, a fundamental principle of the scientific method.

      Reproducibility refers to the ability to repeat some work and obtain similar results. It is especially important when the results are unexpected or appear to defy accepted theories (for example, the recent faster-than-light neutrinos). Scientific papers include detailed descriptions of experimental methods—sometimes down to the specific equipment used—so that others can independently verify results and build upon the work.






  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC





Leftovers

  • TEST: How to know if your computer license should be revoked




  • Finance

    • SEC Seeks Testimony of Ex-IKB Employee in Lawsuit Against Goldman’s Tourre
      The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission wants to question a former employee of IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG (IKB) in its lawsuit against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) trader Fabrice Tourre, court records show.

      The SEC today asked a federal judge in New York to issue a so-called letter of request that would allow the agency to take testimony from Jorg Zimmerman, a resident of Germany.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

    • Facebook suffers lobbying exodus
      The move signals that the gloves are coming off in the ongoing lobbying fight between content providers and Internet companies. Facebook's lobbying spending increased about 285 percent from $351,000 in 2010 to $1.35 million in 2011.




  • Privacy



  • Internet/Net Neutrality

    • 'The Free Internet Act' Emerges As Redditors Craft SOPA Alternative
      When two proposed anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA looked as if they could become law, social news site Reddit helped organize a large-scale online protest that led lawmakers to table the bills indefinitely. But the activism didn't stop there, and now Redditors are trying to draft legislation of their own.

      "The Free Internet Act," as the idea has been tentatively named, intends to preempt any future legislation aiming to limit the scope of the Internet or censor content. Redditors have turned the "r/fia" page into a place to craft something they'd like to someday see become a standard for governing the Internet.


    • Study Confirms What You Already Knew: Mobile Data Throttling About The Money, Not Stopping Data Hogs
      Of the four national mobile operators, only Sprint still offers an "unlimited" data plan -- and most industry watchers expect that to go away soon. When the operators talk about this stuff, they complain about how unlimited plans are abused and the amount of data being used by so-called "data hogs" is crippling network bandwidth. Of course, the alternative story is that they just want to charge people higher rates, and putting a toll booth on data usage makes that possible. A new study by Validas confirms that the latter theory seems to match with reality. The company looked at 11,000 mobile phone bills of users on both throttled (tiered) plans and unlimited data plans and found... data usage was effectively the same. In other words, for all the talk about how tiers and throttles are needed to stop bandwidth hogging... reality shows that these plans have little impact on actual data usage. Or, to put it really simply: these plans are all about the mobile operators making more money and have nothing to do with network capacity.




  • Intellectual Monopolies



    • Copyrights

      • Why Ebook Portal Library.nu Differed From Other Filesharing Sites
        A couple of weeks ago the popular ebook portal Library.nu was shut down, apparently voluntarily, after a coalition of book publishers obtained an injunction against it and a similar site.


      • Leaked Audit in Eminem Royalty Suit Highlights Huge Stakes for Record Industry
        Here's what an examiner turned up when opening Aftermath's financial books to see how much was owed to Eminem's production team.


      • If You Want To Compete With Free, This Is What You Need To Know
        When it comes to competing with piracy, one of the talking points of copyright maximalists is that content creators "can't compete with free." These people complain that because pirates don't have to cover production costs, competing with them is a losing venture. What these people have not learned, despite our many attempts to teach them, is that price is not the only cost considered when consumers choose between buying legally and pirating. Over at Gamasutra, one expert blogger, Lars Doucet, has shared a very profound look at four "currencies" people consider when making such a choice.


      • One More Copyright Infringement, And HADOPI Must Disconnect Itself From The Net


      • Crony Capitalism: Big Companies Sponsor Fancy Dinner For TPP Negotiators
        We've talked about the ridiculous Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement negotiations, which are being held with incredible levels of secrecy, and which appear to include a wishlist of every copyright reform change that Hollywood wants, with little to no public scrutiny. The USTR, who's in charge of negotiating the agreement for the US claims that there's unprecedented transparency -- and that may be true if you're talking about the unprecedented lack of transparency in the negotiations. And where it gets really ridiculous is that while the public has no access to the information, the big company lobbyists have pretty much full access. We already spoke about the recent meetings in Hollywood, where TPP negotiators got to party with the Hollywood elite -- but civil society/public interest groups who tried to hold an open meeting in the hotel (and reserved space and everything) were kicked out of the hotel.


      • UK Labour Party: Let's Just Get On With Kicking People Offline Over Copyright Infringement
        As Techdirt reported at the time, the UK's Digital Economy Bill was rammed through Parliament, without proper scrutiny or even much democratic process, in the dying hours of the previous government. Since then, the implementation of the Digital Economy Act has moved forward relatively slowly. That's partly because there have been a series of legal challenges from ISPs concerned about its legality (and likely cost for them). In addition, it made sense for the current UK government to wait for the completion of the Hargreaves report on copyright in the digital age before proceeding.


      • Reductio Ad Absurdum: Eternal Copyright Is Crazy... But What About Today's Copyright Term?
        Of course, it's easy to laugh at satire like this... until you remember that some make such arguments seriously. But, similarly, it seems worth recognizing that for most of us, copyright is already effectively eternal. Here in the US nothing has entered the public domain in quite some time and it's questionable if or when anything new will enter the public domain... as most people fully expect Disney to push for another copyright term extension as Mickey Mouse approaches the public domain yet again.


      • ACTA

        • FFII call for action: Act on ACTA
          over the past 10 years we have been at the forefront of many policy initiatives to prevent more risks for software professionals: Software Patents, IPRED1+2, Data Retention, European Interoperability Framework and many others. Since 2008 we have been following the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and sought to bring transparency in the process. Our involvement was partly successful, for instance criminal enforcement was not extended to patents and the Commission released the text of the agreement. However, both process and content are still deeply flawed.


        • ACTA is part of a multi-decade, worldwide copyright campaign
          Last week, we observed that major content companies have enjoyed a steady drumbeat of victories in Congress and the courts over the last two decades. The lobbying and litigation campaigns that produced these results have a counterpart in the executive branch. At the urging of major copyright holders, the Obama administration has been working to export restrictive American copyright laws abroad. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is just the most visible component of this ambitious and long-running project.


        • Where did the patients go?
          The European Commission decided to ask the EU Court of Justice an opinion on ACTA. Commissioner Karel De Gucht stated: “We are planning to ask Europe’s highest court to assess whether ACTA is incompatible – in any way – with the EU’s fundamental rights and freedoms, such as freedom of expression and information or data protection and the right to property in case of intellectual property.”










Recent Techrights' Posts

IBM is "Making an Exit". Only the Executives Will Get Rich.
failure disguised as success
2026 is the Year of Blockchains, Says IBM's CEO a Decade Ago?
"falling upwards"
Most Coders Used to be Women, Not Men (and Men Who Dropped Out of College Now Plunder Everything They Can)
"Ethics For Hackers"
European Patent Office (EPO) Series: Down But Not Out – Costa's Comeback
he managed to secure a top-level EU position in June 2024
 
Links 05/06/2026: Lawyers in Trouble for Citing Cases That Don't Exist (Slop Too Bad to Justify Costs; Even It It Did Work, It Would Still be Far Too Expensive)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/06/2026: Bears in the Streets, WWII Revisionism, and Westworld
Links for the day
Microsoft's LinkedIn Called "Dying Platform" by One Who Worked There
The co-founder of LinkedIn has just stepped down too
GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) Layoffs Are Due to Surging Debt, or About 120 Billion Dollars Borrowed in One Year Alone
It's well above 150 billion dollars if one adds Oracle
After One Jeffrey Epstein Associate 'Leaves' Microsoft's Board Another Jeffrey Epstein Associate Steps Down, Workers Concerned About the Mass Layoffs
How many more loans can Microsoft receive? Those loans are becoming increasingly risky.
IBM Exploits Overambitious, Hungry Young Men to Help the "Great Quantum Hype Campaign" (Pumping the Stock Based on Deliberate Misinformation or Outright Disinformation)
The boot-licking campaign is live...
What Will Likely Happen When the Slop Bubble Pops (and When It'll be Widely Accepted That It Popped)
all the "most successful" slop companies are so deep in debt
The Register MS is Part of the Problem, It's Publishing "AI" SPAM Because it's Paid by Chinese Military-Connected Firms
Given that The Register MS is run by a Microsofter (since last summer), destruction seems inevitable
IBM's CEO Does Not Use GNU/Linux, So Why Did He Suggest Buying Red Hat Only to Lay Off Its Workers, Market Slop Instead of Linux, and Sack UNIX Professionals?
Shortly after IBM had bought Red Hat and there were mass layoffs we pointed out that Red Hat's CEO was not using GNU/Linux
If You're Not Focusing on Software Freedom, All You'll Get is Slopware and Buzzwords
If you're not focusing on attaining Software Freedom (and remember "Linux" is just a brand), then you're losing sight of the goals that actually matter
Red Hat/IBM: Microsoft is Our Partner of the Year
Red Hat is a really bad gravy
Gemini Links 05/06/2026: Enshittification of Institutes for Project Management, Codebases Contaminated With Slop, Personal Stories
Links for the day
Communicating With Freedom - Part II - Quibble Breathing New Life Into LibreJS
Notice how work on one thing led to thousands of lines of code added to a mostly dormant (but nevertheless important) project
Slop Has no ROI, an Economy Built on False Assumptions of Slop is Doomed
we're all going to suffer from this Ponzi scheme
Links 05/06/2026: More GAFAM Layoffs, Google Faces Regulatory Crackdown in UK Over Plagiarism in "AI" Clothing
Links for the day
Rumour That Layoffs at Microsoft Will Kick Off on July 1st, 2026 (Impacting 10,000 or More Workers)
this is what the rumour mill or the word through the grapevine is
Mission:Libre, Which Teaches Young People Free Software Ideals, Needs Financial Backing
plea for assistance with Mission:Libre
The Slop Ponzi Scheme is a Problem and Threat to All of Us (Even Those Who Don't Invest in or Use Slop at All)
This problem is systemic, not contained
"Blind Justice" Examines the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Turning a Blind Eye to Abuse by British Solicitors
We have some jaw-dropping examples of how the SRA does not do actual regulation - to the point where its staff does not actual work and does not look into any evidence at all!
7 Days From Now the FSF's Founder Gives a Talk in Bern, the FSF Has Just Advertised This
Meanwhile the FSF (or GNU) processes and uploads many recent talks by RMS
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, June 04, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, June 04, 2026
Links 04/06/2026: Self-hosting Remotely and GemText Emphasis
Links for the day
Links 04/06/2026: Ukraine’s Daily Moment of Silence and Uber Lays off 23% of HR
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 98 Out of 200: Microsoft Threatening Real Security Researcher With Criminal Investigation for Talking About Microsoft's Bug Doors/Back Doors
The crime should be the back doors (deliberate attack on every user's data protection), not talking about those back doors
Microsoft Would Get Away Even With Pedophilia
"Microsoft should never be above the law"
Journalists Should be Ashamed for Parroting False Claims From IBM Management About "Quantum Computing", Say IBM Insiders Who Work on "Quantum Computing"
IBM is a buzzwords vendor. International Buzzwords Machines.
Free Software is Nourishment to Software Users, Unlike Proprietary Software
Quit treating "mere users" of software "like animals"
The "Peanut Gallery" of GAFAM Has Infiltrated Free Software Projects or Disrupts Free Software Communities
They contribute nearly nothing and do substantial damage; they're freeloaders who attack the most productive members of projects
Coding is Not a Quantity Game (It Never Was!)
"less is more"
Exposing Corruption Using a Highly Resilient Platform
Growing levels of trust, based on our track record, help us attract whistleblowers
Mass Layoffs Expected at Microsoft in July 2026
They're preparing more "lists" of people
Reflection on EPO Leadership That Harbours Cocaine, IBM Leadership That Pumps-and-Dumps the Shares, and More
ManCity replaced Manuel Pellegrini with a more famous manager it didn't envision winning 20 titles in 10 years (it could only hope) [...] Team-building is something that "Pep" seemed to be good at, as was Jürgen Klopp
Pump and Dump by IBM Insider Traders: Nickle LaMoreaux, Gary Cohn, James Kavanaugh, Arvind Krishna, Robert Thomas, and Others
the shares are already collapsing
FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) Has Weakened If Not Ruined What's Left of Big Media
Many things that have existed for decades are now being rebranded as "AI"
SLAPP Censorship - Part 97 Out of 200: Garrett in Hiding (From the Simple Observable Fact He's Closely Connected to the Microsofter Who Strangles Women, Tells Women to Kill Themselves, and Worse)
They use one another; they are coordinating this via the SLAPP industry in another continent
Links 04/06/2026: Microsoft Threatening Security Researcher for Naming Back Doors in BitLocker, "Demand is Booming for" Old Tech
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/06/2026: "Word Vomit", Slop", and Moving to Gopher/Gemini
Links for the day
Rust Outsources its Financing (or Financial Control) to Microsoft
How long before the third "E"?
"Format Sovereignty" Can Only be Accomplished With LaTeX or OpenDocument Format (ODF) or Vendor-Neutral Standards for Editable Documents
Microsoft is, in effect, above the law
IBM's Shares Fell Nearly 13% in One Day (Including After Hours)
its main product is false promises
The Cyber Show on the Importance of Software Freedom and Why GNU/Linux Could Not be Stopped
an excellent article
Drew DeVault Can Still Redeem His Reputation. Revisiting His Attacks (and Attack Site) on Richard Stallman Might be a Good Start.
DeVault has openly apologised (this past spring)
The Register MS is Publishing Paid SPAM; Some of It is Designed to Prop Up the "AI" Pyramid Scheme
The Register MS participates in scams
European Patent Office (EPO) Series: "Operation Influencer"
Costa's political career was far from finished
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, June 03, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, June 03, 2026
GNU/Linux Usage Rising Among Gamers, But "Hardware Survey Data Not Available."
Not anymore, not for now anyway
Jumping Up and Down on the Shoulders of Giants, Never Talking About What Bill Gates Did
We're back to 2019
Despite LLM Slop or Chatbots, Our Traffic Has Doubled Since We Moved Everything to the UK (in 2023)
The demise of news sites was not what we thought it would be
Software Developers Attacked by Plagiarism Engines Because These Developers Can Teach People How to Exercise Control, Not Outsource to Monopolies of Slop and Back Doors
"Universities should be telling industry what is to be done next, not the other way about. Present education policy has the tail wagging the dog."
Quantum Quantum Quantum Quantum (Pump, Then Dump)
What has IBM become?
Communicating With Freedom - Part I - Developing “Quibble” and Improving GNU LibreJS in the Process
In the next part we shall examine where things currently stand
Quantum Computers Are "All the Rage" (35 Years Ago, What IBM Promises This Year is What People Promised When the CEO Was in His 20s)
"Quantum" hype is high on the agenda
How IBM Removes 15% of Its Staff Without Even Checking Performance of Staff (or Calling That "Layoffs")
Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) as veiled RAs
Links 03/06/2026: Mobile Systems, Openwashing, and New Antenna
Links for the day
Canonical as Reseller of Back Doors in "Ubuntu" Clothing
Microsoft is the antithesis of security and autonomy
Romania Used to be Windows Stronghold, But That's No Longer the Case
Windows was once upon a time so ubiquitous that institutions didn't bother supporting anything except it
KDE Has Long Used Dragons, and Dragons Come From Hatched Eggs
That Microsoft Lunduke tries to paint this as some "trans agenda" thing says a lot about Microsoft Lunduke and his COVID-19-damaged brain
IBM Announces 5 Billion Dollars "Invested" in "AI", in "Security", and 10 Billion Dollars for "Quantum", But IBM Does Not Have This Kind of Money (It's Fake News to Manipulate the Share Price)
IBM has fast-growing debt and liabilities, it does not intend to invest this kind of money, it's a smokescreen and false promises timed to alleviate the sagging share price (52-week low)
When Science and Religion Are on the Same Side, United Against Slop Pushers
The "Mathematics Pope" (sometimes known as "Pope Pi") brought together science and religion, united against technofascists who are mostly college drop-outs who abhor women
Links 03/06/2026: "In Turkey, Criticizing a Corporation Can Land You in Jail" and "Court Bans X Account of Turkey's Oldest Newspaper"
Links for the day
Web Censorship Benefits the Corrupt and the Criminal
More so when corrupt politicians are in charge
Have a "Lifetime" Without Microsoft
The online rage over this is still ongoing
Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine Undoing Censorship of Corporate Wrongdoing
That won't go away anymore
"For Entertainment Purposes Only" But Everyone Must Adopt It for Work and Governance, Say Anti-Scientific Technocrats
"The present mentality around "AI" is like driving to the gym to use a treadmill - it's walking for people who hate fresh air and beautiful changing scenery."
Gemini Links 03/06/2026: Ian Murdock's Ex-wife Footprint in Debian and Alhena 5.6.1 Released
Links for the day
Irish Company statCounter Recognises It Overestimated Microsoft Windows' Market Share in Ireland
it seems like the Irish people are gradually moving away from Windows
Corporate Media Participates in the Lie That Mass Layoffs at GitLab and Loss of Geographic Footprint in More Than a Third of Countries is "AI" and Thus "Success Story"
There's no way to spin this as positive news
Slop Prompting is Not a Coding Skill and Slop Deserves Shunning
Red Hat is hypocritically shunning the very same thing it keeps promoting
IBM colleagues "handed out a PIP and then right after the end date they are gone"
Some go into early 'retirement' to save face
SLAPP Censorship - Part 96 Out of 200: When You Receive Death Threats From Anonymous Sockpuppets/Burner Accounts Connected to People Who Strangle Women and Tell Women to Kill Themselves
Women are not objects and my wife ought not be mentioned in "threats to kill" (how cops have described this)
European Patent Office (EPO) Series: A Tale of Two Antónios - Introducing the Other António
António Costa
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, June 02, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, June 02, 2026