Bonum Certa Men Certa

GNU/Linux is Everywhere, But People Need to Keep It Under People's (and Developers') Control

Summary: Apathy in the age of GNU/Linux ubiquity leads away from focus on freedom

EARLIER this month it was quite popular to publish overviews of potential GNU/Linux-powered gifts (there are some examples we have not cited yet [1,2]). It's just too easy to find GNU/Linux gadgets because it's the de facto operating system in so many areas (though branding may not suggest so). GNU/Linux has become a strong force not just on this planet but also elsewhere, e.g. in space, arguably Mars (there was a debate about it), perhaps even on asteroids, based on an article from September (source: Linux.com/Linux Foundation [3]). GNU/Linux has not achieved just world domination; it's almost extra-celestial (if we ever got this far). Free software won. But it depends on the criteria, e.g. popularity, market share, level of freedom. Hardware with GNU/Linux on it has gotten easier to obtain [4] and one recent example of it is Lini PC [5-7]. With the triumph of Free software, however it may be defined (many of the hardware is locked down), comes some certain apathy, as if it's all taken for granted. Linux Australia membership is declining [8], Nuxified is up for sale [9] (one among many Free/libre software and GNU/Linux sites to go down this path), and Linux Format lost some of its best writers, who are going independent [10-12] (which in a way is a good thing, unless you are Linux Format). What has become very worrying to me is that in the GNU/Linux world we are now going through what happened in the patents scene; a lot of corporations take over the message, so people's stance and will just simply get ignored or misrepresented. We really need to retain the voice of the people (including developers), marginalising the voices of non-technical managers and large companies that are purely shareholders-driven. Failing to do so will contribute to a drift in the wrong direction, e.g. TPM, restricted boot, DRM, and censorship.



Related/contextual items from the news:





  1. 2013 Holiday Shopping Guide For Linux PC Hardware


  2. Top 10 Linux-Based Gifts for 2013 Under $400










  3. Penguins in Space! Asteroid mining and Linux
    No, Planetary Resource isn't kidding. It’s working on using Linux, open-source software, and commercial off-the-shelf hardware to build the first robotic asteroid miners.






  4. Choosing A 2013 Laptop/Ultrabook For Linux


    Earlier this week I asked what laptop you would like to see tested on Linux. I've been shopping for some new laptops/hardware since I always enjoy testing and benchmarking new hardware under Linux at Phoronix plus as mentioned in that earlier article I'll be over in Russia for the next month focusing on Phoronix Test Suite 5.0 and other developments, so I need a couple more portable systems with new hardware for Phoronix benchmarking. There's also plenty of good shopping deals for the holiday season. After going through the 50+ comments, I ended up doing a Black Friday purchase of the ASUS Zenbook Prime.




  5. Here Comes Linux Powered Lini PC With Intel Haswell Processor


  6. Lini is a Haswell PC for Linux

 (or Windows)


  7. Lini PC offers small Linux computers with Haswell chips


    One of the nice things about Ubuntu and most other Linux distributions is that you can install them on pretty much any PC without paying a penny. In many cases, everything will work perfectly out of the box — but when it doesn’t, you could find yourself spending a lot of time researching tricks for enabling support for your graphics card, wireless chip, input devices, or other hardware.




  8. Linux Australia membership falls by 10 per cent


    Membership of Linux Australia has fallen by a little more than 10 per cent since January this year, according to figures released by the organisation.
  9. After 8 Years Nuxified is for Sale




  10. Linux Voice journos hit crowdfunding target
    A brief update on the crowdfunding efforts of three British journalists, who all worked at Linux Format to launch a new magazine. They have hit their £90,000 launch target for Linux Voice, with 14 days to go.


  11. On Indiegogo: Linux Voice Meets Crowdfunding Goal For Free Software Magazine




  12. The Linux Setup - Mike Saunders, Linux Voice
    What distribution do you run on your main desktop/laptop?

    Xubuntu 13.04 at the moment. I really like the Debian underpinnings, and I’ve been using Xfce for years. Before that I was a big fan of Window Maker.




Recent Techrights' Posts

Real Life Should be Offline, Not Online, and It Requires Free Software
Resistance means having the guts to say "no!", even in the face of great societal burden and peer pressure
 
IBM Took a Man’s Voice, Pitting Him Against His Own Work, While Companies Profit from Low-Effort Garbage Generated by Bots and “Self-Service”
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Links 26/09/2023: KDE, Programming, and More
Links for the day
Mozilla Promotes the Closed Web and Proprietary Webapps That Are Security and Privacy Hazards
This is just another reminder that the people who run Mozilla don't know the history of Firefox, don't understand the Web, and are beholden to "GAFAM", not to Firefox users
Debian More Like an Exploitative Sweatshop Than a Family
Wiltshire is riding a high horse in the UK, talking down to Indians who are "low-level" volunteers in his kingdom of authoritarians, guarded by an army of British lawyers who bully bloggers
Small Computers in Large Numbers: A Pipeline of Open Hardware
They guard and prioritise their "premiums", causing severe price hikes due to supply/demand disparities.
Microsoft Deserves a Medal for Being Worst at Security (the Media Deserves a Medal for Cover-up)
There are still corruptible/bribed publishers that quote Microsoft staff like they're security gurus
10 Reasons to Permanently Export or Liberate Your Site From WordPress, Drupal, and Other Bloatware
There are certainly more more advantages, but 10 should suffice for now
About 200,000 Objects in Techrights Web Site
This hopefully helps demonstrate just how colossal the migration actually is
Good Teachers Would Tell Kids to Quit Social Control Media Rather Than Participate in It (Teaching Means Education, Not Misinformation)
Insist that classrooms offer education to children rather than offer children to corporations
Twitter: From Walled Gardens to Paywalls and/or Amplifiers of Fascism
There's moreover a push to promote politicians who are as scummy as Twitter's owner
The World Wide Web is Being Confiscated From Us (Like Syndication Was Withdrawn About a Decade Ago) and We Need to Fight Back
We're worse off when fewer people promote RSS feeds and instead outsource to social control media (censorship, surveillance, manipulation)
Next Up: Restoring IRC Log Pipelines, Bulletins/Full Text RSS, Wiki (Archived, Static), and Pipelines for Daily Links
There are still many tasks left ahead of us, but we've progressed a lot
An Era of Rotting Technology, Migration Crises, and Cliffhanging
We've covered examples from IBM, resembling the Microsoft world
First Iteration of Techrights as 100% Static Pages Web Site
We want to champion another decade or two of positive impact and opinionated analysis
Links 25/09/2023: Patent News and Coding
some remaining links for today
Steam Deck is Mostly Good in the Sense That It Weakens Microsoft's Dominance (Windows)
The Steam Deck is mostly a DRM appliance
SUSE is Just Another Black Cat Working for Proprietary Giants/Monopolies
SUSE's relationship with firms such as these generally means that SUSE works for authority, not for community, and when it comes to cryptography it just follows guidelines from the US government
IBM is Selling Complexity, Not GNU/Linux
It's not about the clients, it's about money
Birthday of Techrights in 6 Weeks (Tux Machines and Techrights Reach Combined Age of 40 in 2025)
We've already begun the migration to static
Linux Foundation: We Came, We Saw, We Plundered
Linux Foundation staff uses neither Linux nor Open Source. They're essentially using, exploiting, piggybacking goodwill gestures (altruism of volunteers) while paying themselves 6-figure salaries.
Security Isn't the Goal of Today's Software and Hardware Products
Any newly-added layer represents more attack surface
Linux Too Big to Be Properly Maintained When There's an Incentive to Sell More and More Things (Complexity and Narrow Support Window)
They want your money, not your peace of mind. That's a problem.
Modern Web Means Proprietary Trash
Mozilla is financially beholden to Google and thus we cannot expect any pushback or for Firefox to "reclaims the Web" a second time around
Godot 4.2 is Approaching, But After What Happened to Unity All Game Developers Should be Careful
We hope Unity will burn in a massive fire and, as for Godot, we hope it'll get rid of Microsoft
GNU/Linux Has Conquered the World, But Users' Freedom Has Not (Impediments Remain in Hardware)
Installing one's system of choice on a device is very hard, sometimes impossible
Another Copyright Lawsuit Against Microsoft (or its Proxy) for Misuse of Large Works by Chatbot
Some people mocked us for saying this day would come; chatbots are a huge disappointment and they're on very shaky legal ground
Privacy is Not a Crime, Reporting Hidden Facts Is Not a Crime Either
the powerful companies/governments/societies get to know everything about everybody, but if anyone out there discovers or shares dark secrets about those powerful companies/governments/societies, that's a "crime"
United Workforce Always Better for the Workers
In the case of technology, it is possible that a lack of collective action is because of relatively high salaries and less physically-demanding jobs
Purge of Software Freedom and Its Voices
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
GNOME and GTK Taking Freedom Away From Users
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer