Historical Week for Debian and Ubuntu (a Look Back)
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-02-15 11:34:24 UTC
- Modified: 2014-02-15 11:34:24 UTC
Summary: A roundup of news about Debian, Ubuntu, and derivatives of Ubuntu
Debian
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The Debian project is pleased to announce the fourth update of its stable distribution Debian 7 (codename "wheezy"). This update mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustments for serious problems. Security advisories were already published separately and are referenced where available. Please note that this update does not constitute a new version of Debian 7 but only updates some of the packages included. There is no need to throw away old "wheezy" CDs or DVDs but only to update via an up-to-date Debian mirror after an installation, to cause any out of date packages to be updated.
Systemd in Debian
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Since this weekend we have known that systemd was winning the Debian init system battle, but now it's official: systemd has prevailed over Upstart in Debian.
After a very heated fight between the Debian technical committee and also Debian stakeholders, Bdale Garbee as the chairman of the tech committee has announced systemd will be used in Debian 8.0 Jessie.
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systemd already has a wide adoption withing the GNU/Linux distribution with all major distros including openSUSE, Fedora, Arch Linux, etc using it as their default init system. Upstart was either way not getting much support from the free software community due to the restrictive CLAs Canonical requires which is often criticized by the community. With Debian going* for systemd, it will get even more developer power whereas Canonical will be left alone to deal with Upstart along with many more project that it’s trying to do on its own – including the recently discussed File Manager which may replace Nautilus (Files).
Systemd in Ubuntu
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Going forward, systemd will be Debian's default init system for Linux distributions, an init system soon to be used by every other major Linux distribution other than Ubuntu.
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With this move Canonical has slowed the alienation of Ubuntu from the rest of the Linux community. It also shows that Canonical also understand that it can’t fork it’s path too much from the mainstream Linux community, especially from mommy Debian. In a nutshell it’s a wise and welcome decision by Ubuntu leadership and will help them focus on more pressing issues which will help make Ubuntu better.
Systemd
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My view is that this idea is wrong: systemd is broken by design, and despite offering highly enticing improvements over legacy init systems, it also brings major regressions in terms of many of the areas Linux is expected to excel: security, stability, and not having to reboot to upgrade your system.
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As usual in these cases, not just Lennart, but many of those who supported him, also those who sponsored these efforts, has suffered all kind of attacks. Sadly not just for technical, I mean ATTACKS. Even journalists have been involved. Yes, Free Software is also mature enough to have "yellow (technical) press" associated, political and business interests and people in different communities willing to use them against anybody who threaten the current status quo.
Mobile
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Vodafone joined Ubuntu’s Carrier Advisory Group, as Ubuntu demoed progress on a unified desktop/mobile UI, but a Debian decision may further isolate Ubuntu.
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One of Canonical's main goals in bringing Ubuntu to mobile devices is to create a converged platform across smartphones, tablets, and PCs. As such, a developer should be able to write an app that has a single code base yet runs on all three types of devices, presenting a different interface to the user on each form factor.
Licence Agreement
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Canonical has issued an official explanation for the reason why Linux Mint developers have to sign a license agreement in order to continue to distribute the package straight from the Ubuntu repos.
Valve
LTS
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After this weekend sharing benchmarks of the recent Ubuntu 12.04 LTS point releases, here's some complementary tests that offer a look at the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" performance against the current state of the "Trusty Tahr", a.k.a. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.
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The Ubuntu team is pleased to announce the release of Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS
(Long-Term Support) for its Desktop, Server, Cloud, and Core products,
as well as other flavours of Ubuntu with long-term support.
Development
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Last week I was in Orlando sprinting with my team as well as the platform, SDK, and security teams and some desktop and design folks. As usual after a sprint, I have been slammed catching up with email, but I wanted to provide a summary of some work going that you can expect to see soon in the Ubuntu app developer platform.
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The Ubuntu Developer Summit is the primary place where we discuss, debate, and plan the future of Ubuntu. The entire event takes place online, is open and accessible to all, and every session is recorded so everyone can see how decisions are made. It is a useful, fun, and rewarding event to join.
Ubuntu Variants
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Various flavors of Ubuntu 14.04 have come out today with their Trusty Tahr Alpha 2 spins.
Bodhi Linux
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We are huge fans of Jeff Hoogland’s work as a Software Developer and his efforts with Bodhi Linux. So we invited Jeff for a quick chat with Unixmen Australia. We were privileged when Jeff accepted our invitation. Here is what he had to say.
Linux Mint
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It’s no great secret that our organization Reglue uses Linux Mint on many of our outgoing computers. I run Mint on one of my work computers and at home as well. Linux Mint has given us the opportunity to create a respin for educational purposes within our non profit, largely due to an app named mintConstructor. It provides a fairly simple method of making custom systems using Linux Mint as the base.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- What's Very Vexing to GAFAM, EPO and Others Is That It's Incredibly Hard to Censor Us (and Nobody Ever Successfully Did That Before)
- resist, do not capitulate
- Receiving SLAPPs and Collecting Them Like Trophies (the SLAPPs Always Fail)
- People who file lawsuits bring even more attention to themselves (or to embarrassing statements about them)
- Year of GNU/Linux on the Laptop?
- It's not happening only in Lenovo
- What People Must Understand About the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
- some facts about the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
- More Copyright Lawsuits Against LLM Slop Providers and Suppliers of LLM Slopfarms Would Benefit Society
- It's not just bad for the Web and for society; it's also legally dangerous
- In defence of JD Vance, death of Pope Francis
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Three Years in Prison for Disney Employee’s ‘Menu Hacking’: The Economic Fallout of Digital Menus
- Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
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- Microsoft Isn't on the Map in USSR
- To them, it's either Google or Yandex
- In Central America Windows Became a Small Force
- These are countries where Windows used to have well over 95% of the "market"
- Site May be Even Faster Now
- It basically takes less than a tenth of a second to serve the page
- Many of the Scandals Are Interconnected (Overlapping People and Corporations)
- We're only getting started
- Links 26/04/2025: General Assassinated in the Town of Balashikha, US Promoting Seafloor Mining
- Links for the day
- Links 26/04/2025: Facebook Layoffs Again, Remembering What's Real, and Say No to Mass Surveillance
- Links for the day
- Links 26/04/2025: NOAA Budget Cuts and "Dog Days Ahead"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 25, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, April 25, 2025
- Links 25/04/2025: Slop Fatigue and Patent Judges Flocking to Fake, Unconstitutional and Illegal Kangaroo Court (UPC, Captured 'Justice')
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 25/04/2025: Night Manager and Devuan in Hosting
- Links for the day
- Approaching 10,000 Articles/Pages Since Going Static
- Trying to silence or derail the site was always a dumb strategy
- Windows Falls to New Lows in Nicaragua, Now Below a Quarter (It Used to be Almost 100%)
- Another all-time low for Windows
- Microsoft is Shedding Off Loads of Staff and That Can be Dangerous Too
- Working for Microsoft is a choice; nobody forces you to do it
- Richard Stallman and the Unix Philosophy
- When asked about systemd people must remember that RMS speaks as an active Board member of the FSF and also the founder of the FSF
- The Cost (to Linux) of LLM Slop
- Slop 'artists' like Fagioli are far from harmless
- Links 25/04/2025: Ubisoft Spyware, Hegseth Fails at Tech on Every Level
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 25/04/2025: Food Forest Update and Facebook Destroying the Net
- Links for the day
- Get Rid of Back Doors, Don't Obsess Over Bounties and Other Corporate PR Stunts (or Needless Reboot Rituals)
- Security as a term has mostly lost its meaning due to repeated misuse for many years
- Serial Sloppers Are Killing the Web (They Probably Don't Care, Either)
- Slop is a disease on the Web
- Streaming Apps Are “Investor Fraud” That Kills the Planet
- Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
- Things Get Increasingly Nasty at Microsoft Ahead of the Fake Results and May's Mass Layoffs Wave
- They try to get people to 'resign' so that they won't count as layoffs and the company's 'wellbeing' will seem better
- IBM's Debt Ballooned by 8.5 Billion Dollars in Just 3 Months!
- Hallmark of a company in a state of disarray, trying to spend its way out of trouble
- Big Trouble in GNOME
- even GNOME people admit the CoC went wrong
- Slopping the Trough: Disney Plus Loses Billions and the Decline of Physical Media in America
- Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 24, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, April 24, 2025
- Links 24/04/2025: GAFAM Problems and No Peace (or Ceasefire) in Sight
- Links for the day
- Slopfarms on the Web Almost Always Generate Anti-Linux FUD When They Produce "Linux" Output
- Welcome to the dying Web
- Richard Stallman's Oxford Talk Has Just Ended, Here Are Some Photos
- he might hop over to another European country
- Gemini Links 24/04/2025: Birthday and Good Work of Academia in Esotericism
- Links for the day
- Links 24/04/2025: EU fines Apple and Facebook, Another Microsoft GitHub Security Blunder
- Links for the day
- New Article Explains How the GPL Came About and WordPress Having Copyleft Obligations
- Having been involved in the WordPress development community since almost the beginning, I know why it chose the GPL and how it restricts abuse by Automattic
- IBM Gained Almost 6 Billion Dollars in "Goodwill" Value in Just 3 Months, According to IBM
- Congrats to the management!
- In Belarus, Yandex is Now Measured as 50 Times More 'Popular' (by Usage) Than Microsoft
- Yandex continues to gain, whereas Bing cannot even register at 1%. Last month it was registered or measured at a measly 0.65%.
- IBM Cannot Lie to Shareholders Anymore
- "I would not be surprised if we see a layoff every quarter this year."
- Dr Richard Stallman (RMS) Gives Talk in Oxford University in 4 Hours
- If you live nearby, go there (it's free as in gratis)
- Using a Law Firm's Licence to Exercise Politics Through Frivolous SLAPPs and Nastygrams (to Silence People, Remove Pages, Demand Fake or Forced 'Apologies')
- Things must be getting really bad when lawyers act for raving antisemites
- We're Working to Make Full-Site Search Available
- This site has over 1,000 'wiki' pages, many thousands of documents, several thousands of videos, and about 50,000 blog posts or articles. We need to make them easier to find/navigate.
- Links 24/04/2025: IBM Loses Many Contracts, Intel to Lay Off Over 20% (Not Counting Those Who Leave 'Voluntarily')
- Links for the day
- Richard Stallman Can Explain to Oxford Artificial Intelligence Society Why LLM Slop is Not Artificial Intelligence and Why It Hurts Society
- another 'crop' of LLM slop that damages GNU/Linux and facts
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 23, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, April 23, 2025