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away old "wheezy" CDs or DVDs but only to update via an up-to-date Debian mirror after an installation, to cause any out of date packages to be updated.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
- Traf-O-Data, the Company That Jeffrey Epstein's BFF (Bill Gates) (Co)Founded 53 Years and Went Out of Business Due to Heavy Losses
- Who will die first, Bill or Microsoft?
- A Note on SimilarWeb
- Or why SimilarWeb is meaningless for more than 99% of the sites on the Web
- IBM Said to be Shutting Down Offices or Sites in the United States
- the press can no longer avoid admitting that IBM moves many jobs to India
- LLM Slop as Attack Vector on the Reputation of Linux
- The attacks on Linux have escalated to information warfare
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- Links 04/04/2025: LLM Slop Bubble Bursting and Korea Music Copyright Association Bans Slop 'Music'
- Links for the day
- Why Microsoft's Shares Sank Almost 20% in Recent Months (the Bubble is Imploding)
- verified press reports from the past 24 hours
- GNU/Linux Rises to Almost 5% in Algeria While Windows Sinks to All-Time Low
- GNU/Linux grew tenfold
- Where to Get More Gags
- A valued reader recommended that to us
- Links 04/04/2025: Tech Stock (Inc. GAFAM) Fall, Google Pretends to Do End-to-End Encrypted Emails (With Google in Control)
- Links for the day
- To Participate in Fedora Diversity You Must Use Proprietary Software
- Not for the first time either
- Yandex About to Be Three Times Bigger Than Microsoft (Bing) in Asia
- That's about 60% of the world's population
- Gemini Links 04/04/2025: Decoupling Updates, Elaho as Gemini Client
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, April 03, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, April 03, 2025
- Microsoft's Trouble in Africa and Asia
- A new all-time high for GNU/Linux
- Brett Wilson LLP Reported to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)
- The saddest thing in all this is that law firms can maintain high standards shall they wish to
- Links 03/04/2025: Tariff Pains and C.D.C. Cuts
- Links for the day
- StatCounter: Microsoft is Masking a Disaster, It's Way Behind DeepSeek Already and Interest in LLMs Has Waned
- it turns out the money "raised" for "Open" "AI" may not even exist at all
- Links 03/04/2025: SoftBank Money for Microsoft "Open" "AI" Probably Doesn't Even Exist, Wikimedia Foundation Blasts LLM Nuisance While Microsoft Admits Demand Has Shrunk
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 03/04/2025: Patch Panel and Pictures
- Links for the day
- Islamic Republic of Iran: GNU/Linux at All-time High This Month, Windows Falls to 12%
- Vista 10 is up this month despite being "end of life" (EoL) soon
- Indonesia: All-Time Highs for GNU/Linux
- What's noteworthy right now is the growth of GNU/Linux
- statCounter Says GNU/Linux Usage is Up Again (Internationally)
- some preliminary April data
- Only on April 1st Can the Free Software Foundation Associate With Microsoft's Open Source Initiative (OSI)
- We saw some pranks that day linking the FSF to Microsoft (e.g. "endorsing" Windows)
- Confirmed in the Mainstream Media: A Lot of Microsoft "Workloads" Were Just LLM Slop (Helping to Fake Growth for Years, as Microsoft Had Paid "Open" "AI" to Become a "Client") and Demand is Rapidly Waning, Datacentres Canceled and/or Shut Down
- Anything to facilitate further accounting fraud
- Taiwan's Media Covers Closure of Microsoft's "AI" Lab, It's Time to Talk About the Gradual Death of Windows and Implosion of the "AI" Bubble
- Earlier this week we showed that mostly Asian media had the 'nerve' to mention Microsoft silently shutting down its 'AI' lab
- IBM Gets Rid of Kelly Chambliss as Mass Layoffs Reported in IBM Consulting, IBM Loses Key Contracts/Graft
- IBM Consulting has been in disarray lately
- More Gains for GNU/Linux, Based on Web Surveys
- the Steam site shows rapid growth for "Linux" this month
- Slopwatch: Anti-Linux Articles, Not Even Written by Humans
- Why aren't Web sites more vocal about this problem?
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 02, 2025
- IRC logs for Wednesday, April 02, 2025
- Links 03/04/2025: Apple Fined Over Secret Surveillance, "Elegant Writer For A More Civilized Age"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 02/04/2025: Books and Cold Tea
- Links for the day
- Links 02/04/2025: More Layoffs, Nokia Again Takes Advantage of Illegal and Unconstitutional Patent Court With Nokia Staff as 'Judges'
- Links for the day
- Links 02/04/2025: Seizures and Returns to Windows of 24 Years Ago
- Links for the day
- LLM Slop Helps Obscure and Distort News About Layoffs (IBM, GAFAM)
- It's hard to find accurate information
- Links 02/04/2025: Microsoft Developers Are Threatening to Go on Strike, World Backup Day Noted
- Links for the day
- Gemini Protocol Has Growing Appeal (the Web Got Too Bloated and Full of LLM Slop)
- For any "data plan" with bandwidth limits or "tiers" it would be cheaper to use/browse Geminispace
- The Web Can Survive LLM Slop, But Only If We Collectively Shun and Discourage Serial Sloppers
- Doing nothing ought not be a possibility
- Amid Secret Shut-downs and Mass Layoffs at Microsoft (4 Waves of Layoffs in 3 Months of 2025) Some Microsoft Staff Expected to Go On Strike
- workers going on strike
- Gemini Links 02/04/2025: No more on Mastodon and Gemini Mention Script in Go
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, April 01, 2025
- IRC logs for Tuesday, April 01, 2025
- My Motion Disbarring or “Striking Off” Brett Wilson LLP for Enabling Violent Americans Who Try to Crush Microsoft Critics in the United Kingdom by Multiple SLAPPs
- "Guns for hire" (for Microsoft people who received Microsoft salaries)
- The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Hijacked Again by Patent Litigation Industry, as President Cheeto Prioritises Aggressors
- The "mafia" has taken over the "industry" and the Federal system (justice and constitutions trampled upon)
- Ubuntu Slop and FUD Manufactured With LLMs and Funded (by Oneself) 'Studies'
- Slop and FUD are ruining the Web