GNU/Linux Rising: Relevant News Items From March
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-03-19 19:12:45 UTC
- Modified: 2014-03-19 19:12:45 UTC
Desktop
I'm sure there will be objections from people who want to define "the year of the Linux desktop" differently. There will be those fans of GNU/Linux distributions like Ubuntu who will object that the Linux Desktop has not arrived until we're all running KDE and Gnome. I fear those folks have a while to wait. Others will object because there are still so many copies of Windows and new PCs are still shipping with Windows. That's a fair point, but I believe even those users are actually Linux Desktop users. As I argued last year, Linux has already won on the Windows desktop.
Eurocom sent out a news release that beginning today they will be offering choices of operating systems in their line of GPU-upgradeable, high-performance, professional laptops. Besides the high-end laptop line-up, they will also be offering Linux options for their lightweight notebooks.
If your office runs 24/7, you'll have to do the migration in stages. You may have to migrate servers one at a time, and migrate departments group by group. So, some work gets paused, but most of your business will run during the entire migration process.
Linux has a reputation for being designed for geeks only, but that’s old history. Many modern Linux distributions exceed the user-friendliness of XP, and they’re free to download. If you don’t like the feel of one, you can easily switch to another. What’s more, each Linux distribution comes loaded with useful software such as productivity suites, modern browsers like Chrome or Firefox, and photo and music management apps.
"This is a subject very near and dear to me," Linux Rants blogger Mike Stone told Linux Girl over a fresh Tequila Tux down at the blogosphere's Punchy Penguin Saloon.
Though Stone spent several years teaching "how to" computer courses for faculty and staff at a local university back in the 90s, "all those years barely prepared me for my greatest challenge: my own mother," he said.
To wit: After buying his parents a Windows 95 computer way back when, "I sat her down and showed her how to use the basic hardware," he explained. Yet "even after hours a day over the course of weeks, the computer was too much for her. Windows just had too many options, and she kept getting herself into places she couldn't get out of.
"I literally spent years looking for environments that would make her comfortable," Stone went on. "She went through the Windows OSes (95, 98, ME and finally XP) and some Linuxes -- Red Hat first and then a couple variations of Ubuntu. She always found ways to get herself into trouble."
I’ve been a computer user since around 1991, when we got our first PC, a Tandy from Radio Shack (almost $1,000), which came with Windows 3.1. Since then I’ve used each and every version of that operating system (OS), and still do. But at home and for personal use, it’s Linux for me. Why? Well that’s a question with many answers.
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The biggest driving factor for software developers to work together with open source is cost. It is much cheaper for them to cooperate through open source than it is to remain isolated with proprietary software, asserted Inktank VP of Product Management Neil Levine. "You can no longer rely on one particular vendor to provide everything you need with regard to technology."
After the Desktop
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QOOQ is a durable tablet designed for use in then kitchen. It's even got its very own Linux-based OS...
There was a time, back before smartphones and tablets, when most of us used, at most, only three operating systems.
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For months now David Herrmann has been working on a new project known as OpenWFD for open-source WiFi displays on Linux. OpenWFD is an open-source implementation of the WiFi Display Standard / Miracast. That work is now showing success and as part of that Herrmann has just announced Miraclecast as a component to providing open-source Miracast/WFD support on the Linux desktop.
Chromebook
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Chromebooks are making a big statement in the laptop world: NPD Group Inc. reported that Chromebook sales accounted for 21 percent of all notebook sales last year. For devices that are functionally little different from tablets — designed for basic tasks like checking email and web browsing — they're growing fast. Even as the tablet market continues to grow, capturing 22 percent of the entire personal computing market just last year, Chromebooks are giving people an alternative to rectangular touch screens.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Tesla's Debt More Than Doubled in 2 Years and the Company Will Operate in the Red (at a Loss) Quite Soon
- If your first-quarter net income is $409 million and you borrow billions from banks, plus interest to pay on those loans, then you're not far from returning to losses
- Microsoft and Windows Have Many Back Doors, But LLM Slop Keep Claiming That Linux Has "Backdoor"
- It's another example of LLM slop as FUD amplifier, via slopfarms as well
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- Links 05/08/2025: Hey Hi (AI) Passing Fads and GAFAM "Embracing the Military"
- Links for the day
- Links 05/08/2025: Samsung and Microsoft Layoffs
- Links for the day
- Rumours of Mass Layoffs at Red Hat Next Week (August 11th, 2025)
- The eleventh means next Monday
- IBM is Shutting Down (Piecewise)
- IBM is basically being liquidated
- The Debian Language Police Department (PD)
- "there has never been complaints about anyone that was offended by this -off package"
- When The Register MS Says "Linux Backdoor" It Actually Talks About Malware
- The leading story in The Register US/MS this morning is Microsoft
- Microsoft Windows Fell to 19% "Market Share" in Montenegro
- Microsoft must be well aware of this trend
- Why We Also Include Gopher Links in Our Gemini (Protocol) Links
- There are still many people who use Gopher to relay their messages (like blog posts). They're mostly technical people.
- Shouting is an Indication of a Lack of Convincing Argument
- Beware what they are attempting to distract from
- Mongolia: Microsoft Windows at All-Time Low
- in 2009 when Windows was at 99.45% in Mongolia the company was "worth" less than 200 billion dollars
- About a Quarter of Today's "linux" News in Google News Came From One Domain and It's a Slopfarm
- Not kidding!
- Gemini Links 05/08/2025: Zombie Threat and Switching to NixOS
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 04, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, August 04, 2025
- ChatGPT in Trouble
- Watch out for the newer buzzwords
- The Register MS Links to the Wrong statCounter Page
- They link to older data
- Dr. Andy Farnell Explains How Google Turned From "Librarian" Into "Oracle", Telling Us What to Think Instead of Where to Look
- Google was always a lousy librarian
- Microsoft Layoffs Continue in August 2025
- If Microsoft is doing so well, how come about 10 rounds of layoffs in about 7 months in 2025?
- In Many Countries Vista 11 Adoption Stalled or Became Negative
- Not just because people move to GNU/Linux
- Microsofters' Lawyers Are Name-calling and Insulting Microsoft Critics, Even Their Spouses
- How not to win arguments
- Flagging or Tagging Slop That We Find Online
- Right now we use ImageMagick
- Links 04/08/2025: Very Bad Weather and Travel Restrictions in China
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 04/08/2025: Misiamisia and Mobile Linux
- Links for the day
- Microsoft's Stock is Like a Religion, Microsoft Goes Into 'Hiding' (From Shareholders)
- like a religious person or devout believer, the media just parrot anything Microsoft says
- Links 04/08/2025: 80 Years Since Last Nuclear War, IPv6 in China
- Links for the day
- Groklaw Static Site Relaunches With New Theme, But Many Pages and All the Comments Are Missing
- We suppose that's still a lot better than the site being offline, as it was for several months
- "For Five decades; For freedoms; For all users" (Original EMACS Turns 50 Next Year)
- Linus Benedict Torvalds was only 6 when EMACS started
- In Spain, Microsoft's Search Engine Market Share Fell to 2%
- 16 years have passed since Bing was introduced
- Protecting GNU/Linux-Centric Journalism From Serial Sloppers
- Unoriginal slop is taking away traffic from the people who did all the real work
- It Looks Like Managers at Oracle Now Use LLM Slop to Write Blog Posts
- Did he cheat by prompting LLMs for mindless text "filler"?
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 03, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, August 03, 2025
- Gemini Links 04/08/2025: Qubes OS and Curious crypto case of certificates (CCCC)
- Links for the day
- They Tell Us That "Cloud Storage" is Safe and Robust to Incidents Like Fires
- Do you have backups? Where are they and who controls them?
- "Allowing SDL to default to Wayland caused a number of customer issues so keep the default at X11 for now"
- 2025 is another year of Wayland ambitions. It's also a year of self-fulfilling prophecies.
- In The United Kingdom (UK), Microsoft Search (Bing) Falls to All-Time Low
- Grow? What grow??? It's collapsing.
- GNU/Linux Reaches 5% in Oman
- Some GNU/Linux distros are made in Oman
- Google's "AI Mode" is a Pathetic Joke Prematurely Introduced in the UK (Like "Bard", Which Sank the Company's Shares)
- what Google "thinks" about PCLinuxOS
- What the Free Software Foundation Started Four Decades Ago is Becoming Mainstream
- "Four decades; Four freedoms; For all users"
- Doing a Better Job at Labelling Slop Images
- we'll label screenshots that contain slop, typically with red-coloured text overlay
- Social Control Media is Out of Style
- What's your excuse for wasting time on (or in) it?
- Maldives: GNU/Linux at All-Time High, Windows at New Lows
- data from statCounter shows a reassuring trend
- Efficiency is Good, So Why Won't Governments Cull LLM Companies Using Stronger, Stringent Policies?
- Like every bubble that ever existed, including some recent ones, an end will come
- The Defunct Site LinuxConfig Has Published a Fake Article About Richard Stallman Using LLM Slop, Which Stallman Calls "Bullshit Generator"
- Worse yet, it is writing using a "Bullshit Generator" (the term used by Stallman) about Stallman's health
- Microsoft Windows Falls to All-Time Lows in Morocco and Algeria
- About 70% or even less
- StopGenAI in the Cyber Show (C|S)
- covering a theme that we too covered a lot lately
- Gemini Links 03/08/2025: Once-a-Decade Couch Shopping and Blessings in Disguise
- Links for the day
- Links 03/08/2025: Political Catch-up, Global Warming, and Hunger
- Links for the day
- Brittany Day Entered LLM Slop Into LinuxSecurity.com and Something Hilarious Happened: The Site is "Exploited"
- The brainless, effortless copypasta of "slop artists" shows its limits
- Links 03/08/2025: Microsoft Exchange 0-day Exploited and Avoidable Nuclear Escalation
- Links for the day
- Next Month 'New Techrights' Turns Two
- Next month, on the fourth week, it'll be 2 years since the migration
- Definitely Not a Ponzi Scheme
- Bitcoin v Microsoft
- Online Safety Act Tries to Accomplish the Impossible
- All I can say is, "good luck with that!"
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a Billionaires' Lobby
- Billionaires that control tech companies
- Microsoft Borrows 3 Billion Dollars Per Month, a Company Truly Worth Trillions Would Not Do This
- if Windows (and Office) "market share" fell from about 90% to barely 30%, how come Microsoft is now "valued" at 20 times more?
- It's Even Worse Than Microsoft Lunduke Puts It; GNOME is SLAPPing Journalists
- In our experience, GNOME is so malicious - some elements of it in particular - that it would launch multiple simultaneous SLAPP campaigns not only against journalists but also their spouses
- GNU/Linux Adoption Reaches All-Time Highs in Chile, statCounter Indicates
- This month marks 4 years since Vista 11 came out (as a fake "leak") and some surveys still measure its adoption at less than 40%
- Slop Will Not Change the World
- Some of us grow up sooner and leave that nonsense behind (or altogether avoid/skip it)
- Gemini Links 03/08/2025: Nostalgia and TOFU
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 02, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, August 02, 2025