Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 2/10/2015: Qubes 3.0, Linux.Wifatch





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



  • Desktop



    • Why your Linux PC isn't vulnerable to the devastating XOR DDoS malware
      Linux isn’t perfectly secure, but there’s no big Linux exploit story here. The real problem is how many poorly configured Linux systems exist in the real world. Linux isn’t a magic bullet that will make a system secure—it has to be locked down properly, too.


    • Google Chromebooks: The most popular classroom computing device
      In Apple's place, Google with its Chromebooks have stepped in. Chromebooks are cheaper, easier to manage, and easy to share between students. The low upfront price is a big factor, but there's far more.

      For example, Google offers programs just for schools, Google Apps for Education Suite; class-specific ChromeOS and Android apps, and Google Play for Education. Chromebooks that come with Google Play for Education range at prices from $199 to $227.


    • Kali Linux: Why Aren’t We Arguing More about Mr Robot?
      In episode 0 of Mr Robot, we’re introduced to our hiro protagonist [Elliot], played by [Rami Malek], a tech at the security firm AllSafe. We are also introduced to the show’s Macbeth, [Tyrell Wellick], played by Martin Wallström]. When these characters are introduced to each other, [Tyrell] notices [Elliot] is using the Gnome desktop on his work computer while [Tyrell] says he’s, “actually on KDE myself. I know [Gnome] is supposed to be better, but you know what they say, old habits, they die hard.”




  • Server



    • Google and NASA are getting a new quantum computer
      The famous Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab is getting some powerful new hardware. A joint project between Google, NASA, and the Universities Space Research Association, the Quantum AI Lab today announced a multiyear agreement to install a D-Wave 2X, a state-of-the-art quantum processor released earlier this year. With over 1,000 qubits, the machine is the most powerful computer of its kind, and will be put to work tackling difficult optimization problems for both Google and NASA.




  • Kernel Space



  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments/WMs



    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt



      • Kubuntu: Plasma 5.4.2 Ready testing! Come join the fun.
        Today we have the latest Plasma 5.4.2 ready for Wily (backports will not be made until this one has been tested and released)


      • The Future of Kontact
        Supplemental to what we reported previously about the work in Randa [1, 2] there was a session on the future of Kontact, KDE’s personal information manager (PIM). Over the years this tool has evolved into a monster making both development as well as usage sometimes tricky. It’s time to cut hydra’s arms.






  • Distributions



  • Devices/Embedded



    • Compact, low power IoT gateway runs Linux on i.MX6
      VIA’s 30mm tall “Artigo A820” IoT gateway runs Linux on an i.MX6 DualLite, and offers optional WiFi and 3G in addition to Fast and GbE Ethernet ports.

      Like last year’s Artigo A900 mini-PC, the Artigo A820 runs Linux on a dual-core, 1GHz Cortex-A9 SoC. This time, however, VIA Technologies has turned to Freescale’s i.MX6 DualLite SoC instead of its own Via Elite E1000.


    • Phones



      • Fairphone launches v2 of it conflict-free, upgradeable smartphone


        There's a company offering a repairable and upgradable smartphone out there and Jack Wallen believe it is just what the world needs. Read on to see if you agree.


      • Android

        • Facebook gives Android a kick in the byte code
          To improve the mobile performance of its social network, Facebook is enhancing Java bytecode on the Android platform with its Redex project, providing a pipeline for optimizing Android DEX (Dalvik Executable) files.


        • 13 of the best Android apps from September
          Coming off the back of the summer holidays always make September a busy month and this year it was no different.

          From useful spam fighting options arriving for Gmail to movie tracking and the launch of a huge repository of online tutorials across a range of subjects.

          We’ve sorted the wheat from the chaff and what follows is the best new and updated apps from September.

          All you need to do is clear a few minutes in your schedule and click your way through the list.


        • Google reveals new Chromecast and Chromecast Audio devices
          Google's Chromecast streaming media player has proven to be a popular item on Amazon, getting four star ratings and lots of positive comments from Amazon customers. Now Google has announced a brand new Chromecast, and also the new Chromecast Audio device.


        • Hands on: Google Pixel C convertible tablet
          It’s difficult to tell if the new Google Pixel C is a great idea, or an awful one. It feels like a greatest hits list of Windows 8 convertible failures. It’s a clamshell, and the tablet is connected to the keyboard via magnets. But to open it or close it, you have to pull it apart and reconnect it. You can also flip the tablet upright and stick the keyboard to the back of it, though it makes the tablet thicker and heavier than you may like. The entire converting process is messy. Google tries to cover it all up with a beautiful aluminum design and smooth hinges that adjust angle easily. But will it be fun to use every day? I’m not so sure.


        • Google announces the LG Nexus 5X and Huawei Nexus 6P; pre-orders start today
          Google has officially taken the wraps off its new flagship smartphone lineup. In keeping with the current smartphone release trends, Google is announcing two devices today: the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P. The 5X is made by LG, and the 6P is made by Huawei. The Nexus 5X starts at $379, and the 6P starts at $499, and both phones will ship later this month. Pricing for other territories is starting to dribble in—the Nexus 5X and 6P will begin at €£339 and €£449 respectively in the UK—but we'll update the article with more complete information as it's made available.


        • Google announces the new Chromecast and Chromecast Audio
          The new Chromecast has a disk-like design, a departure from the original's dongle construction. Its improved internals should also make streaming easier and faster. Now featuring three antennas, it supports 5GHz 802.11ac Wi-Fi for faster connectivity and heavier formats like 1080p. While the new Chromecast handles video and game streaming, the Chromecast Audio device will handle streaming music or podcasts. The new Chromecast plugs into a device with HDMI; Audio uses both optical and headphone jacks to plug into speakers.


        • Huawei’s first Android Wear watch is a beautiful yet basic timepiece
          Huawei isn't exactly the first company that comes to mind when you think of stylish connected devices. The Chinese manufacturer has delved into wearables with its TalkBand series, but those were slow to come to the US and their fitness tracker-meets-Bluetooth-headset capabilities were peculiar. Now Huawei wants to test the waters of Google's wearable OS with its new smartwatch, simply dubbed the Huawei Watch, and it's a solid first attempt at Android Wear.










Free Software/Open Source



  • Apache Foundation retains informal vibe to manage $1m of open-source projects
    The Apache open-source community gathered at its annual conference in Europe this week to collaborate on new projects to drive the future of the web and cloud ecosystems, with a handful of new projects under incubation.


  • Seize the opportunity to explain open source
    Kids have an insatiable appetite for knowledge. I would estimate that all of us with children have had them go through a phase of asking "Why?" constantly. In truth, it often comes at the most inconvenient moment for a parent; like when the world is literally going to explode unless your child puts down the green marker pen, and instead of doing it, they just look up at you and ask "Why?" I was no different. I went through the "Why?" phase. My daughter has been through it and my nephew is going through it right now.


  • AWS launches a managed Elasticsearch service
  • Amazon launches managed Elasticsearch service
  • AWS debuts Elasticsearch Search, its distributed search and analytics engine
  • Amazon flings open source Elasticsearch at Big Data's cloud
  • New Amazon Elasticsearch service eases setup, with exceptions


  • Amazon Adds Open Source Elasticsearch Platform to AWS Cloud
    Elasticsearch is a Java-based open source framework for searching textual documents on a massive scale. It is designed to be highly scalable and compatible with cluster-based distributed-computing infrastructure.


  • IBM and EMC team up: There’s no “I” in open source
    Sometimes when you are distracting the signal from the noise, you get an exclusive. Today theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, got the full story on the EMC and IBM partnership to work in an open-source environment to make Hadoop more accessible to the enterprise.


  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla



      • Firefox Is Much Better than Any Other Browser and Here's Why
        We often read about comparative tests between browsers and we see that Google Chrome or Opera are extremely fast, or that some other browser gets really good scores in rendering, and so on. The truth is that none of that really matters when you are using browsers in the real world, and in the real world Firefox shines and it's head and shoulders above everything else.






  • SaaS/Big Data



    • The return of TryStack, life as a PTL, and more OpenStack news
      Interested in keeping track of what's happening in the open source cloud?


    • A Brief Comparison of Mesos and Kubernetes
      The recent announcement of Mesos on Windows means developers and organizations that work between Linux and Windows platforms may use their own tools without requiring heavy resource management. Those working with the Google Cloud Engine may prefer working with Kubernetes, while people accustomed to Microsoft Azure may enjoy the Mesosphere workflow pipeline. Each has their own strengths and shortcomings, though the gap between stack management services lessens as more technology is brought to other platforms.


    • MapR Technologies Unveils In-Hadoop Document Database
      MapR integrates Web-scale enterprise storage and real-time database management and adds native JSON support to MapR-DB, its NoSQL database.




  • Databases



    • Pivotal Aims at Oracle Database Business with Open Source Tech
      Software company Pivotal is taking on Oracle’s traditional database business with its latest effort to advance open source. The company is contributing both HAWQ advanced SQL on Hortonworks’ Hadoop analytics and MADlib machine learning technologies to The Apache Software Foundation (ASF).




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



  • CMS



    • If Drupal were a band it would be Rush
      Getting my clients' developers and sysadmins to stick to all of the documented processes I've set up for them.

      I have years of experience implementing Drupal-based solutions, so I have a rather solid understanding of what works and what doesn't. But some folks without any experience with Drupal try to shoehorn it into incompatible environments. I do my best to explain all of this and why to ensure that, when I'm gone, folks can take all of my wiki documentation and run with it (use it and update it as necessary).




  • Business





    • Semi-Open Source





  • BSD



  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC



    • What do you have to say? Share it at LibrePlanet 2016
      LibrePlanet 2016 is coming! Next year's conference will be held **March 19-20, 2016 in the Boston area**. The call for proposals is open now, until November 16th. General registration and exhibitor registration will open later in October.


    • Chicago GNU/Linux talk on Guix retrospective
      Friends... friends! I gave a talk on Guix last night in Chicago, and it went amazingly well. That feels like an undersell actually; it went remarkably well. There were 25 people, and apparently there was quite the waitlist, but I was really happy with the set of people who were in the room. I haven't talked about Guix in front of an audience before and I was afraid it would be a dud, but it's hard to explain the reaction I got. It felt like there was a general consensus in the room: Guix is taking the right approach to things.




  • Public Services/Government



    • EC to increase open source for software development
      The European Commission aims to primarily use open source tools for developing software that is distributed publicly, shows an overview on open source adoption that was presented last week by the EC’s Directorate General of Informatics (DIGIT) at a conference in Tampere (Finland). Already much of the EC’s own software is developed using open source. However, over the next 3 years, DIGIT will push to make ‘open source first’ the target for all the new EC software development projects.




  • Openness/Sharing



  • Programming



    • Most Popular Programming Languages In The IT industry
      Programmers are always in high demand these days for jobs, especially if they have fluency in coding language. Learning programming in various languages for engineers is a no-brainer, but some basic understanding of the languages can be invaluable to anyone, even if you’re not looking forward to becoming a master coder.


    • PHPUnit 5.0


    • PHP version 5.5.30 and 5.6.14
      RPM of PHP version 5.6.14 are available in remi repository for Fedora ≥ 21 and remi-php56 repository for Fedora ≤ 20 and Enterprise Linux (RHEL, CentOS).






Leftovers



Recent Techrights' Posts

Newer is Not Better, Lunar Edition
Maybe in 57 years (2083, after all these wars) we'll managed to launch a capsule with a human and a dog above the stratosphere again
 
Maintenance Later This Month
Apr 24, 2026 21:00 - Apr 25, 2026 09:00 BST
When Energy Prices Double in About a Month the Slop Bros Won't Sleep at Night
Unhinged leadership does not seem eager to end a conflict that it started
Microsoft: Move Over, XBox, Slop is the New "Entertainment" and We Demote Our "Entertainment" CEO
Marketers, marketers, marketers, as a CEO called Ballmer put it
linuxbuz.com is a Slopfarm, It Depends on LLMs
In the more distant past it could be said that linuxbuz.com was an OK site
Links 07/04/2026: Patent Trolls Leigh M. Rothschild, Bolstered by GNOME and OIN, Continues to Attack; ‘Retaliatory Antitrust Suit’ by MElon
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/04/2026: Copyleft Revisited, Killing Linux Processes With FZF
Links for the day
It Would be Good for Debian to Have a Female DPL, But...
Debian isn't exactly selecting people for quality or policing bad behaviour
IBM Insiders Say What's Wrong With IBM in Albany (and Yes, There Are Layoffs)
promotions boil down to what insiders now call "brown-nosing" and nepotism
After Killing OpenSource.org IBM Together With OSI Told Us It Would Carry on OpenSource.net, But the Site Has Been Essentially Dead for 9 Months (Effectively Abandoned)
OpenSource.org has been dormant for 4 weeks already and OpenSource.net last had a new page 9 months ago (it'll be 9 months tomorrow) [...] That's IBM in a nutshell
A Lot of What Happened to OSI is Because of Reporting by Techrights
Half a year since Stefano Maffuli (Executive Director) "left"
Public Presentations by RMS Hardly Interrupted Anymore
We'll carry on covering those sorts of topics throughout the year
Links 07/04/2026: US Wants to Put Journalists in Prison for Reporting Facts, Artist ‘Bale’ Arrested Over Rape Allegation in Social Control Media
Links for the day
To IBMers, IBM Has Failed and is Fast Becoming a Book of Jokes and One-Word Punchlines
How else can one make it obvious that IBM is circling down the drain?
"AI Revolution" Was a Lie: Microsoft CEO Admits What He Calls "AI" is Sometimes Sloppy and Microsoft Admits That Slop is for "Entertainment Purposes Only" (Not for Any Serious Work)
if it gets "memory-holed", we can bring it up again and again
Social Control Media is Not a Viable Business Model
The future of the Web might not be the Web
From Datacentres Boom to Actual Booms That Target Datacentres, Now Struggling to Justify Humongous Energy and Water Consumption
Datacentres that are used for mindless "entertainment" (as Microsoft calls it) like slop are not a priority at this time
Gemini Links 07/04/2026: Aircraft Lift Force, Editor History, and Consumer Hardware Stagnation
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, April 06, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, April 06, 2026
What Matters is Software Freedom, Not the Brands
The important thing is to speak about Software Freedom
Wikileaks is About to Turn 20
~2 days ago it turned 19.5
The Cloud of Smoke
Will 2026 be the year that "The Cloud" openly confesses the risks it brings about?
SLAPP Censorship - Part 36 Out of 200: Claim KB-2024-003529 in a Nutshell (Microsoft Employee Does Terrible Things, Then Sues the Reporter in Another Continent)
It commences with more of an overview
Gemini Links 06/04/2026: Solar Panel Story and Centralisation
Links for the day
"Free Speech, Free Press": What the World Needs to Improve
Darkness breeds corruption
IBM prioritises a "lot of smoke and hype and use of trending buzzwords"
IBM can pretend all it wants things are fine
GAFAM Paying the Price for Pursuing US Military Money (Taxpayers' Money as 'Stimulus' With Strings Attached)
The "cloud" in cloud computing is a cloud of smoke
Observing Slop's Demise
If energy becomes more scarce, then one rare/side perk (or upside) will be slop companies screaming for lifeboats
Links 06/04/2026: Crackers Breached the European Commission, Why "Old Way of Campaigning Won’t Cut It Anymore"
Links for the day
Enron Versus NVIDIA (the Cost of Circular Financing, or Funding Your Own Customers to Buy Your Products) - “The Inventory Paradox” or “The Vibe Revenue Admission”
Round-tripping (finance)
You Know "The Economy" is Fake When 6 Months After Oracle Says Debt-Saddled 'Open' 'AI' (Slop) Will Pay It $300,000,000,000 Oracle Says It Must Lay Off 30,000 Workers at 6AM
Oracle is in deep debt, which increased at a pace of almost 4 billion dollars per month lately
Free Software Will Outlive GAFAM
GAFAM is overhyped
Techrights Was Further Decentralised Three Years Ago
In 2020 we began working on IPFS stuff
The Military Attacks on Dubai Internet City as Reminder That GAFAM Isn't Safe (Disregard the "Nobody Gets Fired for Buying GAFAM" Mindset)
These are all realistic and foreseeable scenarios that GAFAM sceptics have long warned about
The Wars Aren't Ending, Now We See GAFAM Facilities Being Bombed
This is becoming a tech issue
Links 06/04/2026: Turning 34, Throwing Things Away, and Printing in GNU/Linux
Links for the day
Links 06/04/2026: Ex-Microsoft Engineer Explains Why Azure Fails, Germany Prepares for War
Links for the day
EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part XI - EPO Strike Enters Its Second Week, EPO Sheds Off Qualified Staff to Make Way for Nepotists
More than six months ago the "Cocaine Communication Manager" got arrested for cocaine use
Another Microsoft Outlook Downtime
Microsoft has sloppy code, it's not something suitable for mission-critical things
Week 2 of April IBM Layoffs Accelerate Based on Rumours
"Heard about Layoff at IBM"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, April 05, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, April 05, 2026
Culture of Harassment Inside Microsoft, Says Former Director at Microsoft
listen to Microsoft insiders
Drone Strikes on Amazon (GAFAM) Datacentres Highlight Azure's Miniscule Share
Azure is failing
SLAPP Censorship - Part 35 Out of 200: How to Make ~10,000 Pound Sterling (13,220.50 United States Dollars) by Copy-Pasting and Editing 10 Pages
Today it's Easter Sunday, so we'll keep this part relatively short
Gemini Links 05/04/2026: Artemis II Mission Tracker, Meditation on Copyright, Alhena 5.5.5, "Gemini as the Final Frontier of Human Cognition"
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows Falls to All-Time Low of ~60% in Switzerland, GNU/Linux Among Top Gainers
What will it take for mainstream media (not just geeks' site) to cover it?
Mainstream Media on "Practical Survivalism"
Suffice to say, panic buying begets more panic and price surges
Cloud Computing as a Cloud of Smoke (Your Hosting Provider is a "Legitimate" Military Target)
When a French datacentre went up in flames people joked that the "cloud" meant a cloud of smoke
Andreas Tille Congratulates Sruthi Chandran Before the Election for Debian Project Leader (DPL) is Even Over
Andreas Tille, the current Debian Project Leader (DPL) who has been in this role for nearly 24 months
When You Try to Change the World for the Better and Somehow They Find a Way to Say You Are the Villain
Don't be a fool. Don't fall for inversions of narratives.
Slop Was a Flop and Energy Crisis Will be Slop's Final Blow
Today we see no slopfarms in Google News
Links 05/04/2026: "Taiwanese Airlines to Hike Fuel Surcharges 157%" and Openly Racist Voter Suppression Starts in the US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/04/2026: Playing with Hyprland and Migrating Antenna Filters
Links for the day
Links 05/04/2026: "Confidential Computing" as Proprietary Bundle of False Promises and "The Web Is an Antitrust Wedge"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 04, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, April 04, 2026