Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 1/9/2014: Poettering on systemd, ITNews on DBMSs





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



  • Ten Linux Desktops Showing Just How Far Behind Mac OS X and Windows Designs Are
    Linux doesn't have any kind of PR, and in the collective mind of the people, there is still an impression that Linux users spend their time inside the terminal and in dreary desktops. In fact, most of the current Linux desktops are much better than anything made by Apple of Microsoft.


  • Lennart Poettering Talks Up His New Linux Vision That Involves Btrfs
    Lennart Poettering of systemd and PulseAudio fame has published a lengthy blog post that shares his vision for how he wishes to change how Linux software systems are put together to address a wide variety of issues. The Btrfs file-system and systemd play big roles with his new vision.


  • Revisiting How We Put Together Linux Systems
    Of course, we are developers of the systemd project. Implementing this scheme is not just a job for the systemd developers. This is a reinvention how distributions work, and hence needs great support from the distributions. We really hope we can trigger some interest by publishing this proposal now, to get the distributions on board. This after all is explicitly not supposed to be a solution for one specific project and one specific vendor product, we care about making this open, and solving it for the generic case, without cutting corners.


  • Desktop



    • Linux has run out of time - I looked into the trap, Jim
      Is Word better than LibreOffice Writer or is LibreOffice Writer better than Word? Is Android better than Apple? Were Nirvana better than Pearl Jam? Which were better "The Beatles" or "The Rolling Stones"?

      Microsoft Word has a lot of flaws that people seem to gloss over. Bullets and numbering for instance are just random. The fonts change, the numbering changes, the indentation changes and for no apparent reason.

      The Microsoft ribbon bars have surely just been added to sell training courses because there is no way they are better than menus, toolbars and keyboard shortcuts. Everything we have been used to for 20 years all switched around for no seemingly good reason. I don't like it when my local supermarket rearranges all the shelves for no apparent reason either. If you want a ribbon bar then there is always Kingsoft Office.




  • Server



    • Matching databases to Linux distros
      Relational database management systems (RDBMSs) aren’t the sort of thing to get most folk out of bed in the morning – unless, of course, you happen to think they’re one of the most brilliant concepts ever dreamed up.

      These days you can’t sneeze without someone turning it into a table value in a database somewhere - and in combination with the freely available Linux operating system, there’s no end to them.

      Most Linux distros make it almost trivial to add popular DBMSs to your system, such as MySQL and MariaDB, by bundling them in for free in their online app stores. But how do you tell which combination - which Linux distro and which DBMS - will give you the best performance?

      This week we've revved up the Labs servers to ask the question: what level of performance do you get from OS repository-sourced DBMSs?






  • Kernel Space



    • Linux 3.17-rc3
      I'm back to the usual Sunday release schedule, and -rc3 is out there now. As expected, it is larger than rc2, since people are clearly getting back from their Kernel Summit travels etc. But happily, it's not *much* larger than rc2 was, and there's nothing particularly odd going on, so I'm going to just ignore the whole "it's summer" argument, and hope that things are just going that well.

      Please don't prove me wrong,

      Linus


    • Linux 3.17-rc3 Kernel Released Back On Schedule
      Linus Torvalds is back to his rhythm of releasing new kernel release candidates on Sundays.

      After Linux 3.17-rc2 was released last Monday to celebrate 23 years of Linux, Torvalds is now back in Portland and doing his Sunday release rhythm.


    • Graphics Stack



      • Mesa 10.3 release candidate 2
        Mesa 10.3 release candidate 2 is now available for testing. The current plan of record is to have an additional release candidate each Friday until the 10.3 release on Friday, September 12th.

        The tag in the GIT repository for Mesa 10.3-rc2 is 'mesa-10.3-rc2'. I have verified that the tag is in the correct place in the tree.


      • Mesa 10.3 RC2 Arrives Via Its New Release Manager


      • Nouveau X.Org Driver Released With DRI3+Present, Maxwell, GLAMOR
        The Nouveau development community released the xf86-video-nouveau 1.0.11 driver update to kick off the start of September. While you wouldn't guess it from the version number, this driver update is actually very significant and introduces a lot of new functionality and other improvements.




    • Benchmarks



      • Preview: AMD's FX-9590 Eight-Core At Up To 5.0GHz On Linux
        Since last year AMD's had the FX-9590 as the top-end Vishera CPU that can top out at 5.0GHz with its Turbo Frequency, but initially this processor was only available to OEM system builds. Over time the OEM version of the FX-9590 became available to consumers while earlier this summer AMD launched a retail version of the FX-9590 that included the eight-core CPU with a closed-loop water cooling solution. Today we're reviewing this highest-end Vishera CPU to see how it compares to other AMD and Intel processors on Ubuntu Linux.






  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments/WMs



    • AMBIANCE & RADIANCE COLORS THEMES UPDATED WITH XFCE FIXES
      Quick update for Ambiance & Radiance Colors fans: the theme pack was updated (version 14.04.6) today with quite a few Xfce fixes such as: fixed window borders on non-Debian distros, fixed Xfce GTK3 indicator background and more.


    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt



      • Personal clones on KDE infrastructure
        I’m doing a little work on Tupi – the 2D animation application that joined the KDE community some months back — so that it builds on FreeBSD (the C++ code is wonderful, but the build system is qonf, which is not).

        This has led me to the maze of git documentation on KDE’s infrastructure, and I’m taking notes so I don’t forget what I did. It’s also part of one of the things-to-do-at-Akademy on my list: talk to the techbase people to find out what the status and intentions are.


      • THE AWESOMELY EPIC GUIDE TO KDE
        Desktops on Linux. They’re a concept completely alien to users of other operating systems because they never having to think about them. Desktops must feel like the abstract idea of time to the Amondawa tribe, a thought that doesn’t have any use until you’re in a different environment. But here it is – on Linux you don’t have to use the graphical environment lurking beneath your mouse cursor. You can change it for something completely different. If you don’t like windows, switch to xmonad. If you like full-screen apps, try Gnome. And if you’re after the most powerful and configurable point-and-click desktop, there’s KDE.




    • GNOME Desktop/GTK



      • Try GNOME 3.14 Beta 1 with Wayland Without Installing Anything
        GNOME is working to implement official Wayland support for the upcoming 3.14 release and they seem to be more than half way there. It's difficult to test the new GNOME 3.14 Beta updates that have been made until now, especially with the Wayland integration, but a Reddit user posted a short and easy-to-follow tutorial in this regard.






  • Distributions



    • New Releases



      • Black Lab Linux 5.1 Released
        Today we are pleased to release the next in the 5 series of Black Lab Linux. Black Lab Linux 5.1 contains many updates, new features and enhancements to the Black Lab Linux distribution.




    • Red Hat Family



    • Debian Family



      • Debconf Wrapup
        Debconf14 started with a Meet and Greet before the Welcome Talk. I got to meet people and find out what they do for Debian. I also got to meet other GSoC students that I had only previously interacted with online. During the Meet and Greet I also met one of my mentors for GSoC, Zack. Later in the conference I met another of my mentors, Piotr. Previously I only interacted with Zack and Piotr online.


      • Derivatives







  • Devices/Embedded



    • The Curious Case of Raspberry Pi Consumerism
      I find the attitude of many within the Raspberry Pi community to be strange and offensive.

      I first discovered this odd phenomenon (odd because it contradicts the ethos of the project's academic foundations) back when it first started, as many within the Raspberry Pi community took an extremely hostile attitude toward academic freedom, apparently in defence of various parties' highly dubious intellectual monopolies (Broadcom and MPEG-LA, for example).

      I pointed out the irony and hypocrisy of their attitude at the time, explaining that they were more than happy to leech Free (as in freedom) Software for their own benefit, but then balked at the prospect of freely sharing the results, and in particular this contradicted their stated academic goal of facilitating better computer education in UK schools, an environment that rightly demands open access to knowledge.


    • A web browser for the Raspberry Pi
      Since the first beta release we have made huge improvements; now the browser is more responsive, it’s faster, and videos work much better (the first beta could play 640×360 videos at 0.5fps, now we can play 25fps 1280×720 videos smoothly). Some web sites are still a bit slow (if they are heavy on the JavaScript side), but there’s not much we can do for web sites that, even on my laptop with an Intel Core i7, use 100% of one of the cores for more than ten seconds.


    • Phones



      • Android



        • The Trouble With Android
          At my house we have a second generation Nexus 7. I don’t use it at all, but my roommate depends on it. Again, it’s a beautiful OS, stable and easy to use, but it’s all about selling things. In fact, you can’t even enter the app store without going through a screen that nags you to make a deposit in case you find an app you want to buy — and a way of saying “no thanks, I’m just looking for free apps” isn’t as obvious as it should be.

          Like the Internet, Android is primarily a marketing tool designed by Google, which is primarily a marketing company.


        • Android Build Support Improved For Libdrm
          Emil Velikov, the new Mesa release manager, just landed a large set of libdrm patches for improving the open-source graphics drivers for Android.










Free Software/Open Source



  • 5 tips on migrating to open-source software
    Open source is not just for Linux. Yes, you'll certainly find a much larger selection of open-source software for the Linux platform, but both Windows and Apple also enjoy a good number of titles. Regardless of what Free Open Source Software (FOSS) you need to use, you might not always find it the most natural evolution -- especially when you've spent the whole of your career using proprietary software. The thing is, a lot of open-source software has matured to the point where it rivals (and sometimes bests) its proprietary counterpart.


  • Tech kingpins: Your kit would be tastier with a spot of open source
    Of course, I’m not just aiming this blogpost at EMC, I'd also like to see IBM take this approach with GPFS. The open-source products are beginning to be good enough for many, certainly outside of some core performance requirements. Ceph, for example, is really beginning to pick up some momentum, especially now that RedHat has bought Inktank.


  • Events



    • A free culture event in Pakistan
      With regards to the open source community in Pakistan, the situation is analogous to that on Wikipedia. Outside of a core group of members of Mozilla Pakistan and Linux Pakistan, the majority of internet users are not familiar with the free culture and open movements. This, in all likelihood, is due to a lack of widespread awareness of the movements.




  • Web Browsers



    • Chrome



      • Google Chrome 38 Beta Brings New Guest Mode and Easier Incognito Mode Switching
        The developers have explained that the user switching feature has been redesigned and it will make changing profiles and into the incognito mode a lot simple. They have also added a new experimental Guest mode, a new experimental UI for Chrome supervised users has been implemented, and numerous under-the-hood changes have been made for stability and performance.




    • Mozilla



      • Indian Firefox OS phones start at $33
        Intex and Spice launched the first Firefox OS phones in India using a low-cost Spreadtrum design: the $33 Intex Cloud FX and the $38 Spice Fire One Mi-FX 1.


      • Mozilla Firefox 32 Officially Released
        It's been a little over a month since the previous Firefox stable release and the developers have now pushed a new major update to users. This latest iteration of Firefox brings just a few major features for regular users, but it excels in other areas like better HTML 5 support.


      • Mozilla Improving Security Processes After Exposing Developer Data
        Users of the Mozilla Developer Network and Bugzilla testing system are advised to update their passwords after a pair of data disclosures were reported in August.






  • SaaS/Big Data



  • Databases



  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice



    • On my way to the LiboCon 2014!
      There are many, many interesting talks this year, and I cannot resist to remind you of the two talks I’ll be giving, even though Italo and I will also be on the deck for a few talks about LibreOffice marketing especially on Wednesday.




  • BSD



    • PfSense 2.1.5 Is a Free and Powerful FreeBSD-Based Firewall Operating System
      PfSense is a free network firewall distribution based on the FreeBSD, it comes with a custom kernel, and a few quite powerful applications that should make its users’ life a lot easier. Most of the firewall distros are Linux-based, but PfSense is a little bit different and is using FreeBSD. Regular users won't feel anything out of the ordinary, but it's an interesting choice for the base.




  • Project Releases



  • Public Services/Government



    • Code for Germany project launches
      Each OK Lab is a source of a great variety of projects, tackling different social issues and topics. For example, the OK Lab in Hamburg has a strong focus on urban development, and has created a map which shows the distribution of playgrounds in the city. An app from the OK Lab Heilbronn depicts the quality of tap water by region, and another from the OK Lab Cologne helps users find the closest defibrillator in their area. One more of our favorite developments is called “Kleiner Spatz”, which translates to “Little Sparrow,” and helps parents to find free child care in their city.




  • Openness/Sharing



  • Standards/Consortia





Leftovers



  • Sports fan lobbyist fights NFL blackouts, taxpayer-funded stadiums, and Comcast
    Since 1973, the National Football League has prevented local TV stations from broadcasting games when tickets aren’t sold out—and Federal Communications Commission rules enable this decidedly fan-unfriendly policy. The rules are finally close to being overturned, and if they are you can thank David Goodfriend.

    Founder of the Sports Fans Coalition, Goodfriend is an attorney and lobbyist with years of experience in government and private industry. He was a Clinton Administration official, a Congressional staffer, legal advisor at the FCC, and executive at Dish Network. The Sports Fans Coalition teamed with four consumer advocacy organizations in 2011 to petition the FCC to stop supporting the NFL’s blackout regime.


  • Silence to mark the 100th anniversary of the death of last ever passenger pigeon


    Conservationists will fall silent at noon today to mark the hundredth anniversary of the death of Martha, the last ever passenger pigeon – just as a new project is set up to bring the species back from the dead.


  • Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression



    • Ecuador: WikiLeaks cables show US how used 'democracy promotion' to push corporate interests
      Ecuador's pro-US neoliberal president Lucio Gutierrez was ousted in 2005. Since then, relations between Ecuador and the United States have deteriorated, with the Andean nation’s increasing rejection of US hegemony.

      The government of Rafael Correa, first elected in 2006, has broken from the neoliberal doctrines Washington has imposed on Latin America. It has embraced regional integration, moving closer to its neighbours and further away from the US.

      Diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks show how hard the US fought to control Ecuador's future post-Gutierrez.

      They show a key element of US efforts to control Ecuador’s political and economic direction in the post-Gutierrez years was the US Embassy’s “democracy promotion” activity.

      So-called “democracy promotion” came to prominence as a method for maintaining US hegemony in the 1980s.


    • The New Terrorism
      We had the first proof of this strategy with the decryp€­ted mil€­it€­ary film “Col€­lat€­eral Murder”, where heli€­copter pilots shot up some Reu€­ters journ€­al€­ists and civil€­ians in Iraq in 2007. That was bad enough — but the cover-up stank. For years the Pentagon denied all know€­ledge of this atro€­cious war crime, and it was only after Wikileaks released the inform€­a€­tion, provided by the brave whis€­tleblower Chelsea Man€­ning, that the fam€­il€­ies and the inter€­na€­tional com€­munity learned the truth. Yet it is Man€­ning, not the war crim€­in€­als, who is serving a 35 year sen€­tence in a US prison.

      Worse, by sheer scale at least, are the ongo€­ing, wide-ranging unmanned drone attacks across the Middle East and Cent€­ral Asia, as cata€­logued by the Bur€­eau of Invest€­ig€­at€­ive Journ€­al€­ism in the UK. Many thou€­sands of inno€­cents have been murdered in these attacks, with the US jus€­ti€­fy€­ing the strikes as killing “mil€­it€­ants” — ie any male over the age of 14. The US is mur€­der€­ing chil€­dren, fam€­il€­ies, wed€­ding parties and vil€­lage coun€­cils with impunity.


    • The game-changer in global conflicts
      IN THE last 10 years armed unmanned aerial vehicles — drones — have been operated to kill individuals in at least seven countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Palestine, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Their use is changing the way war is conventionally waged.


    • Fighting erupts between Syrian army, rebels on Golan Heights
      Heavy fighting between Syrian army forces and rebels erupted on the Golan Heights on Monday, a Reuters photographer said, but it was unclear if either of the two sides had gained an advantage to control a key frontier crossing.

      Rebels of al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front have been battling the Syrian army in the area and have wrested control of the crossing at Quneitra, which is operated by the United Nations.

      Persistent small arms fire and explosions from mortar shells and other munitions could be heard on the Israeli-controlled side of the frontier of the strategic plateau, the photographer reported.

      At least one tank belonging to the Syrian army loyal to President Bashar al-Assad was also involved and rebels could be seen a few meters (yards) away from the frontier fence.

      On Sunday, Israel's military said it shot down a drone that flew from Syria into Israeli-controlled airspace over the Golan.


    • Israel downs drone from Syria over occupied Golan: army


    • UN withdrawal and Syria drone point to new order in Golan
      After four decades, UN supervision on the Syrian border is about to end and Assad’s military is being replaced by more hostile forces.
    • Taking Yemen from bad to worse
      Recent months have witnessed worrying developments in the realm of news media in Yemen. On June 11, the Yemen Today TV Channel was shut down by Presidential Guards on President Hadi’s order following the channel’s coverage of the demonstrations and riots in Sana’a that same day.
    • China reacts guardedly to Narendra Modi's expansionist remark
      China today reacted guardedly to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remarks of "expansionist" tendency among some countries, saying it is not clear what was he referring to and recalled his earlier comments that India and China are strategic partners.

      "We have noted relevant information about Prime Minister Modi's visit to Japan. You just mentioned comments made by him I don't know what is he referring to," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a media briefing here when asked about Modi's remarks made during his ongoing visit to Japan.




  • Environment/Energy/Wildlife



    • Danish Police Arrest Sea Shepherd Team Trying to Stop Faroe Islands Whale Slaughter
      The Royal Danish Navy arrested 14 volunteers from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society on Saturday for trying to intervene in the slaughter of 33 pilot whales in the Faroe Islands, a protectorate of Denmark.

      A team of six Sea Shepherd volunteers spotted a pod of pilot whales from shore on Sandoy Island in the remote North Atlantic archipelago on Saturday and alerted Sea Shepherd’s small flotilla of boats, which has been patrolling the icy waters for nearly three months. Sea Shepherd has been trying to stop the annual Faroese whale hunt known as grindadráp, or grind.


    • Sea Shepherd crew members released
      A total of 14 volunteer crew members of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s pilot whale defence campaign Operation GrindStop 2014 arrested on Saturday in the Faroe Islands today have been released.

      As of Sunday morning, all 14 Sea Shepherd crew have been released. The six volunteers from the land team must return to court tomorrow, Monday, September 1. The eight members of the boat team have been told to return to court on September 25. Postponing the court date until that time allows the police to hold the three Sea Shepherd boats until the end of September, as they are being held for "evidence." All video and still camera data cards were removed by police and are still being held. Sea Shepherd attorneys are working to have them returned as well.




  • PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying



    • New Docs Undermine Walker's Statements on Criminal Probe
      Despite claims that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is not a "target" in the state's criminal campaign finance probe, newly-released documents demonstrate that prosecutors are indeed looking at potentially criminal activity by the first-term governor and 2016 presidential hopeful.

      The latest round of documents released in Wisconsin's "John Doe" investigation shine new light on the stalled inquiry into alleged illegal coordination between Walker’s campaign and outside political groups like Wisconsin Club for Growth (WiCFG) during the 2011-2012 recall elections.




  • Privacy



  • Civil Rights



  • Intellectual Monopolies





Recent Techrights' Posts

SoylentNews Grows Up, Registers as a Business, Site Traffic Reportedly Grows
More people realise that social control media may in fact be a passing fad
 
Garden Season Starts Today
Outdoor time, officially...
More Information About Public Talks That Richard Stallman Gave This Week in Europe
Two talks in Switzerland
Engadget is Still a Spamfarm, It's Just an Amazon Catalogue (SPAM/SEO), a Sea of Junk Disguised as "Articles" With Few 'Fillers' (Real Articles) in Between
Engadget writes for bots now, not for humans
Richard Stallman's Talks in Switzerland This Week
We need to put an end to 'cancer culture'; it's trying to kill people and it is even swatting people
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 28, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, March 28, 2024
[Meme] EPO's New Ways of Working (NWoW), a.k.a. You Don't Even Get a Desk at Work and Cannot be Near Known Colleagues
Seems more like union-busting (divide and rule)
Hiding Microsoft's Culpability in Security Breaches and Other Major Blunders (in the United Kingdom, This May Mean You Can't Get Food)
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is vast
Giving back to the community
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 28/03/2024: Sega, Nintendo, and Bell Layoffs
Links for the day
Open letter to the ACM regarding Codes of Conduct impersonating the Code of Ethics
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
With 9 Mentions of Azure In Its Latest Blog Post, Canonical is Again Promoting Microsoft and Intel Vendor Lock-in, Surveillance, Back Doors, Considerable Power Waste, and Defects That Cannot be Fixed
Microsoft did not even have to buy Canonical (for Canonical to act like it happened)
Links 28/03/2024: GAFAM Replacing Full-Time Workers With Interns Now
Links for the day
Consent & Debian's illegitimate constitution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
The Time Our Server Host Died in a Car Accident
If Debian has internal problems, then they need to be illuminated and then tackled, at the very least in order to ensure we do not end up with "Deadian"
China's New 'IT' Rules Are a Massive Headache for Microsoft
On the issue of China we're neutral except when it comes to human rights issues
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 27, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 27, 2024
WeMakeFedora.org: harassment decision, victory for volunteers and Fedora Foundations
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 27/03/2024: Terrorism Grows in Africa, Unemployment in Finland Rose Sharply in a Year, Chinese Aggression Escalates
Links for the day
Links 27/03/2024: Ericsson and Tencent Layoffs
Links for the day
Amid Online Reports of XBox Sales Collapsing, Mass Layoffs in More Teams, and Windows Making Things Worse (Admission of Losses, Rumours About XBox Canceled as a Hardware Unit)...
Windows has loads of issues, also as a gaming platform
Links 27/03/2024: BBC Resorts to CG Cruft, Akamai Blocking Blunders in Piracy Shield
Links for the day
Android Approaches 90% of the Operating Systems Market in Chad (Windows Down From 99.5% 15 Years Ago to Just 2.5% Right Now)
Windows is down to about 2% on the Web-connected client side as measured by statCounter
Sainsbury's: Let Them Eat Yoghurts (and Microsoft Downtimes When They Need Proper Food)
a social control media 'scandal' this week
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 26, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
Windows/Client at Microsoft Falling Sharply (Well Over 10% Decline Every Quarter), So For His Next Trick the Ponzi in Chief Merges Units, Spices Everything Up With "AI"
Hiding the steep decline of Windows/Client at Microsoft?
Free technology in housing and construction
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
We Need Open Standards With Free Software Implementations, Not "Interoperability" Alone
Sadly we're confronting misguided managers and a bunch of clowns trying to herd us all - sometimes without consent - into "clown computing"
Microsoft's Collapse in the Web Server Space Continued This Month
Microsoft is the "2%", just like Windows in some countries