Links 22/05/2008: 14 Million Downloads This Year for Famelix (GNU/Linux); Another Linux-Based Media Centre
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2008-05-22 16:48:29 UTC
- Modified: 2008-05-22 16:48:29 UTC
GNU/Linux
- Famelix and the dangers of combating Windows
As with any GNU/Linux distribution, exact figures for use are hard to come by for Famelix. However, other users of the distribution include 62 military units, and schools and digital inclusion centers throughout South America. On its home site, the distribution has had more than 22 million downloads -- at least 14 million of them in the last 12 months, thanks mainly to the first releases to support German, English, and Italian in addition to the original Spanish and Portugese. By any standard, the distribution seems a success.
- Home media system runs open source Linux
A company called Fiire is shipping a home automation, media control, and security system based on the open source LinuxMCE distro. Built around a dual-core AMD Athlon X2-based box called the Fiire Engine, the Fiire system also includes FiireStation thin clients and a Z-Wave-based FiireChief controller.
- Buntu Family Theater [video]
- PCLinuxOS
- Comparing Linux USB flash disk distros
- CeBIT - Red Hat champions open source market education
- New Enhancements for Red Hat Enterprise Linux
F/OSS
GPUs
Leftovers
Recent Techrights' Posts
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- People are being conditioned to associate technology with something undesirable, at times even unbearable
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) Has Layoffs and Microsoft Gaming/Entertainment Division Has an Uncertain Future
- it's good to see all those horrible things crashing and burning
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- Gemini Links 22/07/2025: Thinkpad and Pinephone
- Links for the day
- Links 22/07/2025: "Blog Restart" and Microsoft Clobbered by “ToolShell"
- Links for the day
- Global Warming and Global GAFAM Energy-Wasting
- Burn more money (borrowed, loans), then hope the waste will somehow translate into profit?
- No Compliance With the European Patent Convention (EPC) at the European Patent Office (EPO)
- It's about preventing competition against this autocracy
- Blue-Collar Trolls vs White-Collar Trolls
- Examples of white-collar trolls
- Apple Vision Pro Failed So Badly That Its Sales Are About 2,000 Times Smaller Than iPhone Sales
- What's left for Apple to offer other than hype?
- To Millions of People "Year of the Linux Desktop" Was Some Time in the 1990s (Bootable GNU/Linux as a Complete Operating System is Over 33 in Age)
- In some sense, "year of the Linux desktop" was 33 years ago
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- There are usability aspects, aside from accessibility aspects
- Why Wayland (and XWayland) Won't Solve the Key Problem It Proclaims to be Tackling (the Same Is True for Rust)
- The problem isn't Wayland per se but the false promises and efforts to force everybody to move to it whilst insulting or demonising everyone who won't play along
- Diplomatic Immunity Should Not Exist for Anybody
- The EPO in its current form gradually 'normalises' the end of European democracy
- Brett Wilson LLP Stopped Sending Me Papers When I Showed It had Sent Me Over 5 Kilograms of Legal Papers
- A week ago we lodged our third lawsuit
- Microsoft Mass Layoffs and Shutdowns Became the New Normal at Microsoft
- Microsoft mass layoffs became a topic of everyday media coverage since May
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 21, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, July 21, 2025
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- "Thank you for making a stand against dystopia!"
- Gemini Links 22/07/2025: VPS Exploited and Fear of View
- Links for the day
- LLM Bots vs Techrights
- Slows things down a bit
- New Publication Sheds Lights on Abuse of Workers at the European Patent Office (EPO)
- Put in simple terms, they're killing the Office, harming remaining staff, try to hire rubber-stampers
- Links 21/07/2025: Hardware, Health, and Imperialism
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 21/07/2025: "When Buying Isn't Owning" and "CMS Special Edition"
- Links for the day
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- Links for the day
- [Meme] Microsoft Lawyers Throwing Stones in Glass Houses
- threatened me with bankruptcy
- Google "AI Overview" is Not AI and Not Overview
- do not be misled; what Google does isn't smart, it's just ripping off the sites it already crawled for as long as 27 years
- Making the Case to Dump Microsoft and GAFAM for National and Digital Sovereignty
- "Sovereignty is difficult"
- The Tactics of the Opposition (Microsoft Lunduke): Associate With K00ks, Throw in Vaccines to Muddy the Water
- Who stands to gain from this?
- Europe's Second-Largest Institution (EPO) and Largest Patent Monopoly Office Needs More Transparency, Not Less Transparency
- In the EPO, what good are elections when one candidate literally bribes all the voters?
- How Not to Report News About Microsoft
- This pattern of misreporting is so widespread that it's hard to believe it's not intentional
- Computer Science is Under Attack, They Want Everyone to be a Consumer
- If people can no longer acquire Computer Science education and real Computer Science experience, they will not know how to control their own digital destiny or emancipate the very same universities that now control the syllabus and instead of teaching Computer Science encourage the outsourcing of systems
- The Best Tools Are the Simplest Tools
- There's a hidden message here about the merits of sticking with X
- Ofcom Online Safety Group Speaks of Protecting Women Online, Will Brett Wilson LLP Ever Listen?
- They've essentially became like the Taliban's "burka police"
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- Sales, sales, sales
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 20, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, July 20, 2025
- Fragmentation of Data
- Life is too short to "hoard" data
- In Defence of "Spinning Rust"
- Just because something is "old" (or older) doesn't mean it ought to become extinct
- Using Free Software to Prepare Legal Documents
- LibreOffice is openly complaining about OOXML as an obstacle
- Tech and Technology Are Not the Same Anymore
- "Are you into tech, Sir?"
- Our Articles About SLAPPs Receive Recognition and Interest
- This week we shall continue writing about the 3 lawsuits we filed
- Are You Served?
- For many people, advocacy of Free software and GPL enforcement are assumed to be happening
- Conspiracy or grooming? Alex Jurado, Voice of Reason compared to Outreachy
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
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- Links for the day
- Framed by social control media: Alex Belfield, Voice of Reason
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Gemini Links 20/07/2025: Summertime and OCC25 Wrap-up
- Links for the day
- Jamie Zawinski Complained About Wayland, Then Decided to Give It a Go, Now Complains Again About Wayland
- Ask IBM (Red Hat) why it's worth throwing so much away just for Wayland fanaticism
- Slopwatch: Planet Ubuntu, LinuxSecurity, and More
- former "Linux" blogs which basically became slopfarms
- Russia Set to Ban Facebook?
- If WhatsApp is made to "leave", that means Facebook or "Meta".
- Links 20/07/2025: More GAFAM Lawsuits, Layoffs, and SLAPPs
- Links for the day
- Taking Stock of a Good and Productive Week
- We shall now be taking a break, unpacking the new hard drive (8 TB), and making backups of everything
- Nice Recovery (From Actual Fire) by PCLinuxOS, New Version of PCLinuxOS Released, Now Top of DistoWatch
- PCLinuxOS is a community-driven distro
- More Microsoft Shutdowns That Mostly Slipped Under the Radar
- Remember what happened to books 'sold' by Microsoft?
- Microsoft Lunduke Still Fighting Cancel Culture With... Cancel Culture
- There will be no "winners" in such 'debates'
- The History of Daily Links and Politics
- "I support Wayland, but I also support abortion..."
- Ageism in Tech
- Your protocol is "old"...
- Microsoft is at 0% "Market Share" in Most Areas
- Depending on the taxonomy chosen, there may be dozens of categories other than desktops and laptops
- "The moment MSFT stock fails to start tumbling, that’s the beginning of another corporate giant going under."
- There are far more layoffs at Microsoft than at Intel, but you would not get this impression based on Wall Street media
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 19, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, July 19, 2025
Comments
LinuxIsFun
2008-05-23 07:05:46
The founders of the Digital Standards Organization, and others, will sign the Hague Declaration on 21 May 2008 in the Hague. The signing ceremony will be held in the Dutch Royal Library.
Any updates on this....???????????????
Roy Schestowitz
2008-05-23 07:10:38
There have also been some interesting E-mails on the ODF Discussion List, such as this one from half an hours ago:
On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 7:37 PM, marbux
> The more interesting part to me was Phipps' closing:
> "Of course, I might also reflect on the fact they are finally doing > exactly what Stephe Walli said they ought to do to kill ODF.
This is potentially so huge I can't even get my mind around it. Why would Microsoft do this? What is in it for them? How will they seek to turn it to their advantage?
Some suggestions as to why:
1) because they are being investigated by the EU for their coercion in getting OOXML passed.
2) because they want to extend, embrace, and extinguish:
http://stephesblog.blogs.com/my_weblog/2005/12/how_microsoft_s.html
3) because they recognize that they have lost some important ground the format wars, and that governments really do resent being forced to use MOOXML the way that Microsoft forced it on them with proposed ISO 29500.
4) because they succeeded in using dirty procedural tricks to get MOOX approved as an ISO standard, and now they see that they need to get Microsoft reps on standards bodies if they are going to control and ultimately subvert those standards bodies as they did with ISO.
IMHO, we really need to all bookmark Stephen Walli's blog below, and read it frequently, and maybe even read it aloud to one one another occasionally at meetings, because we are not out of the dark as long as Microsoft has billions to burn to defend its monopoly. I have often heard it said that the rational monopoly will, at some point, be willing to spend the provable future value of the company minus one dollar defending its monopoly status. They owe it to their shareholders to be as vicious as we all know that they have been for decades now.
> If one reads the linked piece from 2005 by former Microsoft exec > Stephen Walli, >
Let's all remember what Microsoft did in staking the ISO vote; and how it packed rooms to block out Sun and IBM participation in Spain. We have one an important procedural step, but the competition for open document standards is only just now beginning. Please remember, too, what a Microsoft Exec once said about stacking panels:
http://boycottnovell.com/2008/01/30/evangelism-is-war-memo/
Thanks to Roy Schestowitz for uncovering and posting that revealing "Evangelism is war" presentation by James Plamondon, Technical Evangelist, Microsoft Developer Relations Group, which is linked above.
Expect more procedural tricks from Microsoft. Exercise caution in watching meeting agendas and lists of participants. Here is a cut-and-paste from Roy Schestowitz's posting of Microsoft Evangelist James Plamondon's screed on how to stack panels:
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I have mentioned before the "stacked panel." Panel discussions naturally favor alliances of relatively weak partners — our usual opposition. For example, an "unbiased" panel on OLE vs. OpenDoc would contain representatives of the backers of OLE (Microsoft) and the Backers of OpenDoc (Apple, IBM, Novell, WordPerfect, OMG, etc.). Thus, we find ourselves outnumbered in almost every "naturally occurring" panel debate.
A stacked panel, on the other hand, is like a stacked deck: it is packed with people who, on the face of things, should be neutral, but who are in fact strong supporters of our technology. The key to stacking a panel is being able to choose the moderator. Most conference organizers allow the moderator to select die panel, so if you can pick the moderator, you win. Since you can't expect representatives of our competitors to speak on your behalf, you have to get the moderator to agree to having only "independent ISVs" on the panel. No one from Microsoft or any other formal backer of the competing technologies would be allowed -just ISVs who have to use this stuff in the "real world." Sounds marvellously independent doesn't it? In feet, it allows us to stack the panel with ISVs that back our cause. Thus, the "independent" panel ends up telling the audience that our technology beats the others hands down. Get the press to cover this panel, and you've got a major win on your hands. Finding a moderator is key to setting up a stacked panel
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