Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 20/08/2009: GNU/Linux Beats Vista 7, Shadowgrounds Survivor is Coming



GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux

  • Linux vs Windows 7
    And this is where Linux can make a big difference. There's nothing in Windows 7 that Linux can't do, and in most cases, do it better. Our machines are quicker and more efficient. Our desktops are more innovative and less static. Our apps are more powerful, cheaper and less partisan, and Linux security has never been better. But best of all, we have complete control over the future of Linux, and it's success or failure at the hands of Windows 7 is in our hands.


  • PS3 Slim - No more Linux? Ahh, but for how long...
    I'm saying it early - I foresee that the PS3 Slim will having Linux running on it within a few weeks of the launch.




  • Games

    • 42 Hot Free Linux Games (Part 2 of 3)
      To be eligible for inclusion in the list below, games again needed to satisfy the following requirements:

      Free to play (no download charge, no monthly charge)

      Does not require Wine to run. Wine is a compatibility layer for running Windows software.

      Not in the early stages of development


    • Shadowgrounds Survivor from Igios is now GOLD !
      LGP Announced that Shadowgrounds Survivor from Igios is now GOLD. It has gone to replication and will be available in around 2-3 weeks. Survivor will be available both as a boxed product everywhere, and as a downloadable and rentable game from our download partners.


    • Quake Live at 1Ghz, 256Mb
      That’s Crux, by the way. I expected laggy performance and skipping graphics. But framerates are exceptionally good, although I didn’t find a way to show a number on screen. I’m not a huge first-person shooter fan, but it’s fun to try out.






  • K Desktop Environment

    • kmymoney 1.0, positioning
      Once again: cheers to the KMyMoney devs and I hope you all managed a small celebration to commemorate your milestone and the great gift you have delivered to the world! :)


    • on feature requests
      The source of the material was a thread on the kde-devel mailing list where feature additions for KDE 4 was brought up, and in particular features that were in KDE 3 that are not in KDE 4.

      [...]

      I want to see the good ideas float to the top and get the attention they deserve (e.g. implementations) and the good ideas that need to be prioritized for later still get the attention they deserve so nobody feels neglected.







  • Distributions

    • PCLinuxOS 2009.1 Minime Review
      What I liked most in this distribution:

      1. Inclusion of Update Notifier and Copy2Ram option. 2. Availability of OpenOffice 3.1, Firefox 3.5.2, Artha and many other useful packages in the repo. 3. Bloat-free attitude of Minime like its predecessors. 4. Adherence to KDE 3.5.10 + 2.6.26 kernel. 5. Stunning default wallpaper, bootsplash + ksplash.


    • UserOS Extreme 9.04 - coming to October 2009 PC User
      In less than two weeks, you’ll be able to give our latest operating system a go - UserOS Extreme 9.04. Based on the recent Ubuntu 9.04 release, we’ve built the new operating system from the ground up. You’ll be able to read in the October 2009 issue exactly what we did but we took a new approach to the operating system. It’s not based on an existing distro.




    • Red Hat Family







    • Debian Family











  • Devices/Embedded

    • 5 Reasons to Get Excited about Linux on the Netbook
      All that being said, you don't have to buy a netbook with Linux pre-installed to enjoy what this "alternative" OS has to offer. There are several versions out there which you can try today, no purchase required. And there are even more soon-to-launch distros which really get us excited.








Free Software/Open Source

  • Three Free Issues of BSD Magazine in .pdf Format
    Karolina at BSD Magazine wanted me to let you know that she has posted three free .pdf issues online. The three cover FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. Apparently BSD Magazine has survived a publishing scare and will continue for the foreseeable future. I may also have an article for FreeBSD out soon.


  • Quick and Dirty MySQL Performance Troubleshooting
    What are the first things you should look at after learning of a sudden change in MySQL server performance?


  • Community work in the framework project – Part 1
    Today I want to start a little overview about the current work of the framework project community members. Fortunately we have some volunteers from RedFlag 2000 who work on several projects


  • Durian is Coming: Blender's Third Open Movie Project
    Blender third open movie project, code-named “Durian” is ramping up to production, and time is running out for the pre-sale campaign if you want to get your spot in the credits. This time the project is focusing on an adolescent audience with an epic-fantasy setting and a female protagonist (my son aptly dubbed this the “Chicks in Chainmail” genre). The only art yet available from Durian itself is the series of banner ads (by concept artist, David Revoy), but an impressive creative team has already been announced.




Leftovers

  • MSI ditches Intel for AMD
    Russian tech site 3DNews review has reviewed the x610 X-Slim series laptop even before it's been officially announced by MSI. The reviewers discovered that the CPU change has put a big dent in performance and driven down battery life to two hours for the sake of a small cost saving.


  • Internet slowly wakes up to PayPal's quiet fee hike
    PayPal made some policy changes in June, but it's likely that you haven't heard much about them until very recently. That's because the company quietly slid in extra fees that will affect nearly all users but failed to be transparent about the changes. Now, the Internet is slowly discovering what happened, and no one is happy about it.


  • Town Hall Protests: Astroturf 2.0?
    Some Democrats have blamed the chaos on astroturf operations: fake grassroots groups funded by special interests. But are the forces whipping up the anti-health care frenzy really astroturf—or a new form of corporate-funded campaigning?




  • Censorship/Web Abuse

    • Censorship or Copyright Infringement? Flickr Takes Down "Obama as Joker" Photo
      Los Angeles residents recently began seeing a new sort of Obama poster plastered across their city. Instead of promoting "hope," these posters feature U.S. President Barack Obama wearing the Joker's clown makeup from the Batman movie "The Dark Knight." Even those outside of L.A. have likely seen this image somewhere as it soon took on a viral nature, appearing both online and in other cities across the country.








  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • BSA Softens Anti-Piracy Message
      The alliance, consisting of about 80 companies — including Apple, Microsoft and Adobe — is the counterpart to the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America.


    • Striking a balance with copyright
      The various monopoly privileges misnamed ‘intellectual property’ (copyright and patent) are relatively recent creations, historically. Both of them derive form something called the ‘Statute of Anne‘. More directly, the copyright and patent laws in the United States derive from a clause in the Constitution which explicitly stipulates that they should only last for a ‘limited time’, and are explicitly required to promote “science and the useful arts”. (Article 1, Section 8.)


    • On Plagiarism, Scholarship, and Community Knowledge
      “During the course of this long volume I have undoubtedly plagiarized from many sources–to use the ugly term that did not bother Shakespeare’s age. I doubt whether any criticism or cultural history has ever been written without such plagiary, which inevitably results from assimilating the contributions of your countless fellow-workers, past and present. The true function of scholarship as a society is not to stake out claims on which others must not trespass, but to provide a community of knowledge in which others may share.” -F. O. Matthiessen, American Renaissance 1941.










Digital Tipping Point: Clip of the Day



Jin Sato, father of humanoid robots 01 (2005)



Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 10/09/2026: Facebook Unsafe for Kids, Fake Songs (Against Right of Publicity, CG Forgeries Basically) a Growing Problem
Links for the day
Rust is Financially and Technically Controlled by Microsoft. Rust Foundation is a Front for Microsoft's Proprietary Software.
Rust is not and has never been about security
Gemini Links 10/09/2026: "I Don’t Want to Interact With Stochastic Parrots" and "ROOPHLOCH 2026!"
Links for the day
What the British School Closure (BSN Senior School Leidschenveen) Means to EPO Staff
The only European thing about the EPO is the staff
Standing in Solidarity With Matt Mullenweg
I don't trust the people and companies that want Mullenweg out. Neither should you.
Links 10/09/2026: "Smear Campaign Says Anti-Flock Movement Is Chinese Propaganda" and "Flock Employee Calls Cops on Reporter Filming Them"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 09, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, September 09, 2026
IBM's Senior VP of Infrastructure is Out, Silent Layoffs Still Going On
Some people imagine the CEO will also "retire" very soon (and "ahead of time")
Gemini Links 09/09/2026: Mechanical Cameras, "Super App", and Prusa Issues
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 177 Out of 200: Manosphere Without Financial Transparency
It has moreover replaced a female worker with a male
Deadline Tomorrow (10th of September) to Appeal the EPO's Fleecing of Staff (Union to Make Legal Challenges)
Join them. Fight the good fight.
linuxstans.com Died, Then Came Back as Slop (LLM Junk)
Don't make the mistake or the assumption that merely 'dabbling in' or 'experimenting with' LLMs can be forgivable as it is a trust destroyer
Links 09/09/2026: GAFAM Fatalities in Miami International Airport, "Britain’s Health Crisis Is Becoming a Political Crisis"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/09/2026: "Adjective Is Subjective" and Walled Gardens
Links for the day
Plagiarism is Hardly a New Problem, It Predates Mainstream Media Getting Paid to Whitewash It as "Training" or "Hey Hi", Then Conflate Plagiarism With "Intelligence" or Deferred "Value"
"Quantum" isn't new either; it's a 'circle-jerk' for companies without direction, only hype
Links 09/09/2026: Airport 'Down' (Glasgow and Edinburgh), 'Open' 'AI' Losses Rise to Pace of 50 Billion Dollars in Losses Per Year
Links for the day
Unsafe at Any Speed, "Modern" Appliances
Appliances have gotten worse
SLAPP Censorship - Part 176 Out of 200: The Sex-Obsessed Non-Experts
We heard some sexual stories
European Patent Office (EPO): No Transparency and No Paper Trail
The incompetence is that of the management, i.e. sheer incompetence of people who never examined a patent in their entire lifetime
Gemini Links 09/09/2026: Going Out, Smartphone Addiction, Mapping the Geminispace
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 08, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 08, 2026
Linux is Sabotaged by Botspam and Bloat (de Facto Denial of Service Attack in "Intelligence" Clothing After Rust in "Security" Clothing)
Linux is becoming orphaned, devalued and diluted by GAFAM slop
Switzerland No Longer Wants Microsoft's 'Swiss Cheese' (Back Doors)
Switzerland's patience with Microsoft is wearing thin
Debian is Not a Community, Many Debian Developers Work for Large Companies Including GAFAM (US)
"Community" sounds like friendship and amicability
Links 08/09/2026: Slop Companies Attack Some More Sites, Nvidia Bribes 'Linux' Foundation for Some More Openwashing and for Saying Slop is "Secure"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/09/2026: Ultra Introverts, BlackBerry Bold in 2026, and Laughing at LLMs
Links for the day
Microsoft Layoffs in October 2026
Microsoft is a market leader. In NDAs.
Links 08/09/2026: "The Green Revolution Has Failed Africa" and Palantir/Microsoft Harming NHS
Links for the day
Microsoft's Silent Layoffs Are the New Normal at Microsoft
Microsoft has a ton of layoffs all the time, but the media isn't mentioning those as no WARN notices get issued
SLAPP Censorship - Part 175 Out of 200: Implicit and Explicit Coalition Against the UK's SLAPP Industry
SRA recognises the problem
Further Transparency Problems at the EPO
The EPO was never meant to be profitable
Gemini Links 08/09/2026: "Everything Must Go", Announcing Perigee, and Presentations in a Browser
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 07, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, September 07, 2026