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Links 17/9/2010: Software Freedom Day, Firefox 4 Preview Raves



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Contents





GNU/Linux



  • Desktop

    • 4 Ways to Give Desktop Linux a Test-Drive
      That desktop Linux offers myriad compelling advantages for business users is no longer the subject of much debate. All that remains for many Windows users is to give it a try.


    • Have Courage, Linux Noobs
      Using Linux is "almost natural, but you still need to poke around to be really fluent -- just as in any OS with a lot of features," Pogson added.

      "I have exposed Grade 1 kids to GNU /Linux GNOME desktops, and after they learned to click a mouse they were off to the races," he recounted. "They were the only humans able to max out that terminal server."




  • Server

    • Should Red Hat Be Worried About Amazon Linux AMI?
      Red Hat is facing another competition from Amazon on form of Linux AMI. Amazon has announced the availability of the Amazon Linux AMI.

      The Amazon Linux AMI is a supported and maintained Linux image provided by Amazon Web Services for use on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). "It is designed to provide a stable, secure, and high performance execution environment for applications running on Amazon EC2," claims Evangelist Jeff Barr in his blog post.






  • Kernel Space



    • Graphics Stack

      • Why Broadcom's Release May be More Significant than Just Code
        On September 9 the news of Broadcom's release of the code for some of its wireless Ethernet chip sets sent shockwaves throughout the Linux community. Broadcom owners, as well as distribution developers have a reason to celebrate.

        In the past, Broadcom owners had to resort to NDISwrapper or rely upon the limited reversed engineered drivers. Neither was optimal. The release of the code by Broadcom should eventually mean a much better Wi-Fi experience for owners of systems with Broadcom chip sets. But for those that like to read between the lines there may also be a deeper significance to this move.






  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments



    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • The future of KDE instant messaging is happening now
        Kopete was initially very innovative, at least in its goals: to communicate with people, while leaving the IM network as a channel. We brought the concepts of “metacontacts” (bad naming), but basically you say people in your contact list, no matter if they were available on MSN, ICQ, or both.

        Today I have a telephone with internet 24/7 in my pocket and I can IM on the bus. I don’t choose IM networks as a soccer team, but rely on them because I have friends on various of them. Just like I use twitter for “geeky stuff” while Facebook is a more “relaxed” environment.


      • Edit Your Films In Ubuntu, Use New Kdenlive
        Ubuntu is one of the most popular, powerful and useful operating systems of the world. While Mac is locked to Apple machines and Windows is expensive and vulnerable to viruses and attacks, Ubuntu is the only operating systems which has all the merits -- its highly secure, free of cost and can run on Apple machines as well.






  • Distributions

    • Fat or thin, it's your choice.
      The point here is that, no matter what Linux distribution you start from, you can make it do anything, be anything or look like anything. If wished you can take an Ubuntu installation and have it look, feel and perform like a Fedora distribution. Or you can take a Fedora installation and have it as slim and trim as Puppy Linux.


    • Looking at Fedora 14 and Ubuntu 10.10
      Both releases seem to be shaping up well, if very differently — as befitting the focus of the distributions and projects. Ubuntu 10.10 is a polished consumer OS that is well-suited for users who are new to Linux, or just prefer a desktop system that's easy to use. Fedora's developer-centric approach makes for an OS that is easy enough to use, but better suited for developers or experienced users who want to tinker with technologies before they make an official appearance in RHEL and other distributions. Ubuntu, on the other hand, is the end result of development rather than the beginning. Many of the changes in 10.10, e.g. the Ubuntu One improvements and the application indicators, are unlikely to show up in other distributions (excepting, perhaps, Linux Mint).


    • Red Hat Family

      • Red Hat looks out of area for HQ-size space
        Red Hat Inc., one of the Triangle’s high-profile companies, is scouting for sites in other states where officials may also be wooing the open-source software developer to move its headquarters from Raleigh.


      • Smartrend'S Candlestick Scanner Detects Bearish Engulfing Pattern For Red Hat (RHT)
        SmarTrend issued an Uptrend alert on shares of Red Hat on August 23, 2010 at $33.03 per share (13.4% return since that call). This bearish candle pattern may point to a reversal of the previously called Uptrend.


      • Fedora

        • Momonga Linux 7 review
          Momonga is a Linux distribution based on Fedora. It is a community-developed distribution with roots in Japan (the name is derived from a species of flying squirrel found in Europe and parts of Asia). Like Fedora, it is a multi-purpose distribution, a Free distribution, with a script that makes it easy to build and install non-free applications






    • Debian Family

      • Squeeze in a jam?
        I put this down to being a complete noob, and reinstalled Lenny. Later I learnt that the upgrade has to be staged- certain packages have to be updated before doing a full upgrade, otherwise the upgrade falls down. Recently I saw a post on the Debian forum which suggested that an upgrade was now a relatively simple process- involving just a kernel upgrade before a full upgrade, so I thought I'd give it a go.


      • Ubuntu 10.10 - Wallpaper, and a few notes
        In the process of doing some other things, I have just noticed that those who thought the "Barf Bag" wallpaper that showed up in Ubuntu 10.10 Beta was just a "placeholder" were probably correct.


      • Canonical/Ubuntu







  • Devices/Embedded



    • Phones



      • Nokia/MeeGo

        • MeeGo Developer Day - Day 2 at IDF
          Sunil Saxena spent some time reviewing the MeeGo Architecture, along with our current thoughts on how we plan to define MeeGo compliance. The MeeGo compliance spec is still being developed, so now is a good time to review it and provide feedback.

          Bill Pearson was the next presenter talking about AppUp and the Intel AppUp Developer Program, which helps developers focus on what matters: platform sexiness, making money, getting recognition, and low friction deployment, while Intel helps with boring things like validation. Developers can create applications or components that they can sell to other developers. In addition to revenue from selling applications, the Million Dollar Development Fund provides additional incentives. Robust analytics are also available on the developer dashboards, to learn more about how your application is selling.

          Rajiv Ranganath gave us an overview of Qt, which has over 350,000 commercial and open source developers.


        • Day 1: Intel AppUp Elements 2010


        • Day 2: Intel AppUp Elements 2010




      • Android

        • Android lockdown: Thanks Linus
          The current lockdown of Linux based devices (including Android phones, TiVo, and many many consumer devices) is due, simply, to the Linux developers' unwillingness to update their code to the GPLv3 license. We* contribute to Linux, Linux is taken for use in Android (and remains Open and Free), and then the phone manufacturers take our work and lock it up and sell it to us with reduced functionality. Big thanks, manufacturers.


        • Android Continues to Gobble Up Smartphone Share






    • Tablets

      • High-end Avaya Android-powered Table PC Unveiled
        Avaya, an enterprise communications systems company, just announced a high-end table PC that is primarily designed for business conferencing. Called the Avaya Flare, the device has an Intel Atom processor and runs Android operating system. It is said to make use of Avaya unified communications software utilizing a new interface called Flare User Experience and features Aura Conferencing and the Linux-based Avaya Aura Messaging software.


      • ViewSonic and Samsung tablets are U.S.-bound
        Viewsonic demonstrated a 10.1-inch, Android 2.2 "G-Tablet" that's bound for U.S. sales, powered by an Nvidia Tegra 2. Meanwhile, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless say they'll offer the Android 2.2-based Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet this fall.


      • Asus U35JC review
        OS Tested: Ubuntu 10.04.1








Free Software/Open Source



  • How do you find and choose free software?
    So you’ve got your GNU/Linux based box. You’ve installed the base system and you’re good to go. Welcome to the world of freedom. But then what? How do you determine what packages to install. How do you decide which of the alternatives to go with?


  • A Quick Look at OpenIndiana
    OpenSolaris is dead, but OpenIndiana lives on. Just a few weeks after Oracle made it clear that OpenSolaris was dead as a doornail, the Illumos and OpenIndiana folks have a distribution ready for the OpenSolaris community that’s been left in a lurch by Oracle.

    The code dropped on Tuesday, so I haven’t had a lot of time to muck with OpenIndiana yet. I spent a few hours with the live CD and installed it into VMware.


  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla

      • Firefox 4 update moves link previews to awesome bar
        Clearly, the status bar's days are numbered. Even Internet Explorer 9 has removed the bottom-dwelling bar in favor of inline tooltips.

        Now, in the latest updates to Firefox 4, Mozilla's browser has moved status bar link previews to the right-hand side of the Awesome Bar. Hover a link, and the destination URL appears in soft, gray text. Sure, it looks OK when you're currently viewing a page with a nice, short URL -- but what about on something like an Amazon product page? Take the jump to see!


      • Firefox 4 Preview - Foxy, sharp and fast!
        I think Firefox 4 is a very smart product. It looks better than 3.6 overall, tabs on top or without them, it feels faster, it has lots of useful features, and it's got the Web 2.0 bling bling. Linux beta lags a step behind, but that's understandable. Performance is good in all aspects, with major improvements in responsiveness. Memory consumption is fairly modest. Firefox 4 is a pleasant addition to the browser arsenal.

        Firefox 4 is a plenty of good, old stuff and a sprinkling of new to make you feel young and excited again. Mozilla, good job. Even the revolutionary stuff is done with style and moderation to make a hot-headed conservative like me smile. You should look forward to the next release. Firefox 4 is going to be a superb browser.


      • Mozilla releases Thunderbird updates
        One day after it released updates for its Firefox web browser, the Mozilla Project has issued versions 3.1.4 and 3.0.8 of Thunderbird, the latest stable and legacy branch updates of its popular open source email client. According to the developers, the latest maintenance updates improve the applications overall stability and address several user experience concerns found in the previous stable branch release.


      • Mozilla releases new "Kraken" browser benchmark
        Mozilla software engineer Rob Sayre has announced the release of "Kraken", a new browser benchmark. The developer says that unlike other browser benchmarks, such as SunSpider, V8 and Dromaeo, Kraken focuses on realistic workloads and on forward-looking applications.






  • CMS



  • Business



  • FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

    • Celebrate Software Freedom Day with the LibrePlanet community


      Saturday, September 18th is Software Freedom Day, a worldwide celebration of user freedom. It's a great opportunity not only to introduce new people to free software, but to connect with other free software activists in your area or online.

      But what about the day after? How can we sustain these links? How can we make sure that people in your area who hear about free software can find a local community to connect with?


    • want to work on Bazaar?
      Now we’re looking for a very good software engineer to join the Bazaar team at Canonical, working both on the core tool itself and on how it’s used by Ubuntu developers.


    • A month of the Hurd: Media Appearances, procfs, Arch Hurd.
      Finally, amongst other bug fixing and other development work by the usual suspects, we had a short review of what the current Hurd contributors still need to use a GNU/Hurd system for most of their day-to-day tasks. This may help to prioritize the development efforts.




  • Licensing



  • Openness/Sharing

    • Developing films the open source way
      In a world where movies are produced on budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars, at a time when studios expect a huge return on their investment, in an industry where the opening weekend can make or break a film--one man refuses to live by society's (or the movie industry's) rules. One man is willing to put it all on the line and do something different. Something daring. Something... free.

      [...]

      The key idea to take away here is freedom: freedom of the consumer to see what they're paying for before they spend their money. This empowers the viewer, letting them control where they spend their money. Rather than spending their money up front before watching a film, they can see the work for free. As a result, more people are likely to watch the film, or listen to the music.




  • Standards/Consortia





Leftovers

  • Power to the PC: How to Select a Computer Power Supply


  • Security/Aggression





  • Finance

    • Kaufman Says `Something Rotten' in Commodity Markets: Video
      Sept. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Frederick Kaufman, a professor at College of Staten Island, Alexia Howard, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., Dennis DeLaughter, the owner of Progressive Farm Marketing Inc., and Alex Wittenberg, a partner at Oliver Wyman, talk about agricultural futures and commodity markets. They speak with Pimm Fox on Bloomberg Television's "Taking Stock." (This is an excerpt. Source: Bloomberg)


    • Setting the Agenda
      That's what journalists are supposed to do: Set the agenda. Rarely, however, do we get the headlines. But last night, on Bloomberg TV, the Food Bubble came through . . .




  • Censorship/Privacy/Civil Rights

    • The Internet Freedom Fallacy and the Arab Digital activism
      This article focuses on grassroots digital activism in the Arab world and the risks of what seems to be an inevitable collusion with U.S foreign policy and interests. It sums up the most important elements of the conversation I have been having for the last 2 years with many actors involved in defending online free speech and the use of technology for social and political change. While the main focus is Arab digital activism, I have made sure to include similar concerns raised by activists and online free speech advocates from other parts of the world, such as China, Thailand, and Iran.




  • Internet/Net Neutrality/DRM

    • Red tape snarls rural Internet firm
      Ottawa tells Peace Region ISP that it’s not Canadian enough for new slice of spectrum


    • Tens of thousands could be priced out of broadband after Government announcement on file sharing code
      Up to €£500m will be taken out of the UK economy according to the Government's announcement today about the cost sharing for the letter writing regime following the Digital Economy Act. The BIS cost order confirms the 75/25 split of costs between rightholders and ISPs.

      ISPs will of course pass on these costs to their customers. According to the Government's own estimates that means that up to 96,000 individuals will not be able to afford an internet connection anymore.




  • Intellectual Monopolies

    • BSA's Latest Study on Piracy and Economic Benefits "Shockingly Misleading"
      When IT Business's Brian Jackson asked me for a comment, I noted that such estimates were notoriously speculative (see Glyn Moody on this) and that the BSA would do far better to tell us how much Canada has gained from its recent significant reductions in piracy. Last year, the BSA said the Canadian rate dropped by three percent to 29%, the biggest drop among developed countries and - the BSA noted - an all-time low. In fact, since 2006 the BSA says that there has been a five percent drop in Canada. Has that created thousands of new jobs and generated billions in new revenues and taxes?


    • IP as a joke


    • Lars Johnson Has Goats on His Roof and a Stable of Lawyers to Prove It
      Having Trademarked the Ungulate Look, Restaurateur Butts Heads With Imitators


    • Copyrights

      • Millions at Stake in Education Copyright Battle
        Negotiating with individual authors or publishers for the rights to a single work may be cumbersome, but so too are the proposed reporting requirements. Moreover, individual negotiations hold the advantage of potential costs savings for students and ensuring that the actual authors receive full compensation for the use of their works. In other words, win-win-win for authors, teachers, and students.


      • An Explanation Of My Views On Copyright Part Four – The Sky Is Falling
        Going back to the section on Digital Locks, let’s assume that Bill C-32 passes into law with no changes. So Randy Bachman releases a new compact disc, and the Record Label uses TPM/DRM on it. The way the law is currently written, Randy Bachman could not legally break the TPM/DRM, even if he owns the copyright. Even worse, he wouldn’t be legally able to break the TPM/DRM if he owned the Record Label, and the compact disc pressing plant. You might argue that he shouldn’t need to, as he’d still have the masters, but accidents have happened before, and masters have been lost. Even if Randy controlled every step of the chain, legally he can’t break the TPM/DRM he decided to use. Does this make sense?










Clip of the Day



Microsoft Propaganda Film



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Credit: TinyOgg

Recent Techrights' Posts

The Real Issue With The Register MS is Not the Politics of Some Staff's "Tweets", It's That The Register MS Publishes Fake Articles for Sponsors (50,000 Pounds Minimum)
AWS and Google each pay millions for fake articles which beget journalistic bias too (they literally pay the salaries of the 'reporters')
Microsoft Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): We Need Accountability Because Many People Die and It's Because of Microsoft Diehards or People Bribed by Microsoft to Deploy Microsoft Where Lives Are at Risk
They're trying to save face right now
What the Media Misses: It's Not an NVIDIA Issue, Super Micro Computer Inc Also Fell From $45 to $26 in the Period NVIDIA Lost 33% of Its Faked 'Value', NVIDIA is Collapsing Like Intel
History goes in circles
Waste of Money: Giving More Money to Toothless Regulators That Don't Even Examine Evidence
Shame in SRA
At Microsoft, "Buyouts" or "Global Voluntary Separation Agreement" (GVSA) Not Much Different From Layoffs (Severance Shockingly Low)
From what we are able to gather, many people are leaving Microsoft 'voluntarily'
Is Microsoft the Next Fake-Valued Corporation to Lose 35% in "Market Value"? Is Slop Bringing Microsoft Down?
Will NDAs prevent people talking or journalists finding out the true cause?
Silent Layoffs at IBM (and Red Hat) Continue in November 2026
IBM's CEO is "a Palliative Care Doctor Who Slides [IBM] Gently Into the Night"
Links 13/11/2026: "Apple Support Community Forums to Permanently Close" and "The Slop Market is Getting Nervous"
Links for the day
 
Gemini Links 13/11/2026: Productivity Metrics and Antenna Outage
Links for the day
It's Not About China or Sex, It's About Corruption at NVIDIA and a Pyramid Scheme Perpetrated Under the Guise of "Hey Hi Revolution" (That Wasn't, It's Manufactured and Hyped by Bribes, Subsidised by Multi-Trillion-Dollar Loans, People's Pension Funds and More)
What's at stake here is a lot bigger than the "Ponzi hub" of Jensen Huang
No, You're Not a "Most Valuable Company" When Everything is Down for Half a Day in the Entire Planet
Still down, still no explanation (maybe they too aren't sure)
"Techrights Statement on Phoronix" Still Valid Five Years Later
Our position as stated in early 2022 has not changed
Vista 11's 'Growth' Has Stalled, It's Measured at Only 17.9% in the US This Year
That helps put in perspective Microsoft's attempt to discard almost 30% of its remaining workforce
"NVIDIA is Enron" (Subsidising the Pyramid Scheme That It Profited From), Microsoft is Next to be Down for the Count
Microsoft increasingly looks like the "next NVIDIA"
Richard Stallman Travels to South America to Give Talks About Free Software in Spanish, FSF Raises Money
The FSF is raising money (goal is $400,000) and the FSF has just mentioned the upcoming talks by the FSF's founder
United States Adding ~300 Billion in Government Debt Per Month, Wall Street Shaves Off Trillions in 'Value' in Less Than One Week
cushioning "assets" by helping them fake "value"
Microsoft: Pay Us for the Stuff That's Offline and We Cannot Fix
Learn to take control of the technology that you rely on
Links 13/11/2026: "Copyright-Strike-for-Hire" and "Stevie Wonder Photo Lawsuit"
Links for the day
The Slop Bubble (or Pyramid Scheme) Relied on Trust and Patience (Being Patient as Losses Grow and Debt Explodes, Trusting the Roadmap of Cheaters and Frauds)
Remember that it all began with trust
Anthropic's IPO Depends on $895.4 Billion in Debt (Money It Doesn't Have, It Loses Over 100 Billion Dollars Per Reporting Period), NVIDIA Has Just Lost Almost 2 Trillion Dollars In Value and Its Debt Trebled in Three Months
This coming week will be very, very entertaining for slop critics/sceptics to watch
Lorenzo Stoakes (ARM) the Latest of Many to Quit Linux Development Over Linus Torvalds' Obsession With Slop (Linus Wants to Work With Bots, Not Humans Who Understand Whatever Code They Write)
Linus caught the 'brain virus'
Microsoft Asks 60,000 Workers to Leave, Some Leave, Services Go Down
Microsoft laid off about 40,000-50,000 people in past years
Gemini Links 13/11/2026: Roku Exits the Smart Home Market and Poor Reporting/Journalism Regarding Slop Plagiarism
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, November 12, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, November 12, 2026
Gemini Links 12/11/2026: A Firing of a Boss and Geminispace Growing Fast
Links for the day
Bill Epsteingate-Funded BBC "Totally Ignoring the $1.7 Trillion Wiped off NVIDIA Stocks"
Imagine how many pension funds are tied to this NVIDIA pyramid scheme
A Few Hours Before NVIDIA CEO Canned (and NVIDIA Shares Plunged) the NVIDIA-Funded The Register MS Published Paid Spam With "AI" 18 Times in It
Anything to inflate the bubble
Links 11/11/2026: NVIDIA Decapitated, "The Company That Published Fake Journalists in Sports Illustrated is Collapsing Dramatically"
Links for the day
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXXIX - We Didn't Start the Fire
It started in 2012
Photo Ops Are Liabilities
NVIDIA is not a "family business" and its CEO isn't some modest genius
NVIDIA’s Total Debt Trebled in Three Months!
Not the hallmark of a rich company unless its accounting is fraudulent
NVIDIA Turns Out to be Serial Cheater, Stock Plunges 33% in 5 Weeks
The "slop bros" have long relied on patience and blind faith
Adopting LLM Slop is Still Suicide
Suicide (in the literal sense) is also linked to adoption of chatbots
On Laundering Licences and Code
A "Second SCO" waiting to happen
The Cyber Show on Slop and the Ministry Of Truth in "Nineteen Eighty Four"
"cultural erasure" by slop
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXXVIII - Keeping Both Eyes on the Ball
One upside of these disputes is that they raise at least two very important issues concerning the law
Gemini Links 12/11/2026: Encryption is Easy, Human Emacs, and Legislation in Italy
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, November 11, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, November 11, 2026
Links 11/11/2026: End of Novaya Gazeta (Assassinated by Putin) and North Koreans Too Poor to Buy Rice
Links for the day
Gemini Links 11/11/2026: The Tyrant’s Moat and Rants About Slop Causing Problems
Links for the day
Links 11/11/2026: Skydance Games and Boeing Hit By Layoffs, "Time Out for Timeouts"
Links for the day
IRC is for Communities, Social Control Networks Are for Broligarchs (by Broligarchs)
Unlike Reddit, it's not a company
JavaScript is the Problem, Not the Answer
Making the Web better is about making things better, not slapping more JavaScript 'walls' at it
Intercontinental Brigading - Part XXXXVII - "Making a False Complaint to Police is a Crime." (British Cops Aren't American Mercenaries)
"In the United Kingdom, the Foreign Enlistment Act 1819 and the Foreign Enlistment Act 1870 make it unlawful for British subjects to join the armed forces of any state warring with another state at peace with Britain."
The Label 'Anti-AI'
They make it sound like opposing plagiarism or cheating is an act of intolerance or hatred
Intolerance and Violence
Intolerance in the software world is not a new problem
António Campinos Hiding From Staff Amid Strikes, Won't Participate in Dialogue
They voted to continue striking until Christmas
Silent Layoffs at IBM (Rolling Layoffs), Now Curbs on H1B (Mostly Indian Applicants)
Little will change at IBM except the gravity (global distribution) of its workforce will go east
Links 11/11/2026: Moving from Proton to Posteo and "Floating in Space"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 10, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 10, 2026