Bonum Certa Men Certa

Links 27/9/2011:Tinycore 4.0, Android Most Popular





GNOME bluefish

Contents





GNU/Linux



  • Linux users, start your engines
    Unless you’re a motorhead to a varying degree — and an older one at that — you probably don’t know who John Cooper is. His contributions in racing circles — putting the engine behind the driver in his Cooper Formula 1 cars in the late 1950s — would normally cement his place in automotive history, but he didn’t stop there.


  • Audiocasts/Shows





  • Kernel Space

    • Kernel.org Still Struggles To Return
      Accessing Kernel.org will simply result in a "Down for maintenance" message. It's also in a similar manner for Linux.com, which was exploited earlier this month. LinuxFoundation.org is at least back online.


    • Linus Torvalds’s Lessons on Software Development Management
      If anyone knows the joys and sorrows of managing software development projects, it would be Linus Torvalds, creator of the world's most popular open-source software program: the Linux operating system. For more than 20 years, Torvalds has been directing thousands of developers to improve the open source OS. He and I sat down to talk about effective techniques in running large-scale distributed programming teams – and the things that don’t work, too.




  • Applications



  • Desktop Environments

    • Fighting the Schism of Free Software
      Over a decade ago an event happened which is still influencing our life in free software. Instead of one, two projects emerged to bring a fully free desktop to Linux based systems. Back then we failed to see the advantages of having multiple available desktop environments and we basically created a schism between the KDE and the GNOME world.

      The Schism is still in place!


    • K Desktop Environment/KDE SC)

      • Still hating Kde4/cups
        Overall KDE4 doesn’t limit my working overly compared to KDE 3.5 (although, so far as I can remember, it doesn’t improve it). One area where it particularly falls down is in printing. I have remarked earlier on the absence of kprinter.


      • KDE’s Infrastructure.
        During KDE’s (one of the largest open source communities around, with about 2500 active developer accounts with direct write access to many millions of lines of code across dozens of products, and large numbers of external contributors) ongoing migration from SVN to Git, GitHub was never considered as an option because the community considers it unacceptable for an open source community to throw their weight behind a proprietary solution.


      • [Artwork]: 10 Ksplash Screen Themes For KDE 4.x
        A great Ksplash theme collection for KDE 4.x featuring many Linux distributions. Innovative themes designed to be suitable to many users who would like to customize the default Ksplash theme.




    • GNOME Desktop





  • Distributions

    • Hello again, Chakra
      Given the short time that has gone by since I last tried Chakra, I'm impressed with its progress.


    • The Air Force's secure Linux distribution
      Outside of the U.S., there are several “national” Linux distributions. These include China’s Red Flag Linux; Turkey’s Pardus, and the Philippines’ Bayahnian. Other countries, like Russia, are on their way to moving their entire IT infrastructure to Linux and open-source software. In the U.S., the government, especially the military, makes use of Linux all the time. Indeed, Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux), the most popular software set for hardening Linux against Linux is sponsored by the National Security Agency. But, there hasn’t been a national American Linux desktop distribution… until now.


    • New Releases



      • A Bundle of Updates Give 10 Linux Distributions a Boost
        With so many Linux distributions to choose from, it can be difficult to keep tabs on them all. Over the past few weeks I've written about Bodhi Linux--a lesser-known but nice (and increasingly popular) flavor of Linux--as well as Arch Linux and Mandriva. But today I'd like to round up other distributions of the free and open source operating system that have released key updates recently.


      • Tinycore 4.0 released
        Yesterday has been released the version 4.0 of Tinycore linux, one of the smallest linux distribution around. You can find the detailed changelog in their official forum, among many updates some are:

        * Updated kernel to 3.0.3 * Updated udev to 173 * Updated glibc to eglibc-2.13 * Updated e2fsprogs base libs to 1.41.14 * Updated gcc base libs to 4.6.1 * Updated util-linux base libs to 2.19.1 * Updated eglibc for 486/586 support. * Updated base Xlibs (microcore users need to get new Xlibs.tcz) * Updated all the custom core utilities to use the new repository area. * New loadcpufreq to handle module loading.




    • PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandrake/Mandriva Family



    • Red Hat Family



      • Fedora

        • Anaconda Whiteboards
          David Lehman and Will Woods are in the Boston area this week so along with Chris Lumens, Peter Jones, and David Cantrell we’ve all been whiteboarding away, planning and refinement on the upcoming Anaconda UI redesign that is scheduled to land in Fedora 17.






    • Debian Family



      • Derivatives



        • Canonical/Ubuntu



          • Ubuntu 11.04 Gets Positive Review On Indian News Station CNN-IBN
            Ubuntu bagged itself some mainstream media exposure this weekend when it was reviewed on Indian news channel ‘CNN-IBN’.

            As part of the stations 25 minute technology segment, ‘Tech Toyz‘, the English language news network featured a short review of Ubuntu 11.04.


          • Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 Beta Released | Introduce Plugin Management System
            Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 has been released. Ubuntu Tweak 0.6 will introduce some new features and new user interface design kinda looks suitable to the upcoming release Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot. Now it’s available to install for tester and developer through Launchpad PPA.


          • Five topnotch replacements for GNOME 3 or Ubuntu Unity
            You’ve heard the talk, the complaints, and the scathing reviews. Both GNOME 3 and Ubuntu Unity have been met with a hailstorm of bad publicity — so much so that people are turning away from adopting Linux — at least Linux that uses either of these two desktops. So if you want to switch to Linux but you don’t want to use either of these desktops, what can you do? Well, I’ll give you five what-to-do’s that will ease the troubled Linux desktop selection.


          • Ubuntu Development Update
            Sticking exactly to the plan, we are quickly moving towards the release of 11.10, and it’s only three weeks until then. If you like partying, start organising your local release party soon! Beta 2 was released yesterday, so give it all the testing love you can. You won’t be disappointed, there’s something great and new in there for everybody.


          • A Tale of Two Betas (almost)
            I don't often write about pre-release versions of Linux distributions any more - I did for a while, but the amount of negative feedback I got compared to the benefit I felt it was providing became too great. I've decided to make an exception this time, though, because there are two particularly interesting new releases coming up - Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, and openSuSE 12.1. I was thinking that I would have the added incentive of both Beta releases coming out on the same day, but openSuSE decided to push theirs back because they are still working on some difficult conversions to systemd, so I just downloaded Daily Build 301 instead of the actual Beta release. They say that the final release date (10 Nov) will not be changed as a result of this delay, though. The screen shot below was made on my HP dm1-3105ez, after installing Ubuntu 11.10 Beta-2.


          • Series: Introduction to Ubuntu Development – Part 6
            This is the sixth article in a series to explain the basics of Ubuntu Development in a way that does not require huge amounts of background and goes through concepts, tools, processes and infrastructure step by step. If you like the article or have questions or found bugs, please leave a comment.


          • Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 234
            Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is issue #234 for the week September 19 – 25, 2011, and the full version is available here.


          • Ubuntu 11.04 vs. Ubuntu 11.10 Benchmarks
            At the request of many Phoronix readers, here are some benchmarks comparing the 64-bit performance of Ubuntu 11.04 versus a recent development build of Ubuntu 11.10. Six different systems were benchmarked for this comparison.


          • Announcing the Ubuntu App Developer site
            I’m thrilled to announce the launch of a significant milestone in the ongoing effort of making Ubuntu a target for app developers: the new Ubuntu App Developer site.


          • Flavours and Variants

            • Linux Mint Computer Case Stickers... For Europe?
              Linux Mint is said to be gaining ground on Ubuntu's popularity dominance lately. This means more folks are using Linux Mint than ever before. These users are bound to be distributed throughout the world - granted with a large concentration in Europe. But there are sure to be users in the USA, Asia, Australia, and South America too.


            • AriOS 3.0 - Not as good as its predecessor
              Now, AriOS 3.0 is out there. As a potential candidate to becoming a complete, truly successful Ubuntu derivative, an accolade which has so far been reserved to only Linux Mint, I took the distro for a spin, with high spirits and higher expectations. Tested: the 32-bit version, on my T60p experimentation rig. There's a 64-bit version, too.


            • Why I chose Zorin OS 5 Ultimate as my go-to distribution


              I changed my Ubuntu workstation from an Ubuntu Ultimate Edition distro to Zorin OS 5 Core. After a week or so I liked it so much I upgraded to Zorin OS 5 Ultimate and installed Zorin Core (the free version) on my other machines. The reason for the changes was quite simple. Zorin OS 5 Ultimate gave my workstation the baseline Ubuntu 11.04 plus the Gnome desktop with features that keep the UI very straightforward and clean. The other machines are kept busy doing distributed processing work for BOINC projects like SETI, Einstein and LHC so their OS and UI needs are minimal. Zorin Core provides the same UI but the distro installs with fewer extra programs to update and maintain.


            • Muon Package Management Suite












  • Devices/Embedded



    • Phones



      • Android

        • Samsung signals HD smartphones with supersize screens
          Samsung had its hands full today, launching several phones, including this refreshed Galaxy S II with a large HD screen.

          The Samsung Galaxy S II HD LTE - which was announced in Korean this morning - sports a 4.65in OLED display with a resolution of 1280 x 720. The handset is apparently the first with an OLED display to feature a higher pixel density than 300ppi, rocking in at 316 pixels per inch.

          Other features include 16GB of storage, an 8Mp camera with 1080p video recording, NFC support and a large, 1850mAh battery.


        • Android 'most popular' with smartphone buyers


        • Survey says: Innovators prefer Android
          About 40 percent of U.S. mobile phone users over age 18 now have smartphones, and Google’s Android OS runs on over 40 percent of them, says Nielsen.










Free Software/Open Source



  • How open source got its groove back
    Portland’s lure lost some luster when the Great Recession hit.


  • Web Browsers



    • Mozilla

      • Does Mozilla's Response to Enterprises Focused on Firefox Go Far Enough?
        As we reported back in June, while many users applaud the rapid release cycle that Mozilla announced for the Firefox browser back in February, not all IT administrators are among the fans. It's easy for consumers to forget that businesses have much more stringent requirements for accepting new applications of all sorts, including browsers, into mainstream use. There are security concerns, compatibility concerns, and more. Mozilla officials have already announced that they take the protests from the IT community seriously, and have a working group focused on delivering Extended Support Releases (ESRs) specifically for businesses that want to use Firefox. Do these efforts from Mozilla go far enough, though?


      • Mozilla Addresses Problems with Add-Ons and Firefox Releases


      • Mozilla Firefox 7 Released
        With the rapid release cycle and all, we are seeing more releases of the Firefox browser than before. Mozilla just pushed Firefox 7 to the official ftp server to prepare for today’s release of the browser. Firefox 7 is actually the first version of the rapid release cycle that is showing big improvements over previous versions.


      • Firefox Memory Leaks Once Again Causing Frustrations
        Three and a half years after developers plugged “hundreds” of memory leaks in the Firefox browser that had slowed many PCs to a halt, memory leaks in Firefox 6.0.2 are apparently once again frustrating users.

        In a number of issues posted on Mozilla’s support message board over the past several weeks, users report repeated instances of Firefox eating more than 1 GB of memory during basic tasks. Some memory leaks have been tied to browser plug-ins, while other users insist they are doing nothing exotic to cause such significant memory use.






  • Databases

    • Oracle's Commercial Moves with MySQL are Drawing Scrutiny
      When Oracle announced its intent to acquire Sun Microsystems, the very first question we asked was what would become of the open source MySQL database and Sun's record of openness with it. The general concensus around Oracle's plans was that the database giant would position MySQL as a way to onboard users to its commercial offerings. (Oracle offers an Enterprise edition.) There is now debate about the extent to which that is happening, especially because Oracle has just released three commercial extensions for MySQL.


    • MySQL at the core of commercial open source
      Oracle last week quietely announced the addition of new extended capabilities in MySQL Enterprise Edition, confirming the adoption of the open core licensing strategy, as we reported last November.


    • MySQL.com Hacked to Serve Malware




  • Oracle/Java/LibreOffice





Leftovers





  • Finance

    • Solyndra Failure Hits Goldman’s Reputation: William D. Cohan
      Since the financial crisis hit, investment banks have been rightly criticized for their tendency to be more concerned with their own trading profits than the well-being of their customers. Sometimes, however, an investment bank can take the whole client service thing a bit too far.

      Take, for instance, the case of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and its client Solyndra LLC, the California-based solar-panel maker that filed for bankruptcy protection on Sept. 6 and dismissed its 1,100 employees.


    • 80 'Occupy Wall Street' Protesters Arrested
      Dozens of demonstrators who have vowed to "occupy" Wall Street were arrested Saturday on the seventh day of a social media-fueled protest against U.S. banking institutions, according to protest organizers.


    • Is the Eurozone Market About to Collapse?
      That’s what Wall Street trader Alessio Rastani says in this extraordinarily candid interview on the BBC. “This economic crisis is like a cancer,” he tells the host. “If you just wait and wait hoping it is going to go away, just like a cancer it is going to grow and it will be too late.”






Recent Techrights' Posts

Why We Support Richard Stallman and You Probably Should Too
It's not about being "Richard Stallman fan", it is about maintaining the right to hold positions (on technology) like his
Some Large German Media Covers Richard Stallman's Talks in Germany Earlier This Week
LLM-based chatbots are just "bullshit generators" (as he has long called them)
Trouble in Red Hat/IBM and a Retreat to Ponzi Economics in Search of Wall Street Market Heist
Would you invest your life savings in this kind of crap?
Who Asked Software in the Public Interest (SPI) for a Refund? ($100,000, Resulting in Losses of $267,201 in 12 Months, Highest-Ever Losses)
The IRS does not reveal who or what's tied to this refund (or the cause/reason)
 
Slopwatch: Google News and Slopfarms That Relay Nonsense From LLMs
Google News, which once prioritised or used to care about provenance and quality, is feeding slopfarms
Links 23/10/2025: More Health Concerns Over Dumb Chatbots (LLMs) and "Talking Cars" as Latest Buzz
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/10/2025: Daylight Savings Time and Duration Shorthand
Links for the day
Links 23/10/2025: LLM 'Hallucinations' (Defects) in Practical Code 'Generation', China Becomes More Economically and Technologically Independent
Links for the day
Linux Foundation Uses LLM Slop to Promote Microsoft in Linux.com (Again), Rendering It a Linux-Hostile Slopfarm
Openwashing with slop by "Linux.com Editorial Staff", which basically seems to be a bot
Links 23/10/2025: Windows TCO Galore and "The Internet Is Going to Break Again"
Links for the day
Social engineering attack: Debian voted to trick you on binary blobs
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Techrights Will Always Stand for Women's Rights
We even invest money - personal savings that it - in our principles
Certified Lawyers Should Know Better (Than to Intimidate Us With Man Who Drives on Motorcycle Through a Really Bad Storm Between Distant Cities, Then Collects Photos of Our Home)
Mentioning someone was in prison for bad things isn't a crime, it's a public service
The "AI" (Slop) Bubble is Already Imploding
"ChatGPT Usage Has Peaked and Is Now Declining, New Data Finds"
The So-called "Sexy" Buckets (AI, Quantum) Cannot Save IBM From Reality, Shares Tank
"No matter how much financial hocus-pocus they use to reclassify revenues to land in the "sexy" buckets (AI, Quantum), it still smells old and musty - just like this company."
Paul Krugman is Wrong About the Scope of Mass Layoffs in the United States
A few years ago society was accelerating its journey towards feudalism, boosted by COVID-19
Links 23/10/2025: Proprietary Blunders and CISA's Latest Disclosure of Holes
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/10/2025: Fast Past (F1), 99.9% Uptime
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 22, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Slopwatch: Google News is Promoting Fake 'Articles' About Fake Xubuntu, Fake Articles About Replacing Windows With GNU/Linux
The quality of the Web deteriorates and unless someone cleans up the mess, real sites will lose an incentive to produce anything
When "AI Layoffs" Mean Layoffs Due to the "AI" Bubble Popping
many people that are laid off by Microsoft claim to be specialists in "AI"
Mysterious grant forfeited, $100,000 from Software in the Public Interest accounts 2023
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Evidence: bullying, student union behaviour: Armijn Hemel's FSFE resignation
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Evidence: psychological abuse, stalking, Galia Mancheva, Susanne Eiswirt ignored by FSFE judgment for Matthias Kirschner
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Helping FSFE scam victims and conference organisers
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Nigerian fraud in FSFE constitution
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Worrying and Amusing Stories of "Clown Computing" Gone Awry
Many of these disasters could be avoided
Links 22/10/2025: Amazon Plans to Replace Workers With Robotics, AWS and Clown Computing in General Ridiculed
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/10/2025: Niri Completely Changes Multitasking and Overview of Diff-ers
Links for the day
Links 22/10/2025: Study on Misinformation by Slop and Heavily Debt-Sabbled Microsoft OpenAI (ClosedSlop) Uses "Browser" as Gimmick/Distraction
Links for the day
They've Already Spent Close to a Million Dollars on Lawyers and Sent Us About 50 KG of Legal Papers (Sponsored by Mysterious Third Party) to Try to Censor Techrights, Without Success
They try to overcompensate with sheer volume for a lack of solid, clear arguments (we are the victims here)
12 Months Ago the 'Hulk Hogan of UEFI' Officially Went 'Tag-Team'
We're actually sort of flattered or proud that such despicable people are so desperate to censor us
"Cloud Computing" Was Always a Joke, But This Week Was the Punchline
Maybe stop following tech trends and fashions
"Cloud Computing" Does Not Mean Safety
Fault tolerance is related to the notion of software freedom
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 21, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 21, 2025
The Fall of Windows: From Something to Nothing
Of course Microsoft will pretend everything is fine and "just trust the hey hi" (AI)
Sounds Like Fedora is Ready to Become Less of a Slave of Microsoft (GitHub)
This seems like a belated move in a positive direction
XBox is a Dead Microsoft Product in a Dying Industry
It's probable that another wave of XBox layoffs is just over the horizon (maybe even before month's end)
Progress on Techrights Site Search
Fun times
IBM's Bluewashing of Red Hat Means the Layoffs Are Silent, Barely Reported
Don't wait to hear about "Red Hat layoffs"
Gemini Links 21/10/2025: Happy Disconnection, AWS Falling Apart, Closing of Gemlog Blue
Links for the day
Full Audio of Today's Richard Stallman Talk in the Technical University of Munich
Free/Libre software and freedom in the digital society
Microsoft XBox is Just Vapourware (Promises of Hardware That Doesn't Exist), Real Products Perish
just as developers lose interest in developing for XBox Microsoft is increasing the costs imposed upon them
Slopwatch: Fake Articles (Slop) in "Linux" Clothing in Google News (Noise)
all about what Google does
Links 21/10/2025: Even "Inventor of Vibe Coding" Rejects Vibe Coding, USPTO Experiments With Slop in Examination
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Talk Now Available for Viewing (Archived Copy, Not Live-streamed)
This recording is over 2 hours old
Links 21/10/2025: AWS-Induced Chaos and Social Control Media Curbs
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/10/2025: Programming, StarGrid, Brand-New Palm OS Strategy Game in 2025, and Chatbot as Addiction Mechanisms
Links for the day
The African Lion and the American Cowards
Safaris exist for people to watch and enjoy animals
Amazon Web Shenanigans Perfectly Timed for Today's Talk by Richard Stallman
Maybe listen to him instead of looking for excuses to ridicule the messenger
Mission:Libre Has Taken Off (Project by Carmen Maris)
there will be a lot more to report on next month (after the event)
Techrights to Publish More EPO Leaks Next Week
We're meanwhile also doing lots of work on search, whose interface now looks better
Links 21/10/2025: 'The Lost Art' of Neon Signs and Twitter (X) to Enable Identity Theft (or Handle Theft) as a Service
Links for the day
Plagiarism With LLM Slop: Hindustan Times (HT Digital Streams Limited) Has Become a Slop Factory/Hub
What a disgrace
A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe, by Richard Stallman
"The surveillance imposed on us today is worse than in the Soviet Union. We need laws to stop this data being collected in the first place"
Next Week We Launch Search at Techrights
We're planning to launch it some time next week. Maybe Tuesday, maybe Thursday.
Talk by Richard Stallman Will be Live-streamed in Less Than 10 Hours
Happy hacking
"No Kings" in the Software World (GAFAM Should Not Exist, Either)
"No Kings" is a good slogan. Let's start by ridding ourselves of masters, not only those who reside in DC or visit DC
Every Morning
Bugs/edge cases combined with automation can spell disaster
Insane, Deliberately Dishonest, or Just Another Bigot?
very intellectually-dishonest human being
A Lot of Techrights is Built on Perl
Perl also runs the sister site
The Register MS Selling Slop for Microsoft (Vapourware, Ponzi Scheme, False Claims)
What will be left of The Register MS if it keeps repeating falsehoods and looking to profit from Ponzi schemes?
analytics.usa.gov Says Less Than 14% of Web Requests (to Government Sites) Come From Vista 11
Vista 11 was released more than 4 years ago!
People Who Attempt to Take Down Correct Information Need a Doctor a Day
“Journalism is printing something that someone does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.” ― George Orwell
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 20, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 20, 2025
Vista 11 is Sinking While Microsoft is PIPing (Mass Layoffs But Silent Layoffs)
We're witnessing a shift in platform dominance
Richard Stallman is Having a Good Week Already (Stallman Was Right About 'Clown Computing')
That alone is worth bringing up in his talk
An Update About Soylent News, With Jan Rinok "Back in the Saddle"
Burnout or "near burnout" a possibility when having to curate abuse
When Prominent GNU/Linux Distros Are Run by Spies
What has Microsoft Canonical become?
More Publishers and Companies Nowadays Say "GNU/Linux", Not "Linux"
It's not to see InstallAware saying GNU/Linux this week