Links 21/3/2012: Torvalds Secrets, Radeon HD 7000 Driver Now Free/Libre
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2012-03-22 00:15:30 UTC
- Modified: 2012-03-22 00:15:30 UTC
Contents
-
Kernel Space
-
To get the most out of your systems, you want detailed insight into what the operating system kernel is doing. A typical approach is to sample stack traces; however, the data collected can be time consuming to read or navigate. Flame Graphs are a new way to visualize sampled stack traces, and can be applied to the Linux kernel for some useful (and stunning!) visualizations.
-
Graphics Stack
-
Applications
-
The TEA Text Editor is a very handy writing tool that delivers a much different user interface. For most computer users cranking out words or program code for digital consumption, text editors are often preferable to feature-bloated word processors. TEA pours on features yet keeps from getting too steamy.
-
Instructionals/Technical
-
Games
-
You may have heard a few days ago that Dear Esther, a game built upon Valve's Source Engine, would be ported to Linux and released in the coming months. Well, here's more details about that Source-based game is getting to Linux.
-
Desktop Environments
-
GNOME Desktop
-
Users who choose between GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 are rarely making that decision on a purely rational basis. In my experience, users of GNOME 2 are often choosing what they know, while users of GNOME 3 are technophiles who enjoy anything that is new.
Neither is likely to go over the two generations of GNOME feature by feature. In many cases, the choice seems made before login.
But what happens when the two desktop environments are compared in general features? I'm a fan of neither GNOME 2 nor GNOME 3, but I decided to find out.
-
-
New Releases
-
Today sees the release of Legacy OS 4 Mini an Update / Replacement for TEENpup 2010 Mini Beta. Those updating from TEENpup 2010 Mini Beta will need to save any important documents, music etc to an external Hard Drive, USB stick etc as a full reinstall is required to update to this new version, sorry!
-
Debian Family
-
Spending a couple of days intensely running Linux Mint 12 on a very nice desktop PC sent to me for review by ZaReason (much more about that later), I probably shouldn't have been surprised by the annoying bugs in Mint that made me a lot less productive than I am in the Debian Squeeze system I've been running on my laptop since late 2010.
-
-
In this interview, Luke Kanies, CEO and founder of Puppet Labs, explains why the Puppet configuration management tool is a huge hit with sys admins, and tells us what to expect next from the popular open source project.
-
We got another reminder of how disruptive open source software is to mobile computing this week, when Linux and Android merged back together. This appears to be good news for a number of parties, but Android and Linux developers and users seem particularly likely to benefit. The inclusion of Android code in the Linux kernel and the ability for Linux developers to more easily work on the Android environment and applications also ties into some of the key topics we’ll be covering in a Webcast March 21 titled ‘Open Source, A Tale of Two Cities in the Mobile Enterprise,’ presented by 451 Research and Black Duck Software.
-
Web Browsers
Chrome
-
Ever since Google started working on its Chrome OS operating system, it has had a pronounced focus on allowing users to only work with cloud-based data and applications. This has drawn criticism from many users, and some from us here at OStatic, as seen in this post. With Chrome OS, Google placed a heavy bet on the idea that consumers and business users would have no problem storing data and using applications in the cloud, without working on the locally stored data/applications model that they're used to.
-
CMS
-
Licensing
-
Are developers actually chasing down license violations?
-
Openness/Sharing
-
There are some pretty basic things that a researcher can do to make their work into an open content project. Here are a few.
-
Programming
-
Finance
-
Censorship
-
The Obama administration has condemned Iran for trying to take control of the Internet. In addition, The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued guidance and licensing information to further support the free flow of information to citizens of Iran – a freedom the Iranian regime has consistently denied to its people.
-
Internet/Net Neutrality
-
They're selling us out. Just weeks after Internet users from across the globe came together to to beat SOPA, the major ISPs are cutting a deal with Big Content to restrict web access for users who are accused of piracy.
-
Intellectual Monopolies
-
Copyrights
-
ACTA
-
Concerned of the ACTA dossier many citizens contacted the press staffers of his colleague Commissioner Neelie Kroes. Commissioner Michel Barnier is right when he emphasized the need for better communications. Karel De Gucht had the opportunity to embrace the public attention to ACTA, and strengthen the institutional cohesion with the European public, help the transformation of the EU towards an “Europe of the citizens”. He didn’t exercise this opportunity, and it appears to me the reason is a fundamental disrespect to democratic principles, he doesn’t take the public seriously.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- The Aim is Not Fame
- Reposted from schestowitz.com
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 114 Out of 200: Thousands of Long Articles to Come, Properly Covering the SLAPP Industry in the UK and Its Modus Operandi
- "Stowell described SLAPPs as ‘a stain on our legal system’."
- Chad's Move to GNU/Linux or the Point of Exceeding 5% "Market Share"
- experienced centuries of being colonised
- GAFAM is Drowning in Debt, GAFAM is Clearly Not Sustainable Anymore (It Runs on Borrowed Money and Bailouts)
- The war and surrender in Iran will deepen the debt; we'll see the GAFAM reports in late July
- Microsoft at 50 Follows the General Trajectory of Skype
- How many years does Microsoft have left before payroll becomes impossible?
- Cybersecurity Does Not Mean Asking Microsoft for Permission to Boot
- There were very good and timely reasons to speak about the matter, including impending antitrust complaints against Microsoft
-
- Links 22/06/2026: "The Sycophancy Machine" and "Port 22 Open for 54 Days"
- Links for the day
- When People Who Make the Most Money Are the Best "Boot Lickers" (Sucking Up to Jeffrey Epstein's Circle and the Dictator)
- Sucking up to rich people may pay off
- "Internally Important, Externally Irrelevant": IBM in a Nutshell
- Right now its debt spins out of control and its stock spirals down the drain
- Finding a Way to Get Paid to Improve LibreJS
- So now we have more people resurrecting LibreJS and improving it
- Microsoft Can't Even Wait Until July, Shutdowns and Layoffs Already Happening
- Mashable speak of "a grim picture for the state of Xbox."
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 21, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, June 21, 2026
- Gemini Links 22/06/2026: Appreciating Simple Things, Perfect Summer Evening, IRIX, Vim and so
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 21/06/2026: Dating Oaks, Paying With Cash, and "More on Withered Technology"
- Links for the day
- GAFAM Was Never an Ally to Europe
- Only 1 in 10 Europeans see US as an ally — study [...] military providers in "tech" clothing cannot be trusted
- GitHub, LinkedIn, and XBox Will Finish Like Skype (Sustainability Crisis)
- Skype should become a verb. When Microsoft 'Skypes' something it means it basically shuts it down with some temporal excuse/s.
- Drowning in Garbage: AUR Shows That Too Much Low-Quality Software (Including Slop) is Bad for Everybody
- What happened in AUR had happened elsewhere before and will happen again in the future
- Links 21/06/2026: EU on Patented (Monopolised) Crops, Microsoft Software "Narcs on You to Your Boss"
- Links for the day
- A Year After a Microsofter Took Over The Register MS It is Effectively a Content Farm With News as a 'Side Dish'
- This is not journalism, this is spam
- IBM Pays the Media and Cons Some 'Journalists' Into Participating in "Quantum" Spam
- "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"
- You Don't Need an 'App' for Your Birdhouse (Slopfondlers Come for Birds)
- That they sell those things as "AI" really says a lot about how dishonest slopfondlers really are
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 113 Out of 200: The United Kingdom is Not Turkey
- Turkey is ranked almost worst in the Western World for press freedom
- Links 21/06/2026: Bots from Alibaba Do Harm and Many Xbox Games Are Being Cancelled
- Links for the day
- 5 Years After Release of Vista 11 Not Even One in 5 People Use It (in the US)
- It doesn't look like Vista 11 will ever be adopted like prior versions and announcing a Vista 12 will mostly upset companies/organisations that only recently "upgraded" to 11
- Gemini Links 21/06/2026: Boca Raton, Perfect Summer Day, and LLM Doing Things Poorly
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 20, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, June 20, 2026
- Microsoft Insiders - Not Limited to XBox - Expect a 'Bloodbath' (Their Own Word)
- This isn't limited to XBox
- Reports of "PIP" as Means of Mass Layoffs at IBM This Year
- some insights into the PIPs
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 112 Out of 200: Strangles Women, Then Refuses to Even Attend Any of His Own Hearings About It
- It is meanwhile very apparent that Brett Wilson LLP is becoming a "mench sphere"
- Gemini Links 20/06/2026: "There Was Never Supposed to Be a Camera" and "What Is A Programming Language"?
- Links for the day
- Geminispace Reaches Its 8th Year, Today It Has Turned 7
- Gemini Protocol 'went live' 7 years ago, just before the COVID-19 pandemic
- Links 20/06/2026: "Full Page Paralysis" and "Hopes For Xbox’s Future Might Be Over Before It Even Begins"
- Links for the day
- European Patent Office's (EPO) Strikes "at a Scale not Seen Since Battistelli", European Patent Grants Down by Over 25% in Past 3 Months
- The actions are effective
- Real Security Elusive, Microsoft Layoffs to Coincide With Certificate Apocalypse
- July 1
- Links 20/06/2026: Microsoft's "Year of Shame" and "Feed the Writers"
- Links for the day
- 2026 is a Year of Strikes at the European Patent Office (EPO)
- As it stands at the moment, to many people the EPO represents crime, not law
- Web Browsers Are Technically Bloatware (No Matter What Runs in Them)
- Don't make it a society that shames people into using a Web browser where none should be needed
- Fedora Has Changed a Lot Since I Last Used It (IBM Dominates Almost Everything, IBM Agenda Displaces Community Goals)
- "It is effectively 100% run by Red Hat/IBM employed people... even when they are community-elected representatives."
- Andy (Cyber Show) on His Teacher Who "Squeezed Every Last Drop Out of Life, With Gratitude, Humility, Generosity and Mettle"
- Some call them "eccentric" and are dismissive about what they have to offer
- Only 1.5% Oppose the European Patent Office's (EPO) Strikes and Other Industrial Actions Until 2027
- Among those polled/surveyed (in a ballot)
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, June 19, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, June 19, 2026
- Gopher/Gemini Links 20/06/2026: Slop With Tcl/Tk and Nokia 770 Perishes
- Links for the day