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
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Kernel Space
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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.
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Graphics Stack
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Applications
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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.
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Instructionals/Technical
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Games
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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.
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Desktop Environments
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GNOME Desktop
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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.
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New Releases
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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!
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Debian Family
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Web Browsers
Chrome
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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.
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CMS
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Licensing
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Are developers actually chasing down license violations?
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Openness/Sharing
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There are some pretty basic things that a researcher can do to make their work into an open content project. Here are a few.
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Programming
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Finance
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Censorship
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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.
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Internet/Net Neutrality
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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.
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Intellectual Monopolies
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Copyrights
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ACTA
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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 Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Under Scrutiny Today in the British Government's Meeting, Grilled for Its Failure to Regulate Rogue Law Firms
- Things are not improving
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- The Deleted Article About Mass Layoffs at IBM (April 2026)
- Resurrected
- Lots of Positive News Lately, Microsoft GitHub in Trouble
- it's not too crazy to speculate about GitHub being the next Skype (or CodePlex)
- The Register MS Has "Webinars" (Marketing); They're Promoting Ponzi Schemes or Slop But Disguised as "Intelligence"
- These "webinars" are just spam displayed to people as if it contains real information
- It Was Always About Freedom and Sovereignty (or Self-Determination)
- About 24 hours from now Richard Stallman (RMS) will be giving a talk in Texas
- Mass Layoffs at IBM Again, Just in Time for the Fake "Results" Next Week
- Slopfarm will issue some chaff to give an illusion of journalism
- Windows (Microsoft) in Botswana Falls to Another New Low
- Botswana is a fairly large country
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 47 Out of 200: British Courts Are Not Censorship Offices for Americans Funded by Affluent Third Parties
- Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) was scrutinised by our government
- More Than 6 Months After a Very Close Friend of António Campinos and EPO Official Caught With Cocaine Campinos is Cracking Down on - or Stealing From - EPO Staff
- Now they go after the "Education and Childcare Allowance"
- Links 14/04/2026: Data Breaches and LLM Slop in Courts
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 14/04/2026: Mastodon in the Terminal and a Voxel Engine
- Links for the day
- Links 14/04/2026: Against US Monopolies in UK, Legal Action Against Twitter
- Links for the day
- The Series About SLAPPs Funded by Third Parties: All Parts Thus Far
- index for today
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 46 Out of 200: Alex Graveley's Attorney Rick Cofer Did Not Deny That Graveley Had Strangled Women; He Did, However, Pay Local Officials
- some background about SLAPPs that began in 2021 very shortly after I wrote about corruption at Microsoft GitHub
- The EPO's Attitude Towards Women and Media Silence on EPO Unrest
- There's media blackout about very critical matters
- Gemini Links 14/04/2026: Greed Versus Stability; Board and Card Games
- Links for the day
- Links 14/04/2026: Cheeto Loses Defamation Lawsuit Against the Media, "France Takes Its 129 Tonnes of Gold Uut of New York"
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, April 13, 2026
- IRC logs for Monday, April 13, 2026
- IBM Agrees With Microsoft That Slop is Just for "Entertainment" and "at Your Own Risk"
- So what can IBM sell now?
- Microsoft Windows "Market Share" in USA Down to 40% According to Government Sites or 31% Overall
- The world is changing, so do Americans
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 45 Out of 200: Garrett and Graveley Cases Inherently the Same, Their Legal Team Can Barely Even Distinguish (Full Timeline)
- "million-dollar men"
- Gemini Links 13/04/2026: Pronouns for an LLM, Fakecoins Promotion Piggybacking Iran, "Your Face is Now a Search Query"
- Links for the day
- Links 13/04/2026: Higher Costs Hurt Both Rich and Poor Country, a "Landslide Win to Oust Orban"
- Links for the day
- Tens of Thousands of Days of Strike at Europe's Second-Largest Institution, Nobody in the Media Has Mentioned It
- Since the "extraordinary general meeting"
- SPAM That Mentions "AI" 16 Times (in "Security" Clothing, But Selling Back Doors), a Paid Placement in The Register MS
- This will doom the reputation of the publication, The Register MS
- At Least 23 Days of EPO Strikes
- Why does the media not deem this newsworthy?
- Links 13/04/2026: Impersonating ProPublica Reporter, More Attacks on the Press (Occupation With Little and No Compensation, Only High Risk)
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, April 12, 2026
- IRC logs for Sunday, April 12, 2026
- Gemini Links 13/04/2026: Freiburg, GUIX, and Announcing Satellite Antenna (SA)
- Links for the day
- Links 12/04/2026: Climate, Conflict, and Change in Hungaristan
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 12/04/2026: Passports, Science, and Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology
- Links for the day
- The Energy Crisis Will Likely Carry on and Kill the Slop Industry
- To the slop charlatans, "this is the end, my friend..."
- SLAPP Censorship - Part 44 Out of 200: Garrett and Graveley 'Copypasta' Sunday (Copy-Paste, Add One Word, Change 'T' to 't')
- recycling text
- EPO on Strike This Past Friday (All Major Sites), Massive Strike Continues Tomorrow
- strikes have trebled, not trembled, compared to last month (in Munich)
- Links 12/04/2026: SLAPPs Against Thai Journalists Who Expose High-Level Corruption, Maharlika (Philippines/Marcos) Threatens to Lawyer Up Against GAFAM to Demand Censorship of Critics
- Links for the day
- Racism and IBM
- at IBM and Red Hat people who are hard-working and proficient are now being fired based on their ethnicity and nationality (or either)
- When Cruelty is the Point (American SLAPPs in London, the United Kingdom, Europe)
- Consider the following
- Resistance to SLAPPs in the UK: Coalition Growing
- thankfully awareness of SLAPPs in the UK is improving
- Links 12/04/2026: Mass Rebellion Against Slop, UK Crackdown on Nudification by Slop
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 12/04/2026: "Objective Truth" and Flutter
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 11, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, April 11, 2026
- Red Hat: We Kill People, But Please Obey the CoC or We'll Banish You
- From Red Hat's own site