GNU/Linux News: The Opportunities Amid XP EOL
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-04-15 14:51:01 UTC
- Modified: 2014-04-15 14:51:01 UTC
Few people know just how pervasive Linux has become, and that is causing a big problem for companies that increasingly rely on it. "There is a shortage of software developers in the U.S. The employment rate for these jobs is down to 2.3 percent in the last quarter. The opportunity for jobs is now there for people who come in to get this training," said Dice President Shravan Goli.
A new book on open source education teaches school leaders and parents why kids need to see coding as more than cool. Energizing Education through Open Source: Using Open Source Software to Enhance Learning by Christopher Whittum makes a strong case for deploying the Linux OS and its academic software in schools.
For business, the same kind of trouble started when Linux and the Internet showed up in the mid-1990s. No matter how useful Linux and the Internet prove to be, business still has trouble getting its head around a virtual world composed of end points that are all autonomous, self-empowered and at zero functional distance from each other. The best geometric figure for that world is a giant hollow sphere composed of boundless smarts on its outside—the nodes of its network—and no controlling entity in the middle.
Linux has become the dominant operating system for internet sites, powering Google, Facebook, YouTube and many others. It is also the dominant operating system powering Android phones and tablets, televisions, home routers and many other devices.
Running various Linux distributions on my own computers has been a mixed blessing over the years. While I've experienced many successes, something I don't talk about as often are the areas that frustrate me. In this article, I'll highlight my top list of Linux frustrations that bug me to this very day.
Ubuntu and the suite of GNU tools in any robust Unix system. A good text editor (currently Gedit)—I keep all of my working files at .txts. A robust, highly configurable browser (Firefox/Firefox for Android). A fast RSS reader (presently Google Reader, likely to be Newsblur next). A tetherable mobile connection—I use EasyTether for Android to circumvent tether-blocking as deployed by some of the carriers I use around the world, especially Rogers in Canada. AirDroid for moving files on/off Android devices in my life.
Recent Techrights' Posts
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- we seem to be on the right path
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- Of course this impacts Red Hat as well
- If You Don't Want "Linux" to Become "Windows", Then Follow GNU
- GAFAM isn't a friend of Linux; it's only a user in the same sense clients are "users" of a brothel
- This is What the Slop Bubble Popping Can Look Like
- Maybe not an overnight collapse, but getting there gradually
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- openai.com Traffic Said to Have Fallen 50% in the Past Three Months, Reports Say It Nearly Ran Out of Money to Borrow
- After the slop frenzy all we'll have left is environmental destruction
- Red Hat Vice President Leaving After Nearly Two Decades
- IBM's culture of secrecy is not compatible with Free software
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- Links for the day
- Readers Pleased With Layout Changes
- Two days ago we began improving clarity and accessibility in the site
- IBM is Outsourcing Red Hat's Fedora to Slop to 'Save Money'
- If IBM cared about quality rather than alleged "cost savings" (cutting corners), it would assign more IBM staff to Fedora, but instead the exact opposite happened, with the likes of Cotton and Miller removed from the project
- European Patent Office (EPO) Industrial Actions Formally Start in Two Hours
- As per the latest (revised) action plan, today workers will slow down their work and limit patent grants
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- In 2025 we kept a running tally of 30,000+ Microsoft layoffs, so 40k this year would not be unthinkable
- The "Alicante Mafia" - Part VI - More Strikes Planned at the EPO, Starting This Month
- Yesterday we said that friends of Berenguer or inside Berenguer's circle may have left
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- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
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- Links for the day
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- Links for the day
- Slopfarms in Google News (at Least Three Today) With Fake 'Articles' About "Linux"
- Google itself is trying to promote its own slop ("Overview") at the expense of original and credible sources
- Links 19/01/2026: ChatGPT’s Defects and The Guardian on Why So-called "AI Companies Will Fail"
- Links for the day
- IBM Quiet About Its Plan for Red Hat Amid Accelerated Bluewashing
- Something is going on at Red Hat
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- they have a rough idea of what's coming
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- Microsoft, people-ready
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- Ecosystem and sales said to be targeted
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- Free Software in Times of Peace (and Times of War, Too)
- GAFAM and IBM are war companies
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- The auditorium has very high capacity and this is his "college comeback" talk in the United States
- Office Meetings Are Most Useful to the Least Productive Workers
- In my "office life" days I really didn't like meetings
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- We suppose waiting another month or another year won't change a thing
- Claim That the Board of Directors at IBM Isn't Happy With How the Company is Run
- IBM tries to project an image of strength to the whole world, especially to its clients
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- Links for the day
- 'Vibe Coding', Chatbots, and Other Bots (e.g. "Agents" Disguised as "Superintelligence") Aren't Saving You Time
- False marketing, FOMO marketing tactics
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- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
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- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 18/01/2026: Against English as Language of the Net, "Symposium of Destruction"
- Links for the day
- You Would Expect This Kind of Misleading Narrative Shortly Before Microsoft (or GAFAM) Mass Layoffs
- misleading PR
- FOSDEM 2026: democracy panel, GNOME & Sonny Piers modern slavery experiment
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Pump-and-Dump With IBM Shares, Courtesy of People Who Stand to Gain From the 'Pump'
- "3 Reasons to Buy IBM Stock Right Now"
- IBM: Spying on Staff Like Never Before and Implementing Silent Layoffs This Month, Say Insiders
- what we heard from whistleblowers seems to corroborate
- 'Cancel Culture' Doesn't Work (in the Long Run)
- Despite all the attacks, I'm enjoying life, I'm keeping productive, and our audience continues to grow
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- Red Hat's main product, RHEL, is full of secret sauce and has 'secret recipes' (it is basically proprietary)
- IBM Turning Up the 'RTO' (Stress) and 'PIP' (Fear) Heat on Workers, Rebellion May be Brewing
- Sometimes it feels like today's executives at IBM view IBM workers as a liability
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- Links for the day
- GNU/Linux Still up (statCounter Says to 6%) in Bosnia And Herzegovina
- Let's see where it is at year's end
- Making Layout Changes
- Feedback can be sent to us
- Behind an Economy of Fake 'Worths' and Fictional 'Valuations' or 'Market Caps'
- They normalise white-collar crime and say "everyone is doing it!"
- Links 18/01/2026: "South Africa is Running Out of Software Developers", Companies Spooked to Find Slop is a Major Liability
- Links for the day
- Eventually the Joke (and Financial Fraud) is on Microsoft, Stigmatised for Slop
- Is Microsoft trying to commit suicide?
- GNU/Linux Leaps to All-time Highs in Virgin Islands
- it seems to have started around the "end of 10"
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- Not even joking; make a guess
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- Sometimes less does mean "more" (or "MOAR")
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- To better overlap industrial actions we might delay/postpone/pause this series for a bit
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- As the Web gets worse, not limited to bloat as a factor, people seek alternatives
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- Even if Google is aware that there is slop there, it's hard to believe that Google will mind
- Slop Bubble "Is Worse Than The Dot Com Bubble"
- Edward Zitron Says It like it is
- Software Patents and USMCA (or NAFTA)
- We recently pondered going back to issuing 2-3 articles per day about patents and common issues with them
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- PIPs are "performance improvement plans"
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- We try to name some of the prolific culprits
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- Links for the day
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- Over at Tux Machines...
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