GNU/Linux and Servers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Mar 14, 2025

• GNU/Linux

  • [Old] GNU ☛ Free Software Is Even More Important Now - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation

    We deserve to have control of our own computing. How can we win this control?

  • [Old] Project Gutenberg ☛ Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software by Sam Williams | Project Gutenberg

    "Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software" by Sam Williams is a biographical work that likely spans the late 20th to early 21st century. The book chronicles the life and activism of Richard Stallman, a pivotal figure in the free software movement, emphasizing his contributions to software freedom, the development of the GNU General Public License (GPL), and his philosophical battles against proprietary software practices. The opening of the book introduces readers to Stallman's early life and the initial events that shaped his perspective on software sharing and ownership. In a frustrating encounter with a malfunctioning printer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stallman's realization that the software running the printer was closed off and proprietary sparked a series of reflections about the ethos of the hacker community and the impact of non-disclosure agreements. This incident is highlighted as a significant turning point in Stallman's journey, emphasizing his growing conviction that software should be open and accessible to all. The narrative sets the stage for Stallman's evolution from a software programmer to a passionate advocate for free software, as it explores the moral implications of proprietary software and the importance of collaboration and transparency in the tech community. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

  • [Old] Salon ☛ Code free or die

    But as Williams points out, no matter what you call it, the cultural and economic phenomenon of free software at the turn of the century was one of the best things that ever happened to Stallman. In 1999 he was suddenly speaking to crowds in the tens of thousands at LinuxWorld conventions. If he'd had his way, they would have been called GNU/LinuxWorld conventions, thus giving proper respect to the GNU software project that Stallman spearheaded -- but in any case, the rise of Linux meant that Stallman was suddenly delivering his personal peroration on the moral imperative of free software to a greater audience than ever before.

    And even as the dot-com boom imploded, and the economic model underlying attempts to cash in on open-source software collapsed, Stallman's star continued to rise. Today he is in huge demand for speaking engagements across the globe. He is the co-recipient, along with Linus Torvalds, of Japan's Takeda Award in 2001 (worth approximately $268,000). Stallman continues marching along, even as many of the magazines that profiled or otherwise covered him are gone.

  • Audiocasts/Shows

    • Bryan Lunduke ☛ Pokemon Go, the Surveillance Game Financed by the CIA, now Owned by Saudi Arabia

      Pokemon Go has been 3D mapping your homes for years, and now it is owned by the Wife-Beating, Jeff Bezos Hacking, Journalist Murdering Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.

    • GUI Driver Manager for Debian

  • Kernel Space

    • [Old] DEV Community ☛ Understanding the Structural Differences Between BSD-based Kernels and Linux Kernels

      When diving into the world of open-source operating systems, two names frequently come up: BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and Linux. Both have rich histories and have significantly impacted the development of modern operating systems. However, despite their similarities as Unix-like systems, there are notable structural differences between BSD-based kernels and Linux kernels. This blog aims to shed light on these differences to provide a clearer understanding of their architectures.

    • Rob Norris ☛ We should improve libzfs somewhat

      Recently in the weekly OpenZFS Production User Call we’ve been trying to pin down some common use cases and work out how to get from where we are to the point where someone can turn up looking for a useful programmatic interface to OpenZFS. That conversation is ongoing but we all agree the bare minimum should be to make sure that what we have already is usable, even if not particularly useful. At least, that makes it easier for people to experiment and get a feel for the shape of the problem, and help us figure out what’s next.

      BSD Fund have generously sponsored me to do a little bit of exploratory work around libzfs and it’s younger sibling libzfs_core and make some progress. This fits in well with my personal mission of making OpenZFS more accessible to developers of all kinds (which I will try to write about soon). There’s some nice low-hanging fruit to be plucked here!

      This post will go over what we’re trying to achieve, why it’s difficult and what I’m currently looking at.

• Distributions and Operating Systems

  • Servers / Back end

    • Netcraft ☛ Netcraft Launches New Real-time Threat API to Improve and Accelerate Collaboration with Infrastructure Providers

      Netcraft, the leader in cybercrime detection and takedown, has set a new standard for reporting threats in real-time via a new JSON-based API powered by its world-leading Cybercrime Disruption and Takedown platform. This new API gives infrastructure providers — including domain registrars, registries, and hosting companies — a free, real-time threat feed of abuse incidents originating on their infrastructure.

    • Kubernetes Blog ☛ Spotlight on SIG Apps

      In our ongoing SIG Spotlight series, we dive into the heart of the Kubernetes project by talking to the leaders of its various Special Interest Groups (SIGs). This time, we focus on SIG Apps, the group responsible for everything related to developing, deploying, and operating applications on Kubernetes. Sandipan Panda (DevZero) had the opportunity to interview Maciej Szulik (Defense Unicorns) and Janet Kuo (Google), the chairs and tech leads of SIG Apps. They shared their experiences, challenges, and visions for the future of application management within the Kubernetes ecosystem.

  • Canonical/Ubuntu Family

    • Ubuntu ☛ Effortless observability for Django applications

      In this post, we will start with a Django application built using the native support for Django in Rockcraft and Charmcraft and deployed with Juju, and add observability to it using just a few commands. This shows a key benefit of bringing the Juju ecosystem (which includes most of the plumbing you’d expect from a modern cloud, like observability, databases, ingressing and so on) to a web application using charms as we will be able to set up observability in a matter of minutes rather than hours. Rockcraft and Charmcraft also natively support Flask, FastAPI and Go and the following instructions will work similarly for those as well.