Ubuntu Infringing, AlienBob Quits, Linus' Laptop
The top story today proves once again that Hollywood has way too much power. A DMCA takedown request to Google, to which they relented, included an address to Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS. In other news, Slackware developer and Slackware Live founder Eric "AlienBob" Hameleers has given his notice and Bodhi Linux 4.0.0 Alpha 2 was released. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols spoke to Linus Torvalds about his development computer and Matt Hartley posted some ideas for the perfect Linux desktop.
Ubuntu 12.04.2 might do a lot of things, but infringing upon Paramount Pictures' movie "Transformers: Age of Extinction" ain't one of them. Nevertheless, because a lot of folks searched for its torrent on Google, one of the URLs leading to a copy of it was targeted for removal by the Hollywood cartel. TorrentFreak.com spotted the request in Google's recent transparency report and reported it Saturday saying, "Paramount's mistake may be relatively harmless, but it shows once again how much can go wrong with these automated DMCA notices." Google still claims they try and be accurate, according to the Freak, but it looks like they're failing.
Oh no, AlienBob is calling it quits. The Slackware icon had to make a hard choice and working on Slackware had be sacrificed. Hameleers was given notice from employer IBM that his position will no longer be available as of November 1. Any spare time from here on will be dedicated to retraining and finding a new job. He then added that he's not sure that he'll have the time even after he finds a new position since he has no idea what exactly he'll end up doing. This is truly sad on many levels. We wish Eric all the success in finding new employment, but we will miss all his excellent work on official Slackware and extra packages as well as his handy Slackware Live. His absence will be noticed. Hopefully it's just temporary.
Jeff Hoogland today said that Bodhi 4.0 is still tagged a pre-release because it lacks just a bit of polish. Reports from the first Alpha stated the Moksha desktop was stable with only minor issues in the default theme. Hoogland said he's been using it since Alpha 1 on his everyday laptop and it seems to be working fine. However, he did encourage folks to download and test Sunday's Alpha 2 release and report any bugs. No final release date was given, so stay tuned.
In other news:
* Linus Torvalds reveals his favorite programming laptop
* A Proper Linux Workstation & Best Linux Desktop for Work
* Arch-based Apricity OS 07.2016 Review