You won't get that version to run with a 5.5 or newer kernel without a kernel patch and recompile of the kernel.  I believe the release you are running is based on the 5.10 kernel.

Try searching the web for "Linux  5.10 nvidia 340.108"

I'm not sure it works quite like that, though this add on is new to me and I find myself rather skeptical ...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/adnauseam/

By blocking the ads in the first place, it conserves a lot of CPU and thus power.  Then sending back the response to the host is only a tiny bit of data.  However, I do question it's worth.  Blocking ads is part of the battle, preventing fingerprinting and blocking trackers is another part.  Not sure where this fits in.

I'm not sure there's any sense discussing licensing.  I'm also not going to discuss OpenBSD much, let alone defend it.  Kelsoo quotes gnu.org and has clearly made up his mind already.

When it comes to funding - it's clear that Linux has been a massive commercial effort, developed and funded by a consortium of "Big Tech", including Microsoft, IBM, Red Hat and google, to name just a few, for many years now.  That's an indisputable fact.  I actually don't think that makes the Linux kernel any "worse" in terms of functionality however (we are all hypocrites, all reaping the rewards and it runs on the hardware we want it to run on).  Corporate influence, funding and developers on the corporate payroll is now intrinsically woven into Linux eco system.

Most of OpenBSD's funding however comes from it's development of OpenSSH, rather than the OS itself - though it could be argued that OpenSSH is permissive licensed for the very reasons you've stated above.  I vaguely recall a quote from Theo de Raadt actually criticizing the corporations using OpenSSH for their own profit and contributing nothing back.  You could quite rightfully say "well, duh...".  I think corporations taking permissive licensed code for profit and contributing nothing back is a very valid concern - I also think corporations buying off and hijacking GPL licenced projects to the extent that they effectively run the show and then steer development to suit their commercial interests is equally valid.

systemd exists to suit commercial interests for example...  Linux distributions and other projects were steered towards and then railroaded into systemd, due to the sheer inertia of corporate reps within multiple free software projects.  Without corporate control, something like systemd would never have happened.

I actually believe that de Raadt truly subscribes to the permissive licensing philosophy (rather than being some corporate stooge/sell out as you seem to suggest) in the same way that someone like Stallman believes in the copyleft licenses.  In my opinion neither camp are ready to accept that with enough money and power and buying off the right people - both licenses become almost irrelevant.  The "freeness" of a project, really depends on the project leaders and developers working on it.  If they can resist the "man from Microsoft/google" and his big bag of money, the project remains "free", if they can't, then you have yet another "open source" project.

Around 85% of code contributions to the Linux kernel come from those in the corporate employ.  For example, you have working video hardware nowadays, due to AMD and Intel engineers who are paid to develop Linux drivers for their hardware (the 'BSDs also port this code, but it's primarily developed for Linux).  With a project like OpenBSD, the overwhelming majority of the contributions to it's kernel would come from volunteers - and it's a tiny project by comparison.

The kernel code contributed by AMD and Intel to the Linux kernel is not GPL'd, but released under a permissive license similar to the MIT license.  But a big part of that effort comes in the form of proprietary, but redistributable, binary only firmware, which is loaded onto and runs on the device itself (as headstick has already explained).  The driver is free - the firmware needed for the driver and hardware is not - thus it's not actually "free" at all - it's all about manipulation and careful selection of "free" licences to meet a commercial end.

x86, also the main focus of Red Hat, SUSE and Canonical, is strongly tied to Microsoft - who have long standing secret deals with the hardware manufacturers (OEMs) to ensure Microsoft Windows exclusivity on consumer PCs.  Red Hat, SUSE and Canonical are all "Microsoft partners" - who work in a "cartel" with Microsoft and ensure that Microsoft's ownership and total control of the consumer PC market is never challenged.

I had something similar a few days ago, I had assumed it was a plasma issue at first, (I use plasma at work only - in fact I only use Linux at work) and after deleting the mess of configs, ~/.cache , ~/.kde5 - and then when that didn't work, doing it all again and then rebooting eventually "solved" it.

Not the first time I've had such issues.  Plasma 5 just seems overly complex and unwieldy.

Fleeing tyranny as well eh?  Wait until your account over there gets sadistically deleted by the resident tyrant.  He likes to utilise his shiny new plaything to the full...

Refusing the GPL'd code, prevents the non GPL'd code from becoming "contaminated" plus - GPL is regarded by some as a viral license.

Hence the school of thought that GPL isn't a good thing and why some 'BSDs have policies which exclude it from the base system.

You are actually stating what I have been saying for at least the last 10 years - that GPL is not some anti corporate or anti capitalist safeguard, which prevents corporate involvement/takeover.  As you have noted, corporations have infiltrated free software and simply pay the people / fund the projects and in doing so achieve control and can steer those projects as they see fit.  This also means that"unfunded" projects lack/lose developers and die.  One could argue that, if the code were under,e.g. BSD 2 clause, they would just throw some donations at the project, walk away and do their own thing.  Who can say for sure.  I think that horse has bolted.

All GPL really does in a nutshell is seek to prevent a company (or an individual in fact) from taking code and "turning it proprietary".  That's really it.

And when corporations do develop "free" code?  They use the non copyleft (permissive) licenses wherever possible (for example, code developed by AMD or Intel for the Linux DRM/KMS graphics stack is mostly permissive licensed.

If they do use GPL - you can bet they have done so for a reason, in that there is a business motivation for releasing the code under a restrictive copy left licence (having no option but to release the code, but at the same seeking to prevent a competitor from using the code without also having to release their own derivative works).

There is another valid argument however - costs.  Despite Microsoft propaganda of the early 00s, Linux is a cheaper alternative for e.g. IBM or HPE than developing their own in house UNIX.  They essentially get the same "solution" they had to pay many millions of dollars to develop, for what amounts to peanuts.  So you can already see that it's very much in the corporate interest to "hijack" projects such as the Linux kernel and steer them to suit a corporate agenda.

I'm almost certain OpenBSD contains no "non-free" stuff - in fact there are strict policies with regards to that.

FreeBSD, I'm not so sure about.  I do know they have signed NDAs in the past and I know their focus is on providing something that works rather than something primarily provided to meet some ideological objective.  But yes, despite this - one could argue that FreeBSD is "more free" than Linux as it is not funded and controlled by a consortium of "Big Tech", but instead relies on donors (some of those also being "Big Tech"), who throw some money at it.  That is ironic, considering all the criticism leveled at FreeBSD over the years by GNU evangelists (while corporations crept in and stole almost everything from under their noses).

No project is perfect or "better" however.  I can see a lot of problems in many FOSS projects.  It seems that corporate influence, even something like those nefarious "CoC" documents are everywhere these days.

@Ogis1975:  100% agreed.  It's a pity politics can't be left out of this, but it seems we're too far down that rabbit hole now...

The western media has completely glossed over and hidden the fact that Neo Nazi militias actually rule Ukraine, through a puppet.  And when I say "Neo Nazi militias", that's precisely what I mean - i.e. fanatics who style themselves on the SS, worship Adolph Hitler and would ethnically cleanse most of Europe in a heartbeat if they had the chance.

The "west" are arming these militias, just as they armed Islamist death squads in Syria in order to force out Assad.  That was a proxy war against Russia, this is no different.

Some of you need need to turn off the fucking TV news / put down the biased tabloids, which only ever repeat the state sponsored narrative and start thinking for yourselves.

I think ESR is way off...

WSL/WSL2 shows that MS is hellbent on keeping Windows as the installed OS and is researching and developing means to ensure that.  UEFI and Secureboot were another means of creating a gradual slippery slope towards vendor lock in and greater influence and control by Microsoft.  Business is business and "security" is often touted in sales patter.  Unfortunately some are unable to separate the sales talk from the technical talk when it comes to those two.  The "corporate Linux" vendors, signed in blood for Microsoft (of course they did, as they're MS partners, in bed with MS and have been for well over a decade) and unfortunately some Linux fans bought the whole "security" thing.

The idea that MS will eventually scrap Windows and rebuild from the ground up seems outlandish - I seriously doubt that will happen - for decades anyway. and then only as a matter of necessity.  At this moment in time, it's a pipe dream.

Consider that Linux itself dates back to the early 90's.

Windows NT (i.e. the current Windows OS family) dates back to the late 80's and has it's roots in OS/2.

BSD is even older, late 70's, with the current 'BSD OS having their origins in 386BSD (early 90's).

macOS/iOS is based on parts of BSD and the Mach kernel - again 80's and 90's OS,

So, while it could be argued that Windows is getting "stale", so in fact are all of the other mainstream OS.

If Microsoft were to switch to Linux with some "Wine like" emulation layer, they would have to go through a massive retool, overhaul and exercise in retraining.  The migration alone for their enterprise customers, would be a massive and highly disruptive undertaking, which could be catastrophic - for very little return.  And that's before you even consider all of the hardware support implications.  It might be great way of sending a big proportion of customers running to Red Hat/SUSE/Canonical.  It won't happen.

Generally enterprise doesn't care if their MS exchange server now runs on Linux - they just need it to work and shareholders just want a return on their investment.  While Windows may be crap, it's predictable crap for the sysadmins and other professionals who are paid to keep it running.

DuckDuckGo was marketed by Wienberg as being a "privacy" focused search engine - it turned out to be no different to the worst.

There is Microsoft collusion (conclusively proven facilitation of MS trackers, hosting on Azure and github, scraping of bing search) and the same political bias/censorship as other "Big Tech" based search engines.  To cap it all, it's actually proprietary software.  Using DuckDuckGo with the expectation of any privacy is what amounts to either "head in sand" naivety or willful ignorance.

Not incredible at all.  She was pure evil.

At LQ there was a moratorium on covid topics - and quite rightly so.  I'm wise enough to keep my opinions on it to myself...

But any covid thread quickly deteriorates into social media style puerile squabbles, both sides waving supposed "facts" around, neither side actually having a clue.  Not worth all the trouble.

Unless your writing your own rc scrips / services / unit files, I'm not sure why you'd care.

That may be the product of fear mongering.  Linux is not just GNU/Linux + systemd.  In fact it's mainly Android:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/18/2244 … oogle-2021

That's over 85% of mobile devices.

Desktops are < 2%.

Servers and embedded (including smartphone OS) is the main market for Linux, that's what the corporate funding is all about.  Of those only servers and only those server products from Red Hat, SUSE and Canonical are really invested in systemd.  But make no mistake about it, they want users and exposure.

Desktop distributions get it, because they are well downstream and serve as free beta testers for those enterprise server OS.  systemd entanglement with the gnome project (another Red Hat funded project) also ensures that systemd is shoehorned into desktops as much as possible, to increase the numbers further.  Consider that most of the major desktop distributions are corporate owned or funded - or reliant on a distribution that is.  systemd does more and more, because it's goal is to achieve as wide adoption as possible.  Those desktop distributions are after all hardly different to their server counterparts.

It's about cheap development - developing the kind of software that Microsoft and historically the likes of HPE and IBM had to pay out many, many hundreds of millions to develop, maintain and support over decades.