Proprietary social networking platforms have a few distinct issues for free software users, but one of the biggest is that it is often hard — if not impossible — to extract your information from them. With Twitter, for example, you can scroll down to the bottom of the page and wait for more tweets to load via JavaScript, but you can't sort and analyze them yourself. But that's exactly what the open source application ThinkUp does for you.
In the days of yore we had a System V (SysV) type init daemon to manage Linux system startup, and it was good. It was configured with simple text files easily understood by mortals, and it was a friendly constant amid the roiling seas of change. Then came systemd, and once again we Linux users were cast adrift in uncharted waters. Why all this change? Can't Linux hold still for just a minute?
In the days of yore we had a System V (SysV) type init daemon to manage Linux system startup, and it was good. It was configured with simple text files easily understood by mortals, and it was a friendly constant amid the roiling seas of change. Then came systemd, and once again we Linux users were cast adrift in uncharted waters. Why all this change? Can't Linux hold still for just a minute?