Today I finally moved out of my lovely Ubuntu 10.04 LTS I was so proud in 2012, sad to read. That there are no longer any updates for it, only half of the problem. Many projects I am interested in started to fail during compilation because the toolchain is getting old. I was not updating because I did not like Unity, say whatever you want about it. I could learn it, of course, I have learned lots of way more sophisticated things (what about building GNU Classpath?). But I do not like the attitude, do not like decisions being made the way they are. Design must follow the user demands. Not in reverse. I gave a try to Gnome 3 as well with Fedora 22, played for some time but was not very impressed either and decided to drop after discovering that while it is possible to install the Gnome 2 - like Mate desktop, it is very difficult to actually switch into it.

My next distribution will be Ubuntu Mate. Value your freedom otherwise you will lose it!

Unexpectedly there were significant problems during updates . While in 2012 Linux installed no problem for me, now both Ubuntu Mate and Fedora 22 have booted in UEFI mode, raising lots of esoteric complains. It took half of the day for me to find where to switch of these UEFI beaties off in my wondercard, and another half to discover that the wondercard does not remember this setting, spontaneously reverting to "UEFI on". I cannot switch into UEFI, I have two other Linux distros on the same machine and do not want to loose. But now seems done.

Another company is refusing to issue a Java RIA code signing certificate for individual. Even if they openly declare they do in they website. Even after I provided the notary-confirmed copies of all documents they requested and they have had two phone interviews with me. Seems really the end of the project. Dalibor, are you reading this?

Java browser plugin has been here for a very long time, and for many years it was available on lots of machines. Yet, there were relatively few reports about somebody successfully using any security holes ever discovered.

We are currently under heavy rain of reports about Java applet security exploits on the wild. Some of these are, most likely, true.

How this could be? If some security bug (or fundamental platform weakness whatsoever) already existed for more than a decade, why nobody used if for exploit before? Why intruders spend so much of they time writing exploits of the now rather legacy platform? Where were they using this time before, instead of attacking the platform that at that time was significantly more widespread and relevant?

Several days ago, and just by chance, I have discovered that applets on Ultrastudio.org do not run any longer, thanks to the Oracle requirement to sign also applets that run in a sandbox.

It may be a question if one should purchase a signing certificate for over one hundred of dollars per year, for a project that has never generated any revenue. However I was even desperate enough to apply. Unfortunately even this was not helpful: the provider said certificates can only be issued for the officially registered companies and official non profit organizations. Being individual, I am neither one nor another.

The last attempt I may try, maybe some providers issue free certificates for open source projects, if they also do not put the same requirement that open source project should be run like a company. If not, that is the end of the Ultrastudio project.

Platform that requires a yearly fee just to allow others to run your code, and only if you are on behalf of some company, seems not the best for the Free software anyway.

"You are in 'detached HEAD' state. You can look around, make experimental changes ..."

oh, dear ...