Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts tagged as “android”

CES: Smart TVs on Linux; SCALE prep underway

By Larry Cafiero on January 9, 2015 |

Community, Distros, Hardware, News and Operating Systems

CES: Smart TVs on Linux; SCALE prep underwayscale logo

FOSS Week in Review

First things first: Thanks to Christine Hall for standing in for me last Friday for the weekly wrap-up. As some of you know, I was pretty much in the dark for the first five days of the year after a fire in my building (nowhere near me) early on New Year’s Day morning caused the power to be shut down.

As we start 2015, with the Consumer Electronic Show in full swing in Lost Wages (more on this in a bit), let’s take a look at some of the happenings in the FOSS realm.

scale logoSCALE 13x in the starting blocks: The team organizing the Southern California Linux Expo’s 13th edition, more commonly known as SCALE 13x, has begun to ramp up preparations for the show. This year, SCALE 13x adds a day to become a four-day event running from Thursday, February 19 through Sunday, February 22 at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport hotel. The speakers have been chosen and the SCALE Team is in the process of sending out acceptances and rejections — so if you’ve heard you’re in, congratulations. If you haven’t heard either way, you will soon.

Continue readingCES: Smart TVs on Linux; SCALE prep underway
Firefox OS: It’s Not You, It’s MeFirefox OS logo

Firefox OS: It’s Not You, It’s Me

By Larry Cafiero on January 7, 2015 |

Hardware, Mobile and Operating Systems

I hate breakups. Even when they’re for the best, breakups have a tendency never to go well when executed — a difficult but apt word for it — and there’s always some heartbreak involved.

So it breaks my heart to tell everyone that Firefox OS and I must go our separate ways.

It’s not you, Firefox OS. It’s me. While I know you’ll go on to thrive and find digital happiness without me in the wider FOSS world, I am sorry I’m not going to be a part of your future.

Firefox OS logoFor the last year, you and I have been pals joined at the hip — the hip pocket, at least — as the OS on my ZTE Open phone. You know I’m not very demanding; the ZTE with Firefox OS did what was expected of it when it comes to my very limited use of mobile devices. To me, using mobile means taking calls, making calls, and texting. That’s really it. We’ve discussed this before, and the limited-albeit-growing selection of software for Firefox OS phones and tablets is a testament to your predicted longevity and bright future.

Firefox OS, it’s just that I need a little more dependability. We’ll get to that in a minute.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Continue readingFirefox OS: It’s Not You, It’s Me

2014’s Five Biggest Stories Affecting FOSS

By Christine Hall on December 30, 2014 |

Business, Community, Distros, Internet, News, Operating Systems, Patents, Politics and Security

Another year has come and gone, and as you might have guessed, 2014 still wasn’t the year of the Linux desktop.

Covering FOSS and Linux isn’t nearly as exciting as it was a decade or so ago — but that’s a good thing. Back then, we were at war with nearly every proprietary software vendor on the planet and faced threats from all directions, including up and down. To be sure, we didn’t start the wars we were fighting, as PROFAL (the People’s Republic of FOSS and Linux) only wished for peaceful coexistence.

The dust settled long ago and it appears as if we won most of these wars we didn’t start. Even our old arch enemy Microsoft is now waving the flag of peace and is seeking to normalize relations with us. And our old arch-arch enemy, SCO, doesn’t even exist any more — at least not in any form that we would recognize as the SCO of old. May Caldera rest in peace.

That doesn’t mean there’s not still news to be covered in the FOSS world. There is — and plenty of it. But these days, it’s mostly about advancements in technology, new start-ups and new alliances. We still face threats, to be sure, from crackers, spooks, politicians, the RIAA and the MPAA, but these forces threaten all of computerdom, not just FOSS, so we’ve been able to nurture some new strange bedfellows to join us in our struggles.

As years go, 2014 wasn’t the most boring year in the history of the free software movement, but it also wasn’t overly exciting. Again, that’s a good thing as it means there was no battening down the hatches and stuff. Still, there were many trends in the news this year which directly affect the purveyors and users of FOSS.

Here’s my top five list:

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
Continue reading2014’s Five Biggest Stories Affecting FOSS

Only FOSSers ‘Get’ FOSS

By Christine Hall on September 22, 2014 |

Community, Operating Systems and Software

Back on the first of September I wrote an article about Android, in which I pointed out that Google’s mobile operating system seems to be primarily designed to help sell things. This eventually led to a discussion thread on a subreddit devoted to Android. Needless to say, the fanbois and fangrrls over on Reddit didn’t cotton to my criticism and they devoted a lot of space complaining about how the article was poorly written.

They had me there; admittedly it wasn’t one of my better efforts.

The one comment that caught my attention, however, wasn’t complaining about me or my obviously misguided opinion. This commenter said something about how my article came from a FOSS site and made some snarky remark about how as open as Android is, it would never be open enough for those whiny FOSS people. This is the kind of remark we see all the time from tech people, user and developer alike, who think OSS is as free as it gets and don’t understand the distinction between open source and free and open source.

In other words, sometimes it’s the people who’re the closest to us in opinion who become our biggest ideological detractors.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingOnly FOSSers ‘Get’ FOSS
The Trouble With AndroidAndroid logo

The Trouble With Android

By Christine Hall on September 1, 2014 |

Business, Mobile and Operating Systems

I hope there are no marketers in heaven, who create demand for profit while claiming they’re only “giving the public what they want.”

What would you do if you were offered a choice between a carrot or a bar of candy? I don’t know about you, but I’m taking the candy, even though I definitely really, really need the carrot’s vitamins, roughage and other goodness and don’t need the candy at all. But if you were to sit a carrot next to me, it probably wouldn’t get eaten — ever. Set a candy bar down next to me, however, and I’ll resist it for all of five minutes.

Android logoSo why wouldn’t I eat the carrot? Because candy bars are too easy to come by. So are burgers, fries and shakes. They all feed unhealthy addictions and creating addictions, then feeding them, is central to our economy and is what keeps the fat cats fat. Even though I know this, I’ll grab the candy bar, the Little Debbie’s Zebra Cake or the “all the way” cheeseburger when what I really need is a pear or an apple.

Again, given the choice between a carrot or candy, a nice gooey chocolate bar perhaps, which would you choose? I’m betting that most of you are like me.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingThe Trouble With Android

The Time to Recommend Linux & FOSS Is Now

By Christine Hall on August 18, 2014 |

Operating Systems and Software

When I first started using Linux twelve years ago, no one I knew, other than folks on the local LUG, were interested in giving Linux or FOSS a try whatsoever. Don’t get me wrong; my friends were nice. They supported my enthusiasm for this Linux thing I’d discovered, but were politely uninterested when I suggested they might want to give Linux a try too. That didn’t surprise me at all. Hell, I’d been trying to get people to give Star Office a try since the turn of the millennium and they wouldn’t go for that either, even though they were paying through the nose for MS Office.

In those days it seemed that everyone was très afraid of wandering away from their familiar Windows landscape, lest their magic-box-hooked-to-a-telescreen cease computing and thereby end the wonders of Yahoo, online airplane tickets and email. Mac users didn’t wander either, not because they were afraid but out of a false sense of smugness.

When Vista came along things changed, but only ever so slightly.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingThe Time to Recommend Linux & FOSS Is Now

When the Police Can Brick Your Phone

By Christine Hall on August 16, 2014 |

Hardware, Mobile and Security

“Tyranny. Pure and simple. If it is software, somebody will find a way to hack it. If it is hardware, ‘old’ smartphones will be worth their weight in platinum.”

My friend Ross from Toronto made this comment with a link he posted on Facebook to The Free Thought Project’s article on a new about-to-be law in California. The law mandates a kill switch on all new smartphones, allowing the owner of a stolen phone to disable it until it’s recovered. The bill, CA SB 962, now only needs the expected signature of governor Jerry Brown to become law. In July, a similar law went into effect in Minnesota.

Organized using smartphones.
Photo by Jonas Naimark – Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
On the surface, a law with the purpose of protecting expensive smartphones from theft might seem to be a no-brainer good thing. Just render the device inoperable, while activating a homing program to locate it. Presto! In no time at all the phone is back in the hands of its rightful owner and made operable again. Supporters also hope the kill switch becomes a deterrent that greatly reduces the number of phone thefts.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingWhen the Police Can Brick Your Phone
When Linux Was Perfect EnoughLinux muscle car

When Linux Was Perfect Enough

By Christine Hall on August 3, 2014 |

Distros, Operating Systems and Software

The other day my colleague, friend and sometimes partner-in-crime, Ken Starks, published an article here on FOSS Force on one of his favorite gripes: things that don’t work right in Linux. This time he was complaining about a font issue in Mint when using KDE. This is nothing new from Ken. In the past he’s written other articles about broken aspects of various Linux distros that never seem to get fixed. It’s his contention that these “small” bugs, which remain unfixed release after release after release, are largely responsible for desktop Linux’s failure to take hold with the general public.

He might be right.

For Christmas I bought my roommate a new second generation Nexus 7 tablet running Android, an OS built around the Linux kernel. It “just worked,” out of the box, with no tweaking necessary. During the last seven months she’s used it for hours daily. As far as I know, she’s found no glitches that require fixing. I’m reasonably certain I’d know if she did, since the main reason I gave her the Nexus to begin with was because I had tired of trying to keep her Windows laptop running to her satisfaction. She has no trouble telling me when her computer goes kaput, and she always wants it fixed right now. Facebook waits for no one, you know.

I point this out because Linux has all but taken over the tablet and phone end of the computing spectrum. Apple makes plenty of money with the iPhone and iPad, but that’s due to their high prices. In market share, they lag far behind Android devices. And Microsoft has proven that Windows isn’t the unbeatable giant it was once thought to be. Even with massive money spent on television ads and conspicuous product placement in nearly every scripted drama on CBS, mobile devices running Windows remain a mere asterisk when looking at market share.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingWhen Linux Was Perfect Enough

Poll: You Mainly Use Desktops & Laptops

By Christine Hall on March 27, 2014 |

Hardware and Polls

Desktop wins pollIt’s hard to remember that it wasn’t that long ago that we only had a couple of choices to meet our computing needs. As recently as 2007, the year before Obama was elected, someone looking for a new computer basically could choose between a desktop or a laptop. In mobile, Research In Motion offered the Blackberry, which candidate Obama was famous for using — and still uses.

2007 was the year things began to change. In June of that year, Apple introduced the iPhone and in October Asus released the Eee PC, the first netbook of the modern era. When in October of the following year HTC released the Dream, the first handset running Android, it became obvious that consumer computing space had been forever changed. Less than two years later Apple released the iPad which was quickly followed by tablets running Android.

The introduction of the modern generation of tablets, which were highly capable and easy to use, had an immediate effect on sales of traditional desktops and laptops, leading some tech writers to proclaim that the age of the desktop was over and that desktop computers were on their way out. This wasn’t true, of course. We were just experiencing what the Wall Street types call a “market correction.”

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingPoll: You Mainly Use Desktops & Laptops
What Operating Systems Do You Use?Linux's Tux

What Operating Systems Do You Use?

By Christine Hall on March 13, 2014 |

Operating Systems

There was a time, back before smartphones and tablets, when most of us used, at most, only three operating systems. Indeed, for the average computer user there was only one operating system that mattered and that was Windows, which held a 95% market share. Even those of us who used Linux or Apple at home usually had to use a Windows computer at work–which remains true today.

However, today’s computer users daily come into contact with many other operating systems than merely Linux, OS X and Windows. Smartphone and tablet users boot into Android and iOS, with some even using the more open Firefox OS and Sailfish OS. To traditional consumer computers we can now add Chrome OS for those who don’t mind doing most of their work in the cloud.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingWhat Operating Systems Do You Use?
Breaking News: