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Posts tagged as “microsoft”

Fedora 24, SourceForge’s Dilemma & More…

Also included: Solus 1.2, Elementary Snaps, Microsoft fights OEM crapware and LibreOffice’s minor upgrade.

FOSS Week in Review

The biggest news this week was the much awaited release of Fedora 24.

It’s baseball season, and in baseball about this time of year talk turns to trades. Well, I’ve been traded for one game…er, review. That means that although I’ve downloaded and installed Fedora 24 on our test machine, I can’t really give it a full review here. However, I’ll make sure to point you to the review as soon as it goes up “on another network,” as Johnny Carson used to say. All I can tell you now is that so far it seems to do what it does well.

Other than Fedora, the most interesting story to me this week might have been missed by many FOSSers as it doesn’t involve FOSS at all, but our proprietary lover in Redmond.

Microsoft to Acquire LinkedIn for $26.2 Billion

With today’s announcement of Microsoft’s planned purchase of LinkedIn, it appears that the business oriented social site will soon become a platform for connecting with Redmond’s proprietary products.

Are you ready for MS LinkedIn? Too bad. It’s coming. Today Microsoft announced in a press release that it’s purchasing the social network for $196 per share in an all-cash deal worth $26.2 billion. Although the sale will require shareholder approval, that’s evidently not going to be a problem.

Microsoft's LinkedIn plansAccording to a PDF presentation posted by Microsoft, LinkedIn’s board has unanimously recommended the deal and the social site’s board chairman, co-founder and controlling shareholder, Reid Hoffman, is supporting the transaction and intends to vote his shares “in accordance with the Board’s recommendation.” The deal is expected to be completed by year’s end.

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

Microsoft’s BSD, SourceForge’s Speed Test & More…

Also included: Maru OS brings Android/Debian convergence, three new distro releases, Google making Android more proprietary and EFF asked to investigate Miscrosoft.

FOSS Week in Review

Here I am, sitting at the FOSS Force table in the land of the not-so-deep-south. I’m in Charlotte, in the northern Carolina, 33 miles exactly from the border with the other, southern, Carolina, which is probably good, just in case I need to make a quick getaway. I’m also almost exactly 90 miles from the termite eaten shack I call home up near the Virginia state line. Essentially this morning I’ve traveled from state to shining state.

I am, of course, at the SouthEast LinuxFest, which is Tux’s gift to the land of fatback, grits and turnip greens. This year’s trip is something of a working trip, because I really can’t afford to take three days away from work. So FOSS Force has a table here, convenient for me to get my work done, as I’m doing now, writing the weekend roundup. It’s just like my home office, except here I’m surrounded by Linux using and loving folks instead of by unswept cobwebs and more stink bugs than I can tolerate, which is how I live. It’s fun here. It’s different. Later on I’ll take in a lecture, which will be the first performance I’ve seen that’s not on a TV screen since last October.

But first, the FOSS news…

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

Surprise! Microsoft Ending Free Upgrades to Windows 10

Microsoft announced on Thursday that the end-of-life is coming soon to its free upgrade-to-Windows 10 scheme. Afterwards, the operating system won’t be cheap.

Just because Steve Ballmer is no longer at the helm in Redmond doesn’t mean Microsoft doesn’t go completely bonkers on occasion. On Thursday, the company announced in a blog that free upgrades to Windows 10 are coming to an end.

Microsoft Windows 10
Windows 10 build 10240 with the Start menu and Action Center open.
While this is a totally expected move — Microsoft always said the free upgrades were for a limited time — it’s not going to happen the way many had anticipated, or in a way that would make sense in today’s market. There’s not going to be a pay-as-you-go subscription model, nor is Windows 10 going to be offered at “attractive” prices. Instead, it’s going to be the same old game. Despite all the talk we’ve heard from Redmond about how Windows in no longer the backbone of the company, the operating system is evidently still seen as a cash cow to be milked for more than it’s worth.

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

The Best Windows 10 Commercial Ever

We interrupt this weather report with a very important announcement. Despite our best efforts, your local TV station has not yet upgraded to Windows 10. We warned them that something like this was bound to happen sooner or later.

We absolutely had to share this with you.

On Wednesday morning on KCCI, the CBS affiliate in Des Moines, Iowa, meterologist Metinka Slater was in the middle of giving her weather forecast when her onscreen computer suddenly presented one of those upgrade-to-Windows-10 nag screens we’ve been hearing so much about.

‘New’ Windows Security Flaw Runs Apps Without Admin Rights

Newly discovered Windows security hole bypasses AppLocker and lets apps run without admin rights. Proof-of-concept code published.

This is one of those “look what I found while looking for something else” sort of stories. Casey Smith was trying to solve a problem and accidentally discovered a security vulnerability that affects business and server editions of Windows 7 and up.

Microsoft’s Becoming the New, but Successful, Novell

If there was ever a time to make the distinction between OSS and FOSS, it is now. Microsoft may be the largest open source company on the planet, but it will never be a FOSS company.

It was only a couple of years ago that the FOSS world was proclaiming that Microsoft was a dead company walking. The king was dead. Sales of new Windows releases were flat and Android was seriously kicking its butt in the mobile marketplace. FOSSers were sure they wouldn’t have Redmond to kick around for much longer.

Microsoft German camputTimes have changed. Android is still winning on mobile, but other than that, Microsoft is back on track and is maybe more secure than ever. That’s not good for FOSS.

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

Maybe It’s Time to Trust Microsoft — Maybe Not

The Heart of Linux

In this story, Microsoft is the cunning spider and Linux the intended victim, the fly. Everyone knows how the story begins. ‘Will you walk into my parlour?’ said the Spider to the Fly.

The punishment needs to fit the crime, but in Microsoft’s case, it never has. The punishments that have been meted out to Redmond for their civil and criminal asshattery over the years have been almost laughable. From the ridiculously small punishment for obvious antitrust violations at the turn of the century when the company was convicted as a monopolist, to the law seemingly turning it’s blind eyes away from Microsoft for their blatant patent-slinging abuses.

What it all boils down to is Microsoft being fined millions while making billions.

If Penfield Jackson, the initial judge in the Microsoft antitrust case, hadn’t gotten himself thrown off the case for discussing it with the press, the Microsoft of today would look much different. The pieces of it anyway. Personally, I think I would like that Microsoft much better than the one today.

Ken Starks

Ken Starks is the founder of the Helios Project and Reglue, which for 20 years provided refurbished older computers running Linux to disadvantaged school kids, as well as providing digital help for senior citizens, in the Austin, Texas area. He was a columnist for FOSS Force from 2013-2016, and remains part of our family. Follow him on Twitter: @Reglue

Ubuntu Coming to Windows 10

In its quest to become the Microsoft of the Linux world, Ubuntu and Microsoft are expected to announce today that Ubuntu will soon run on Windows 10.

Holy crap!

In Friday’s Week in Review I jokingly opined that I wouldn’t be surprised to see “Ubuntu for Windows” as a move by the folks at Canonical as part of their plans for world domination. Guess what? It’s really happening.

In an article published Tuesday, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes that “[a]ccording to sources at Canonical” a deal has been worked out between Ubuntu’s parent company and Microsoft that will lead to the GNU/Linux distro being able to run alongside Windows 10. According to Vaughan-Nichols, “This will not be in a virtual machine, but as an integrated part of Windows 10.”

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

Ethical Hackers Unethically Hacked, Keystroke IDs & More…

FOSS Week in Review

While Facebook and Google work to better identify you by your typing skills and Red Hat counts the bucks from its best ever year, Ubuntu finally makes it possible to launch from the bottom.

If you depend only on mainstream tech media’s coverage of FOSS, you might be excused for thinking that the biggest news of the week revolved either around Ubuntu’s new summer home in the world of BSD — which isn’t a Canonical project by the way — or Microsoft’s open sourcing of every scrap of code it can find that might benefit Microsoft if it were open sourced.

In my not-so-humble opinion, both of these stories were yawners. Of course somebody’s attempted to create a BSD *buntu. There are already Ubuntu flavors for every single desktop environment known to mankind, as well as a few DEs that are figments of Canonical’s imagination, so where else was there to go but to another operating system? What’s next? Given the way Ubuntu has been cozying up to Microsoft, I’m expecting Ubuntu for Windows.

As for Microsoft’s continuing open sourcing? There’s nothing new here, move on. When Redmond loves Linux and open source enough to quit suing open source projects over patents it claims it has — that will be news.

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

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