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Posts tagged as “ubuntu”

System 76 Talks With Ubuntu, WordPress Ups Game and More…

Also included: Fedora community says goodbye to Matthew Williams, Solus gets a new package build system, end-of-life for Fedora 23 and IoT security.

Ubuntu logo

FOSS Week in Review

Something arctic this way comes. That”s what Lannie Pope, the weatherwoman on the local NBC affiliate, tells us, Trouble is, I’m still stuck in a house without proper heat, a situation that’s been dragging on since near the end of September. It’s a long story, but…brrr. I’m glad I don’t live in a part of the country where it gets really cold.

Now on to this week’s FOSS news, which is always warm…

New IoT Botnet, Attackers Target Tor, and More…

Also included, Flash on life support, Mageia’s new release, Ubuntu sets date for “Zesty Zapus” and our News Wire gets an RSS feed.

Tor logo

FOSS Week in Review

Outside of FOSS, the news becomes too depressing and repetitive to read. Gamergate has taken over our country and is set to move into the White House and to have free rein in the halls of congress. Roles are being reversed and it’s rapidly becoming politically incorrect to express concerns for our mother the earth or for the creatures who inhabit it, while it’s perfectly fine to label anyone who advocates for equality as a “social justice warrior” who should have no place within any organization.

If you think I’m bummed out, you’re right. At least for the time being, in the world of FOSS life goes on as usual…

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

Homicide Commits Suicide, HP Says It’s Sorry & More…

Also included: Judge seems to make software patents illegal, Mageia mourns a contributor, Yakkety Yak frozen, KDE’s new release, and getting ready for All Things Open.

FOSS Week in Review

When I wrote last week’s wrap, Hurricane Matthew seemed to be on a direct path for my office. Now it appears that long before it hits my state it’s going to take a sharp turn to the right and head back out to sea. That’s the good news. Unfortunately, in getting to where it is today, this storm has so far killed nearly 1,000 people that we know of so far, and has made thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, homeless. That’s bad news indeed.

This week’s free tech news was a little more fun…

Digital Homicide logoDigital Homicide commits suicide: In a story that’s been brewing for a while now, it seems that game company Digital Homicide was given enough rope to…well, you know. It seems that the publisher had gotten in the habit of suing any Steam user who dared to post a bad review about one of its games, and actually subpoenaed Valve for the identities of 100 anonymous users who had made statements about the company. This, in turn and understandably, pissed a lot of users off, which led to Valve removing all games from Steam.

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

Krebs Goes Down, Opera Gets a VPN & More…

Also included: Yahoo’s big hack, Garrett on Lenovo, new Audacious and GNOME, and Ubuntu get’s ready for Yakkety Yak.

FOSS Week in Review

I spent time this week terminating a Yahoo account I’ve had since way back in the last century. For years, the My Yahoo page was my “home” page whenever I fired-up the old dial-up to go online, but over time the portal (remember portals?) became less and less relevant and I found my visits to Yahoo becoming less and less frequent. By the time I closed the account, prompted by news of a massive hack involving 500 million accounts going back to 2014, I hadn’t visited my Yahoo page in well over a year. RIP Yahoo. It was nice knowing you.

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 Last LinuxCon, MariaDB Goes Open Core & More…

Also included: Gilles Chanteperdrix passes, corporate Linux, Cisco patches against the NSA, MariaDB’s proprietary moves, Netrunner becomes Maui, Ubuntu to replace Upstart, Fedora and Wayland, and Linux client for Yandex Disk.

FOSS Week in Review

The last LinuxCon: This year’s LinuxCon, held in the city of Toronto which is one of my favorite old haunts, was the last love fest for Linux under the name LinuxCon, which had come to be synonymous for a certain type of Linux festival. In a way, it’s fitting this should be the last as the show ended on the day before Linux’s 25th birthday and was, in many ways, a celebration of the first quarter century of Linux. In another way it’s a crying shame. LinuxCon has come to stand for the community spirited nature of Linux, even though backed by the Linux Foundation, which becomes less of a community organization with the passing of each year.

Linus Torvalds, Dirk Hohndel, LinuxCon 2016
Linus Torvalds being interviewed by VMware’s Dirk Hohndel on the last day of the last LinuxCon North America. Next year’s event in Los Angeles will be renamed Open Source Summit.
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

How to Install Ubuntu on a Chromebook Pixel

Chromebooks are really nice laptops, except for one tiny problem which is…well, Chrome OS. This week, our contributing video editor found an easy to follow step-by-step guide for installing Ubuntu on a Chromebook Pixel. Problem solved.

The Video Screening Room

The Chromebook Pixel of 2013 is a lovely computer. Want to make it even lovelier? Install Ubuntu on it. This well-done tutorial video shows and explains all the steps.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Girn7mgoRco?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en-US&autohide=2&wmode=transparent&w=640&h=360]

In three years time, the Chromebook Pixels of 2013 will be six years old and you’ll be able to buy one quite affordably on eBay.

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

Easy Linux Distro Hopping with MultiSystem

Our resident Linux newbie is off and running. Not only is he single booting his Lenovo IdeaPad to Ubuntu Mate, he’s using the FOSS app “MultiSystem” as a down and dirty way to check out lite distros for his ancient resource challenged Sony Vaio. We couldn’t be prouder.

The Linux Gadabout

Running Ubuntu MATE for the past week, my Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 has so far been a dream — perhaps too much of a dream, because it’s allowed me to waste even more time playing Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth without interruption than Windows 10 ever could. But on my significantly more ancient and RAM limited Sony Vaio, Ubuntu MATE seems to be more of a resource hog than I’d like. Sure, it still runs better than the Windows XP that came pre-installed, but it doesn’t mean we can’t do better.

Robert Glen Fogarty

“Bob” Fogarty was the editor-in-chief at Chris Pirillo’s LockerGnome.com for nearly 12 years, and has written for ReadWrite.com and TheArtofCharm.com. He lives in San Diego with his wife and a medium-sized menagerie of beasties great and small. Follow him on Twitter: @Fogarty

Dumping Windows Overboard Because Linux Does It All

In this week’s installment, our GNU/Linux newbie decides to go all in and take the training wheels off his Linux laptop.

The Linux Gadabout

The more I use Linux, the less I like Windows.

I doubt this will be a shocker — the majority of FOSS Force readers will probably nod their heads knowingly at this point. Additionally, my Mac using friends will smugly point out how they’ve been trying to steer me away from that Microsoft garbage for years, but Apple’s not kept me free from frustration, either. In fairness to all options on the table, I’m sure Linux won’t remain blameless as I log more time with it. I’ll even allow the possibility that Windows is just the easiest target for my unspent rage as it’s been on my radar the longest. But so far, most of the problems I’ve had with Linux (Ubuntu MATE, in particular) have been hardware related — that is, not the fault of Linux at all.

Robert Glen Fogarty

“Bob” Fogarty was the editor-in-chief at Chris Pirillo’s LockerGnome.com for nearly 12 years, and has written for ReadWrite.com and TheArtofCharm.com. He lives in San Diego with his wife and a medium-sized menagerie of beasties great and small. Follow him on Twitter: @Fogarty

Jono Bacon on Life After (and Before) GitHub

It caused a bit of a splash in May when Jono Bacon abruptly left GitHub after serving as community manager for only six months. As we predicted at the time, he’s landed on his feet.

The FOSS Force Video Interview

Do you want to know what it takes to be a professional community manager? This interview will show you the kind of personality that does well at it, and how Jono Bacon, one of the world’s finest community managers, discovered Linux and later found his way into community management.

Robin "Roblimo" Miller

Robin “Roblimo” Miller is a freelance writer and former editor-in-chief at Open Source Technology Group, the company that owned SourceForge, freshmeat, Linux.com, NewsForge, ThinkGeek and Slashdot, and until recently served as a video editor at Slashdot. Now he’s mostly retired, but still works part-time as an editorial consultant for Grid Dynamics, and (obviously) writes for FOSS Force.

Ubuntu Hacked, Linux Journal Extremists & More…

Also included: Microsoft shows love of Linux with gift of Skype and Torvalds continues to be Torvalds.

FOSS Week in Review

The biggest Linux story this week by mainstream tech sites’ standards was Skype working to include Linux users in its installed base by releasing a new Linux client to replace obsolete software that hadn’t been updated in at least two years. According to many of the comments on FOSS Force’s coverage, Skype might consider itself a day late and a dollar short.

The big problem, of course, is Skype’s ownership by Microsoft, whose love of Linux is so far unrequited. Add to that the fact that Skype, like Microsoft, doesn’t have the monopoly it once had and the result is a less than enthusiastic response. However, it wouldn’t surprise me if Ubuntu doesn’t start installing the Skype client by default once it comes out of beta.

Now on to some news that’s really newsworthy…

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

Is 32-bit Nearing End-of-Life at Some Linux Distros?

At least three Linux distros have already quit releasing 32-bit versions, and Ubuntu seems to be standing in line to do the same. Is the end at hand for 32-bit mainstream distros?

News Analysis

We have three computers that see regular duty here at FOSS Force. Two are 64-bit laptops, one which is primarily reserved for out-of-the-office trips and the other used exclusively to test distros and software for reviews. The heavy lifting is done by our old 32-bit HP desktop.

In a month or so, when the Xfce edition of Linux Mint 18, otherwise known as “Sarah,” is released, we’ll be backing up our data and doing a clean install on the desktop. This will probably be the last operating system upgrade this computer will ever see. Sarah will be supported until 2021, and by then, this old computer will most likely have already given up the ghost. Even if it’s still running, however, it’s doubtful there will be a 32-bit version of Mint to run on it, as Canonical will probably have ceased development of the 32-bit version of its distro by then.

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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