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Posts tagged as “windows”

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

Microsoft Kidnaps Windows, Malware Everywhere & More…

FOSS Week in Review

The big Linux conference down in the land of Oz just completed and there are no really big shows on the agenda until Atlanta’s Great Wide Open opens its great doors wide in March. Everybody here in North Carolina, which I call home, is on the road, hanging out in Baghdad-by-the-Bay waiting to see how well the Panthers play in fog and trying to pretend to be old hats at having a pro home team worth the effort of a root or two.

You’d think it would be quiet around here, but it’s not. As always, it’s one thing after another, and as a coworker often often says, I’m getting too old for this. I could tell you stories, but I’m not. What I am going to tell you is the high points of this week in FOSS…

If you’re a Windows user, which most of you reading FOSS Force aren’t, then Microsoft wants to hijack your machine. It seems that the company that’s been spending millions — and has been buying into every free and open source conference it can find and a few it can’t — to get the word out that “Microsoft has changed,” hasn’t. If you happen to be unlucky enough to be using Windows 7, 8 or 8.1, you’re probably beginning to realize this right about now.

Windows users might be well advised to think about unplugging their computers from the Internet when they’re not around to keep an eye on things or they’re likely to wake-up in the morning, or return home from work, to find they’re running Windows 10 instead of whatever version they know and love.

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

Redmond Admits Using Microsoft Supported Windows Is ‘Risky’

The Heart of Linux

I’ve mentioned often on these pages and others that, as a rule, us older folks tend to have severe allergic reactions to technology and tech devices. I believe I’ve successfully made my case, just by talking about the folks in my own neighborhood retirement community.

I am the anomaly. I’m an “old guy” who gets tech. Mostly anyway. Just don’t lean too heavily for my networking skills or you’ll fall down, busting your butt and getting nasty paper cuts from all of those antiquated certs. And sure, we can tick off names here of the folks who know what both an IDE and Gertitol are, but mostly we older people resemble “The Walking Dead” as we wander around Fry’s Electronics or Best Buy.

Best Buy, of course, is the place where many of us older people go to seek help in what it is we need in a computer. The sales reps there can be so nice. What they suggest is almost always twice the cost of what we really need, but hey, the Best Buy geek said this is the one to buy. Sales bonus for an extended warranty plan anyone?

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

Ghosts in the Linux Machine

I’ve been smug about it for years now. No, smug doesn’t really cover it. “Haughty” might be a closer match. Now there’s an old school word: Haughty. It was used in a time when every other sentence didn’t contain a hyperbolic term or a phrase.

“Man, that movie was awesome!”

No, that movie wasn’t awesome. It might have been extremely entertaining or thought-provoking, but it wasn’t awesome. The overwhelming swell within you when you first see the Milky Way out in the middle of nowhere with no light pollution, that is awesome. An F5 tornado rending a human body part down to slimy, unrecognizable DNA, now that’s awesome. Watching Jupiter take one for the home team here on earth, thusly avoiding an extinction-level event, that was awesome. Awesome is when you have no words or ability to say words.That’s what awesome is

Regardless of how I parse it, the fact is that as a Linux user, I felt just a wee bit sorry for my Windows brethren and probably a wee bit superior. All that chugging and churning their computers went through several times a week while their antivirus software brought their machines to their knees….

Not me. I’m a Linux user.

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, Microsoft, Tizen & More…

FOSS Week in Review

There was plenty of FOSS news this week, but in many ways it was just more of the same — the more things change and all that. Unfortunately, some of the news harkens back to the dark ages, when armour clad knights from Redmond seemed to be hiding behind every tree…

SUSEIs Ubuntu the new Novell? It probably wasn’t news to anybody when Microsoft failed to renew it’s deal with SUSE when it expired at year’s end. Many with long memories will remember that way back when SCO was still a viable company, Microsoft inked a deal with Novell, which was then the proud new owner of the SUSE Linux distro. Among other things, the deal gave SUSE users a free pass against getting sued by Microsoft for infringing any of its patents. As part of the deal, Microsoft purchased tons and tons of SUSE support contracts to sell to enterprise customers who might need to keep a Linux machine or two running, which were reportedly given away. Mainly, Microsoft was using SUSE as its official Linux distro, and as a testing ground for Microsoft’s attempts to get Windows to work and play well with Linux.

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

Shuttleworth at SCALE, Google Rolls Over & More…

FOSS Week in Review

Wow. It certainly didn’t take long after the holidays for the FOSS news wire to heat up again. It’s like all the newsmakers have been chomping at the bit to get back to work doing what they do best, which would be, well, making news. Let’s start with some breaking news concerning a well known FOSS personality…

Soyuz Rocket Shuttleworth
Mark Shuttleworth, rocket man and founder of Canonical/Ubuntu will be a keynote speaker at SCALE 14X in Pasadena, Calif. Presumably, he’ll arrive using a conventional mode of transportation.
To SCALE or not to SCALE: If you live somewhere within driving distance of Southern California and you’ve been sitting on the fence trying to decide whether to attend SCALE 14X (that’s the Southern California Linux Expo for the jargon impaired), then we’re about to give you a tidbit that might help you make up your mind.

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

What Hardware Platforms Do You Use? All of Them.

The FOSS Force Poll

The results of our hardware platform poll have been tallied and just as we suspected, FOSS Force readers in large part use every platform available. The poll, which asked what different hardware platforms you use, offered a slate of answers too long to list here. Let’s just say it covered the gamut, from smartphones to desktops, and included separate places to tic for different operating systems.

What Computer Platforms Do You Use?

The FOSS Force Poll

Star Trek Communicator computer
Photo by David Spalding
When Star Trek first hit the air back in the “swinging sixties,” that’d be the 1960s for those too young to remember, many of the technically minded took one look and said, “Impossible.” Or if not impossible, it’d be at least the 23rd century, the era in which the show was set, for the technology to arrive. They weren’t talking just the space travel science, stuff like warp drive, inertial dampers and the like, but were talking the small stuff too, like the communicators and tricorders. Today we have something akin to both, built into a single device called a smartphone. In hindsight, we should’ve seen it coming, but as some folks say, hindsight has perfect vision.

Linux Foundation’s Deal With the Devil

Last week when Microsoft and the Linux Foundation separately announced a partnership that would see Redmond issuing a Linux certification called Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate Linux (MCSA), Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols felt the need to add the words “not a typo” to the headline of his coverage on ZDNet. A couple of days later, when the story made the pages of The Register the headline included, “Do not adjust your set. This is not an error.”

Linux Foundation LogoWe were just as surprised here at FOSS Force, and Larry Cafiero pulled no punches when breaking the story in Friday’s Week in Review. “There’s the argument that because Microsoft ‘loves’ Linux…we should be more inclusive,” he wrote, “but this is the company that considered Linux a cancer and has fought FOSS for decades. Rather than throw the Microsoft that is treading water a life preserver, I still think throwing it an anchor would be more fitting.”

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

Welcome to Linux: The Stone Age OS

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

–R. Buckminster Fuller

Let’s talk about the future, as understood by today’s children who will ultimately shape that future.

In the course of a normal day, for every adult with whom I speak, there are two kids who add to the day’s conversations. Sometimes they are 17 year’s old, sometimes they are anywhere from 9-12. Regardless of the “sometimes,” one thing remains a constant: These kids will shape the world in which they live, equaling and surpassing the accomplishments of their fathers or even their grandfathers, those fearful but heroic men who faced withering gunfire and certain death on foreign beaches, men who prematurely ended the Third Reich to insure those after them would not have to, and men who died so those approaching the land could advance.

Linux users
Linux users, according to one of Ken Starks’ critics.
Their sacrifice changed the future of millions, and the kids I work with are indeed that future. Kids like Brandon, a well-spoken eighth grade student in Taylor, Texas.

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

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