FOSS Week in Review
Back to school, back to work, back to just about everything else free and open source this week: The temperatures could be a little cooler in California, but there’s a modicum of cool to go with the heat.
Like the following items in this week’s wrap…
Tipping the Scales for Linux: Sean Michael Kerner over at Datamation wrote an article accompanying a video interview with Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin, who says, among other things, why the foundation is just going to keep growing.
The four-minute interview video, on the Datamation page, is worth a watch. Good news from the foundation, indeed.
Awesome Audio from Raspberry Pi: From across the pond, ElectronicsWeekly.com puts the Raspberry Pi through some audio paces with a couple of tweaks, and gives it good marks in a somewhat long and detailed article.
Where at one time multi-room audio “was only for the well-off, or the extraordinarily ingenious,” the article states, “Raspberry Pi has changed all that, and now the only qualification for such a system is the ability to follow step-by-step instructions – and maybe £100 (about $155) per room for good sound through existing loudspeakers, and under ~£30 (about $46) if you have an old set of computer speakers lying around and are really not fussed about quality.”
That means, if you’re not Neil Young…
But with some Raspberry Pi hi-fidelity add-ons mentioned in the article, including Class-D power amplifiers “delivering tens of watts,” you could make a better-than-adequate sound system. It sounds like a potential weekend project for those audiophiles out there.
Open-Source Gmail Alternatives: Meanwhile over at Opensource.com, Jason Baker writes an article offering readers five — no, actually eight — open-source alternatives to Gmail. The list include these five — Roundcube, Zimbra, SquirrelMail, Rainloop and Kite — while adding three more options: HastyMail, Mailpile, and WebMail Lite. Of these, I’ve used SquirrelMail (“webmail for nuts” — no, really) in the past and I remember liking it. Your mileage may vary.
Have a great weekend, stay cool (if you’re in California), and see you Wednesday.
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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
I’ve been running two Zimbra systems for about 9 years now… and it is a turnkey solution full of features that works very well… from a web-based client. If you want to check it out Larry, I’d be happy to create an account for you. A new account with no emails, contacts, calendar events, etc… is pretty boring… and hard to get a feel for the power of the system… but what’cha gonna do?