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Posts published by “FOSS Force”

KDE Tops Poll

It didn’t take nearly as long to count the votes for our desktop poll as it did for last week’s distro poll, mainly due to the fact that not as many of you voted, but also because there aren’t nearly as many desktop environments and window managers as their are Linux distros. Also, unlike the distro poll, there was a clear cut winner instead of a virtual tie.

KDEActually, of course, it’s not about winners and losers. It’s about what you like. It’s about preferences. After all, unless you’re a diehard command line person, the desktop is how you interact with your computer.

Again this year, KDE tops the list with a commanding lead, piling up over a quarter of the 617 votes cast. This is a huge drop from the 70 percent showing it made the last time we conducted a desktop poll, back in January and February of last year. In that poll, however, users were only given three desktop choices — KDE, GNOME 3 and Cinnamon. This year, voters were served up a menu that included eight popular desktops from which to choose. As in last year’s poll, voters could also opt to place write-in votes.

Why KDE? According to your comments, there were two major reasons: stability and configurability, with many of you saying, “It just works.” But there seemed to be some disagreement over whether KDE’s legendary configurability is as great as it once was.

Poll Results: Ubuntu & Mint End in Near Tie

The FOSS Force Linux Distro poll is now one for the record books. The poll, which ran for a week, finishing just before midnight on Wednesday, asked the simple question, “What Linux distro do you use most?”

We figured this would be a popular poll going in. What we didn’t know was exactly how popular. By the time the dust had settled, over twenty-five hundred of you had voted — more than double the previous FOSS Force poll record, set back in 2013 for the third and final round of our Best Personal Linux or FOSS Blog poll. Back then, a little over a thousand of you voted, leading us to think we’d crossed the Rainbow Bridge into Valhalla.

What’s Your Desktop Environment?

The Linux distro poll is over and we’re crunching the numbers for an article to go up later today. However, first we want to introduce our second annual Desktop Environment poll.

It only seems fitting, somehow, that we would follow up our what’s-your-distro poll with a Linux desktop poll. After all, we see and interact with our desktop everyday — but we never “see” our operating systems — meaning most users actually have a better understanding of their desktop environment or window manager than they do with the underlying distro. So much so, that many users — especially outside of the *nix world, often think of their desktop environment as the operating system.

‘All Thing Open’ Announces Call for Speakers

On Wednesday afternoon, the All Things Open (ATO) conference announced its Call for Speakers for 2015. The call will remain open for 45 days, which means it will close sometime near the end of April. Those interested in being a speaker at this year’s event can apply on the ATO website. 2015 marks the third year for the Raleigh, North Carolina event, which is well on the way to becoming the premiere open source enterprise conference in the Eastern United States.

All Things Open 2015After being a two day event for its first two years, this year the event, which is staged by the Columbia, South Carolina based nonprofit IT-oLogy, will expand to take place over a three day period. In addition, the event is moving from midweek to the beginning of the week, and is scheduled to begin on Sunday, October 18th and run through Tuesday, October 20th.

As in years past, the event will take place at the Raleigh Convention Center in the city’s downtown.

POSSCON Returns to South Carolina

POSSCON is back.

After taking a year off so that IT-oLogy, the nonprofit behind the event, could concentrate on launching the Great Wide Open conference in Atlanta, the POSSCON developers’ conference will return to Columbia, South Carolina on Tuesday and Wednesday, April 14th and 15th. Last year, regular attendees of POSSCON were urged to attend the Atlanta event instead. This year’s event will take place at various venues in the Vista, Columbia’s arts and entertainment district.

What Linux Distro Do You Use?

Inquiring minds want to know: What Linux distro is on your computer?

Market share matters, even in the nonprofit world in which most distros live. Most likely, a large user base means more dollars coming in from donations or corporate grants. Also, a popular and much used distro might also prompt more folks with technical skills to volunteer, which might result in an improved user experience — or not. You know what they say about too many cooks in the pot.

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