Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts published by “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

Unixstickers Gives Back to FOSS Projects

By Christine Hall on May 25, 2016 |

Community, Distros and Potpourri

Unixstickers Gives Back to FOSS ProjectsUnixstickers Emacs

We were pleased to discover an online retailer that caters to Linux and FOSS users and seems to understand exactly what free and open source is all about. This company gives a percentage of each purchase to free tech projects.

Are you one of those people who likes to use your laptop as a billboard to announce to the world that you’re a Linux user? Do you feel compelled to plaster stickers all over the outside of your laptop, maybe even your luggage, letting everyone know your favorite distro, some of your favorite FOSS programs or even a favorite programming or scripting language? Do you find yourself wishing there was an easy way to cover up the Windows key on your PC’s keyboard with something that actually represents an operating system you use?

Continue readingUnixstickers Gives Back to FOSS Projects

Ubuntu’s Got Tablet, Fedora’s Kernel Decision & More…

By Christine Hall on May 21, 2016 |

News

FOSS Week in Review

Also included: OSCON folds tent, Pinguy developer might pull plug, Libreboot joins with GNU, Arch and Fedora repository news, and a new version of the Pi Zero.

Back in the hippie days there was a lot of talk about plastic people, which would be fake people. Back in those days, plastic people were to be avoided, as was plastic anything.

How times have changed. These days we embrace a plastic world. As example, we replace carefully hand crafted wristwatches made to last a lifetime with electronic rhinestone wearables that will be obsolete in a year or two, just because they tell us how fast and how seldom we walk.

You see, by the ’60s definition, plastic doesn’t need to be made of plastic to be plastic. You dig?

We also embrace virtual, meaning plastic or fake, reality, and Android N (which has no name yet but I’m betting on Nutty Buddy) intends to steal virtual thunder away from Oculus, Facebook and Windows by becoming the VR platform that can be carried in your pocket everywhere you go. Soon, there’ll be no need to travel to Paris or Milan, just put on your headset and go…. Hey, when did they put Google ads on the Eiffel tower?

Enough of that, on to this week’s news, garnered from the FOSS Force News Wire…

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

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingUbuntu’s Got Tablet, Fedora’s Kernel Decision & More…
Bodhi Linux 3.2.1 With Moksha: Another Path to EnlightenmentBodhi Linux logo

Bodhi Linux 3.2.1 With Moksha: Another Path to Enlightenment

By Christine Hall on May 19, 2016 |

Desktops, Distros and Reviews

Thursday morning we published a video interview with Jeff Hoogland, the founder and lead developer of Bodhi Linux. What better time, we figured, to take a look at the distro’s latest and greatest, which was just released last weekend.

Bodhi Linux was the first distro I ever loved.

Actually, I suppose I loved Mandrake first, which I installed back in ’02 and used, like. forever. But at that time it wasn’t the distro I loved so much as GNU/Linux. I had no experience with other distros, even though I knew about them, so Mandrake represented, by proxy, all of Linux. Such is the way it goes with new Linux users.

Around 2008, when Mandrake/Mandriva’s future became uncertain, I moved on to distro hop for a while, not finding anything that really tripped my trigger. However, PCLOS came close, not surprisingly given its Mandrake roots, and became the distro I used for a number of years. Then an install failure, followed by an inability to login or open an account on the distro’s forum, prompted me to move on.

Which led me to Bodhi, a resource sipping Ubuntu based distro using the Enlightenment desktop version 17, or E17, which at the time was the most elegant and configurable of the lightweight desktops available.

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

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingBodhi Linux 3.2.1 With Moksha: Another Path to Enlightenment
Android: The Glass Teat of the 21st CenturyAndroid logo

Android: The Glass Teat of the 21st Century

By Christine Hall on May 18, 2016 |

Internet, Mobile and Operating Systems

Have you been trying to put your finger on exactly what it is you don’t like about Android and iOS? Maybe this will help.

I’ve finally defined what it is I don’t like about Android — or about any mobile device for that matter. I’ve grappled with this issue for several years, boiling my dislike of Google’s operating system down to “it’s always trying to sell something.” But that wasn’t quite it, and I knew it. The selling thing is a symptom, not the disease, so to speak.

Then, one day last week I finally had my aha! moment and realized precisely what it is I don’t like about mobile devices. I was reading a pretty good article by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, his take on the death of computing as many of us know it, when I came across a line that was basically meant as an aside, and suddenly I understood why I don’t like Android or iOS and never will.

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

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingAndroid: The Glass Teat of the 21st Century
OSCON for the Rest of Us Starts TodayOSCON logo

OSCON for the Rest of Us Starts Today

By Christine Hall on May 18, 2016 |

Community and Media

With the two day training classes and tutorials out of the way, OSCON gets cranked up today for the rest of us — in its new Austin, Texas home.

Things get cranked-up for real in Austin, Texas today at OSCON. Although the conference started on Monday, the first two days were reserved for special two day training classes and tutorials. Today the big gate opens wide on the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey of open source conferences. For the first time ever, the event is taking place deep in the heart of Texas, as OSCON has said goodbye to Portland, Oregon, at least temporarily, to say hello to the land of Tex-Mex vittles.

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

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingOSCON for the Rest of Us Starts Today
PayPal’s Failure an Opportunity for FOSS Money Apps?KMyMoney

PayPal’s Failure an Opportunity for FOSS Money Apps?

By Christine Hall on May 16, 2016 |

Business, Operating Systems, Reviews and Software

What started off as a quest to evaluate FOSS money management apps ended up revealing an issue with PayPal that plagues even highly funded proprietary money management programs running on that other operating system.

This is both a review and a complaint, which often seems to go hand in hand in the tech world.

I’ve been looking for a financial management app recently. Since I closed a bricks and mortar store back in 2012 — after eight years it became yet another victim of the 2007 recession — I’ve been letting my business and personal bank accounts, along with my PayPal account, sort themselves out separately. Business has improved a bit recently, and the time has come to once again put all of my accounting eggs in the same basket, so to speak.

KMyMoney
The “home” screen for the KDE application KMyMoney.

My plan was supposed to be easy, but you know what they say about well laid plans.

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

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingPayPal’s Failure an Opportunity for FOSS Money Apps?
Italian Military Goes LibreOffice, HBO Abuses DMCA & More…Jonathan Schwartz

Italian Military Goes LibreOffice, HBO Abuses DMCA & More…

By Christine Hall on May 13, 2016 |

Business, Copyright, Distros, News and Software

FOSS Week in Review

Also, eight new distro releases, CoreOS raises another $28 million, Mint drops codecs and the women of open source.

The most reported FOSS story this week was the beginning of the court fight instigated by Oracle against Google over Android’s Java implementation. Most interesting as the proceedings get going are the once familiar names that are now back in the news.

So far, we’ve heard from Jonathan Schwartz, pretty much a good guy who you might remember replaced Scott McNealy as CEO at Sun Microsystems in April 2006 and was on hand to pass the keys of the kingdom on to Oracle in 2010 after the company was brought down by the so-called Great Recession.

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

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingItalian Military Goes LibreOffice, HBO Abuses DMCA & More…
Opera ‘Power Saving Mode’ Extends Battery Life 40-50%Opera logo

Opera ‘Power Saving Mode’ Extends Battery Life 40-50%

By Christine Hall on May 12, 2016 |

Browsers

Numbers supplied by Opera show that the browser’s new Power Saving Mode, currently found only in developer builds, can considerably extend laptop battery life.

The folks behind the free but proprietary Opera browser announced today that the latest developer build includes Power Saving Mode, a new feature that the company claims can extend battery life by up to 50 percent. If true, this could be a serious game changer. Free and open source software advocates should hope that the developers at Mozilla are paying attention.

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

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingOpera ‘Power Saving Mode’ Extends Battery Life 40-50%
Surprise! Microsoft Ending Free Upgrades to Windows 10Microsoft Windows 10

Surprise! Microsoft Ending Free Upgrades to Windows 10

By Christine Hall on May 9, 2016 |

Business, News and Operating Systems

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

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingSurprise! Microsoft Ending Free Upgrades to Windows 10
Toronto Getting a Free Meshnet, Six New Distro Releases & More…Toronto

Toronto Getting a Free Meshnet, Six New Distro Releases & More…

By Christine Hall on May 6, 2016 |

Community, Distros, News and Software

FOSS Week in Review

Also: We hear more from DuckDuckGo about its open source donations and welcome Robin “Roblimo” Miller to the FOSS Force team.

While the big news in FOSS media this week was the Ubuntu Online Summit, I wasn’t there. Too far to travel. However, the big news seems to be that Mir and Unity 8 won’t be the defaults when Canonical ships Ubuntu 16.10 on October 20, although both “will be available as an ‘alternative session,’” according to OMG! Ubuntu! Ho-hum. Now on to some real FOSS news…

Toronto
Thanks to two developers, Toronto’s getting a free encrypted Internet meshnet.
By chensiyuan (chensiyuan) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
The most interesting story this week, to me at least, was a report by Motherboard on efforts underway to bring a free encrypted mesh network to Toronto. A mesh network relies on a series of wireless nodes which only need to be connected to the Internet at a single point. The plan is the brainchild of two local developers, Mark Iantorno and Benedict Lau, who plan to deploy Raspberry Pis as nodes. Meshnets already exist in Barcelona, Berlin, and New York City.

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

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingToronto Getting a Free Meshnet, Six New Distro Releases & More…