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

MeeGo & SUSE: What’s Up With That?

By Christine Hall on October 13, 2011 |

Business, Distros and Mobile

I’m wondering why Attachmate is interested in MeeGo.

Okay, I might be getting ahead of myself here. Actually, I don’t know that Attachmate is interested in MeeGo. All I know for sure is that yesterday Jos Poortvliet, the openSUSE community manager, wrote an article for LinuxUser in which he offered openSUSE as a new home for MeeGo:

Continue readingMeeGo & SUSE: What’s Up With That?

RMS – Too Crude to Lose

By Christine Hall on October 10, 2011 |

Business, Media and Politics

Richard Stallman at the University of Pittsburgh 2010 (courtesy Wikipedia)
When it comes to software freedom, Richard Stallman is a bomb throwing anarchist. That’s a good thing. The FOSS community needs a few bomb throwers in its arsenal.

His job is to keep the bad guys, those who constantly attempt to usurp our principles for their own gain, at bay. More importantly, his job is to expose them, which helps keep us FOSSers from believing the spinmasters when they use Orwellian magic to convince us that “closed is open.”

We are susceptible to such spin.

We love our Linux, we love our GPL, we love our “free and open” so much that we often jump on the bandwagon to proclaim projects “free and open” just because they contain some open source code. Look how pleased many of us are that Android runs atop the Linux kernel. That means it’s got to be FOSS, doesn’t it?

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 readingRMS – Too Crude to Lose

The Death of Zune, the Resurrection of WebOS & Kernel.org Returns

By Christine Hall on October 7, 2011 |

Browsers, Business, Distros, Internet, Mobile, News and Security

Friday FOSS Week in Review

It was already a slow week when the news came on Wednesday of Steve Jobs’ demise. Since then, most tech sites have been reporting on not much else. As always, however, there were a few things to note…

Privacy Issues with Kindle Fire’s Silk Browser

Almost as soon as Amazon unveiled their new Kindle Fire tablet last Wednesday, Naked Security raised some privacy concerns about the device’s browser, called Silk. It seems the browser, in order to offer a quicker user experience, does most of it’s heavy lifting in the cloud:

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 readingThe Death of Zune, the Resurrection of WebOS & Kernel.org Returns

Secure Boot: What’s Microsoft’s Agenda?

By Christine Hall on October 3, 2011 |

Hardware and Security

Secure boot is the sort of security solution Microsoft loves. Back in the days when Windows was even less secure than it is now, one of their security solutions was to have software vetted and signed. Although this might have helped enterprise customers a bit, it did little to make the home user more secure, as any software would still install normally after clicking through an “are you sure” warning. If this scheme did anything, it hurt small vendors who couldn’t afford to go through the process of having their software approved by Redmond.

Secure boot is the same sort of scheme, except this time there’s no “are you sure” screen to click through. If a user is trying to install an operating system (or even run one from a live CD) on a machine with secure boot enabled, that operating system will have to have unlock keys to enable hardware devices. These keys are provided to the creator of the operating system at the whim of the hardware makers.

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 readingSecure Boot: What’s Microsoft’s Agenda?

Can Penguins Dance on a Dell, Will Reiser File Again, Are Samsung and Intel Going to the Prom?

By Christine Hall on September 30, 2011 |

Business, Distros, Hardware, Mobile, News, Patents, Security and Software

Friday FOSS Week in Review

The biggest news this week has centered around fears that Linux may become uninstallable on Wintel machines from the big OEM’s. But there’s been more. Some fun stuff. Some silly stuff. Some stuff that might eventually develop into something important…

Secure Boot Has Penguinistas Buzzing

Last week on FWIR I mentioned there was a storm beginning to brew around Windows 8 and secure boot, which could potentially keep Linux from being installed on some computers once they’re implemented. Well, it’s not just brewing anymore, it’s a full fledged storm with hurricane force winds.

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 readingCan Penguins Dance on a Dell, Will Reiser File Again, Are Samsung and Intel Going to the Prom?

Will Oracle Turn MySQL Into ‘Crippleware?’

By Christine Hall on September 27, 2011 |

Business, Internet, News and Software

Since Oracle obtained MySQL in the Sun takeover, many FOSS folks have been wary of Oracle’s plans for the open source database, a wariness that wasn’t eased by Oracle’s handling of the OpenOffice/LibreOffice split. When a couple of weeks ago we learned that Oracle has added three commercial extensions to MySQL, many figured that was the beginning of the end of MySQL as a free and open project.

According to The Register, the commercial extensions offer “…thread pool scalability, a pluggable API for PAM and Windows authentication, and additions to Oracle VM and Windows Server failover clustering support within MySQL Enterprise.”

From the moment this story was published, Oracle’s been working to spin this as “good for FOSS.” The Register article mentioned above quotes Giuseppe Maxia, former MySQL community team member, who predicts the negative response from the FOSS community, which he then pooh-poohed:

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 readingWill Oracle Turn MySQL Into ‘Crippleware?’

HP Board Misses One Shot Opportunity

By Christine Hall on September 26, 2011 |

Business and News

HP’s Board of Directors could’ve solved a lot of their problems with the single action of replacing failed CEO Léo Apotheker with a competent executive capable of managing a diversified (some would say bloated) giant like HP. The CEO job would not be a position to fill with haste, which the board seems to have done.

HP Welcome Sign outside corporate headquarters.Sure, Meg Whitman is something of a minor CEO rock star insofar as her name has a brand recognition. That brand is connected to her performance leading eBay to über success and to a failed bid to become California’s governor. As has been pointed-out countless times since Thursday, when when she was hired as HP’s latest CEO, however, eBay is not a technology company but is an auction house that happens to reside in cyberspace. As for her venture into West Coast politics – does blowing $144 million of her own money (and an additional $34 million of other people’s money) in a failed election bid instill confidence in her ability to make sound decisions?

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 readingHP Board Misses One Shot Opportunity

Phone 7 FUD, Windows 8 Lockout, Samsung Takes Off Gloves

By Christine Hall on September 23, 2011 |

Browsers, Business, Mobile, News and Patents

Friday FOSS Week in Review

This week’s biggest story in FOSS was the quick changing of the guard over at HP. Although HP isn’t really a FOSS company, they do of course sell Linux servers and were recently considered to be on the verge of becoming a major FOSS player with their webOS. There’s no need to cover any of that here, however, as I posted my viewpoints on this fiasco last night.

DigiNotar Put out of Business by Hackers

You know, when you’re a security firm it pays to have your security in place. I mean, it doesn’t look even a little good when you’re hacked, especially when your business is telling other people how not to get hacked. This is a truth that became much more self evident early this week when Dutch security firm DigiNotar announced they were going into voluntary bankrupcy and putting themselves out of business as the end result of a hacking incident that began last July. It seems that attackers gained access to the firm’s internal systems and issued a slew of fake certificates that allowed the hacker/crackers to impersonate web firms like Google, Facebook, Twitter and Skype. Evidently, the certificates were used to gain access to over 30,000 Google email accounts.

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 readingPhone 7 FUD, Windows 8 Lockout, Samsung Takes Off Gloves

No Brass Ring on HP’s CEO Carousel

By Christine Hall on September 22, 2011 |

Business, Hardware and Mobile

Since September 18th I’ve been saying that Hewlett-Packard needed to get rid of Léo Apotheker sooner rather than later. Well, the deed’s been done and Apotheker’s been shown the door. The trouble is, HP’s board doesn’t seem to have learned their lesson. They’re replacing him with former eBay CEO and would be California governor Meg Whitman, who might even be less qualified than Apotheker to run the ailing tech giant. The announcement of the switch came early this evening, pretty much timed to coincide with the closing of the stock market.

Apotheker’s Troubled Tenure

Léo Apotheker
It wasn’t obvious that Léo Apotheker was a good choice to replace Mark Hurd in the catbird seat at HP last September when it happened, and it has never been obvious since. In fact, it’s never even been obvious that Mr. Hurd’s resignation should’ve been forced to begin with, as the cloud over his head, a charge of sexual harassment, was evidently short on substance. HP’s board, evidently after blood, ignored the fact the he’d put the company on a sound financial footing and had charted a reasonable course for the company to follow, a course that left room for expansion into other areas.

None of this mattered, according to James B.Steward writing in The New York Times, for the bigwigs at HP thought the company to big to fail:

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 readingNo Brass Ring on HP’s CEO Carousel

Happy Belated Birthday, Mageia

By Christine Hall on September 21, 2011 |

Distros

I absolutely have to stop for a moment to wish a big happy birthday to the folks at Mageia.

A year ago, when I wrote about a group of Mandriva former employees and contributors who’d decided to create a fork called Mageia, I had no idea whatsoever whether the project would survive to actually release a product. Well, a year has come and gone and Mageia not only released Mageia 1 in June, it’s now a distro with a year’s worth of organization under it’s belt. That may not sound like a lot, but to my mind it’s quite an accomplishment.

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 readingHappy Belated Birthday, Mageia
Latest Articles