Posts published by “Larry Cafiero”

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

Linux Distros We’ll Never See

By Larry Cafiero on January 14, 2015 |

Distros, Humor and Operating Systems

Linux Distros We’ll Never See

A few days ago, I was cleaning my desk in the lab and happened upon a printout of a fake distro called Chuck Norris Linux — more commonly known as CHUX — which casually mentions that “…if Chuck Norris wrote Linux, you couldn’t boot it, it would boot you.”

It reminded me of the yes-it-really-happened Hannah Montana Linux, based on Kubuntu, which to my knowledge is still in existence, at least on Github. Following the logic that if these two can exist, even though one is fake and the other real, I started thinking about other distros based on other cultural icons which would never (thank God) see the light of day. Like…

Larry Cafiero

CES: Smart TVs on Linux; SCALE prep underway

By Larry Cafiero on January 9, 2015 |

Community, Distros, Hardware, News and Operating Systems

FOSS Week in Review

First things first: Thanks to Christine Hall for standing in for me last Friday for the weekly wrap-up. As some of you know, I was pretty much in the dark for the first five days of the year after a fire in my building (nowhere near me) early on New Year’s Day morning caused the power to be shut down.

As we start 2015, with the Consumer Electronic Show in full swing in Lost Wages (more on this in a bit), let’s take a look at some of the happenings in the FOSS realm.

SCALE 13x in the starting blocks: The team organizing the Southern California Linux Expo’s 13th edition, more commonly known as SCALE 13x, has begun to ramp up preparations for the show. This year, SCALE 13x adds a day to become a four-day event running from Thursday, February 19 through Sunday, February 22 at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport hotel. The speakers have been chosen and the SCALE Team is in the process of sending out acceptances and rejections — so if you’ve heard you’re in, congratulations. If you haven’t heard either way, you will soon.

Larry Cafiero

Firefox OS: It’s Not You, It’s Me

By Larry Cafiero on January 7, 2015 |

Hardware, Mobile and Operating Systems

I hate breakups. Even when they’re for the best, breakups have a tendency never to go well when executed — a difficult but apt word for it — and there’s always some heartbreak involved.

So it breaks my heart to tell everyone that Firefox OS and I must go our separate ways.

It’s not you, Firefox OS. It’s me. While I know you’ll go on to thrive and find digital happiness without me in the wider FOSS world, I am sorry I’m not going to be a part of your future.

For the last year, you and I have been pals joined at the hip — the hip pocket, at least — as the OS on my ZTE Open phone. You know I’m not very demanding; the ZTE with Firefox OS did what was expected of it when it comes to my very limited use of mobile devices. To me, using mobile means taking calls, making calls, and texting. That’s really it. We’ve discussed this before, and the limited-albeit-growing selection of software for Firefox OS phones and tablets is a testament to your predicted longevity and bright future.

Firefox OS, it’s just that I need a little more dependability. We’ll get to that in a minute.

Larry Cafiero

Despite Rumors, Xfce Alive & Kicking

By Larry Cafiero on December 31, 2014 |

Desktops, News and Software

Rumors: They exist, for better or worse, and there’s not much you can do about them. In addition, rumors are the starting blocks for the old Churchill adage that “a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

Three times this month, Xfce came up in conversation — online, of course, and in the realm of social media and in forum discussions — and the context in which each conversation came up had the desktop on the brink of closure, with one unwitting person saying that Xfce was dead.

Nothing could be further from the truth, and several in the discussions rose to Xfce’s defense on the absurdity.

Xfce lead developer Olivier Fourdan “won’t really comment on the rumors,” he said, “but as long as there are users and developers, the project is not dead.”

Larry Cafiero

Punching Out the Week on Boxing Day

By Larry Cafiero on December 26, 2014 |

Business, Distros, Internet and News

FOSS Week in Review

So much joy abounds on Christmas morning, unless of course you’re trying to set up your new XBox or your new PlayStation (See? You should have waited for the Steam box…). But you can’t blame the North Koreans for that — blame is being heaped upon your friends at the Lizard Squad which, according to an article in USA Today (Tomorrow, the World!), is taking credit for the takedown (not their first try at this — they have previously claimed credit for attacks earlier this year on the PlayStation Network, World of Warcraft, and League of Legends).

So the gaming may have to wait.

But now that it’s Boxing Day, let’s punch out the week with a couple of tidbits from the week that was, as 2014 is winding down and 2015 is in our sights.

Marriott Boycott? Manic geek Jim Lynch — his self-description, not mine — opines on his blog post on Christmas Day that we should maybe not stay at hotels like Marriott or others that attempt to force guests to pay for wireless connectivity by blocking networks other than that provided by the hotel. But wait, there’s more: Marriott is asking the Federal Communications Commission for the government’s blessing to do this.

Larry Cafiero

Welcome to the Pre-Post-PC Era

By Larry Cafiero on December 24, 2014 |

Hardware, Humor and Mobile

And the hits just keep on coming…

Today’s float on the parade of the PC-is-dead prognostications comes from The Register, which says, “At the very moment that Linux desktops seem to be reaching new levels of sophistication, polish and ‘just works’ ease-of-use, the entire future of the desktop computer (by which I also mean laptop) feels in doubt.”

The only thing that’s in doubt is whether that sentence is anywhere near remotely accurate. But let’s put that aside for a moment and assume we can see the future of how we deal with our digital lives.

Sure, you can see a Post-PC future from here all right. Of course, you’re going to need the Hubble to do so.

Naturally, there are things that you can do with your Post-PC apparatus, like surf the web, watch videos and all those important digital activities. But bear in mind that you’re not going to be using Blender on your smartphone.

Larry Cafiero

Linux & FOSS Predictions for 2015

By Larry Cafiero on December 19, 2014 |

Distros, Humor, Operating Systems and Software

You can tell it’s the holiday season — a lot of people are focusing more on the guy with the red suit who looks quite a bit like Jon ‘maddog’ Hall than they are on digital matters. This also is the time of year, naturally, where pundits make their predictions for the following year.

However, I should admit something here. Truth in advertising: I don’t have a good record in predicting the future. I have a hard enough time predicting what to wear the following day — oh, right: clothes. But Linux and FOSS being, well, Linux and FOSS, these projections are as good as any prediction now being foisted on the FOSS public by the army of digital pundits out there.

So what’s going to happen in 2015?

A lot. Like…

Larry Cafiero

Get Out the Vote for LinuxQuestions.org

By Larry Cafiero on December 17, 2014 |

Community, Distros and Mobile

Ken Starks — I love him like a brother, but I hate following him every Wednesday here at FOSS Force after his Tuesday column runs, because every time — week in and week out — his column is always a good one.

He knows what I’m talking about, too, because he got to experience the same kind of thing at Ohio Linux Fest when his keynote came after Jon ‘maddog’ Hall. While I wouldn’t characterize Ken’s situation there the same way he did in his keynote — like Tiny Tim following Aerosmith — I certainly can relate. If you haven’t given his latest post a read, go ahead, I’ll wait.

Be that as it may, it’s time to vote. Every year around this time, LinuxQuestions.org trots out its annual LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards. The 2014 version, which ends in February, certainly does not disappoint.

One great thing about this poll — probably the best thing about this poll — is that each of the categories has an extremely wide range of candidates, and there are programs in many of the categories that I’ve never heard of. Hearing about them for the first time, I get to try them out. So not only is it fun — yeah, I think voting is fun (so shoot me) — it’s also educational.

Here’s how we’ll do this: I’m not going to post every category, but I’ll post some of them and tell you my choice — vote with me or not, it’s entirely up to you — and then I’ll mention some of the programs new to me that I plan to try out. Conversely, you can post your own choices in the comments below.

Larry Cafiero

Fedora 21 Raves & DRM Happiness

Fedora 21 Raves & DRM Happiness

By Larry Cafiero on December 12, 2014 |

FOSS Week in Review

It’s raining, finally, in California. After a couple of years of painfully dry weather, we’re getting the kind of rain that causes animals to march two-by-two into a large wooden boat. One might think this would be cause for a damp and sullen report to end the week, but actually that’s not the case, because…

The reviews are in: The tech media has given multiple thumbs-up to the new release of Fedora 21, released earlier this week to a server-jammed public (if you tried and couldn’t get it earlier, I think the rush is over now). For example, a couple of Stevens — Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols of ZDNet and Steven Rosenberg of the Los Angeles Daily News’ Click blog — put in their proverbial two cents each in generally positive articles.

Larry Cafiero

Linux Distros: What’s in a Name?

By Larry Cafiero on December 10, 2014 |

Community, Distros and Operating Systems

Yesterday, the Fedora Project released Fedora 21, and with it the tech media got on its proverbial horse and started reports and reviews of the latest release. While it’s a good release and we won’t be reviewing it here — I already gave it a shakedown during the alpha and found it to be fantastic and completely worth the wait — there’s one thing that’s missing from Fedora 21 that I find rather disheartening.

Namely, Fedora 21 is missing a release name.

It’s quirky, perhaps, but release names are a favorite item of mine in the FOSS realm. While completely useless in the scope of the software itself, it does actually reflect a degree of creativity within the respective communities. Depending on the how it’s done, the decision process ranges from a spirited event to a tried-and-true yawner.

Until Fedora 21, the Fedora Project used to have a process for release names in which knock-down drag-out brawls would break out, rhetorically speaking, in the debate and community-wide voting for the name. Arguably, Fedora 17 “Beefy Miracle” wobbled the process from the rails, and while the rest of the names were noble — my favorite was Fedora 19 “Schrodinger’s Cat” — the formula was fairly simple: Names had to meet a “is-a” test. For example, “Schnozz is a ____, and so is Keister.” Taking the example of naming Fedora 14 “Laughlin,” the Fedora Project took the name of Fedora 13 “Goddard” and, though the miracle of the “is-a” test, had a list of candidates, of which Laughlin won. So the formula is as follows: “Robert H. Goddard was a professor of physics, and so was Robert Laughlin.” To see this in action, you can look at the Fedora Release Name History.

Larry Cafiero

Linux Minty Fresh, Zuul Logo & Weighing In on SCALE

By Larry Cafiero on December 5, 2014 |

News

FOSS Week in Review

With colleagues like mine, you can rest assured everything is covered. From FOSS Force columnist Ken Starks’ friendship column this week to Christine Hall’s commentary on the contiuous battles free and open source software developers and advocates face, the week has been a very thoughtful and reflective one in the FOSS Force neighborhood.

Nevertheless, here are a couple of more FOSS morsels to wrap up the week:

There is no Dana… Over at OpenStack, a discussion initiated by Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph goes into the possibility of a logo for Zuul, OpenStack’s pipeline-oriented project gating and automation system. Because she gets asked during presentations, “What is the logo for Zuul?” Elizabeth has picked up the baton and gone to bat, to woefully mix sports metaphors, on behalf of the issue.

openstack logo “[A]n open source contributor (and) artist friend” of Joseph’s has already put their artistic talent to work and come up with a logo, which was outlined in Joseph’s missive, and this likeable dragon would make an excellent choice.

Larry Cafiero

Spacewalk 2025

FOSDEM 2025

SCALE 22x (Southern California Linux Expo)

Early Adopter Tech Summit

All Things Open AI

Posts published by “Larry Cafiero”

Linux Distros We’ll Never See

CES: Smart TVs on Linux; SCALE prep underway

FOSS Week in Review

Firefox OS: It’s Not You, It’s Me

Despite Rumors, Xfce Alive & Kicking

Punching Out the Week on Boxing Day

FOSS Week in Review

Welcome to the Pre-Post-PC Era

Linux & FOSS Predictions for 2015

Get Out the Vote for LinuxQuestions.org

Fedora 21 Raves & DRM Happiness

FOSS Week in Review

Linux Distros: What’s in a Name?

Linux Minty Fresh, Zuul Logo & Weighing In on SCALE

FOSS Week in Review