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Posts published by “Larry Cafiero”

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Fedora 21 Alpha Gets Off on the Right Foot

By Larry Cafiero on September 24, 2014 |

Desktops, Distros, Operating Systems and Reviews

Fedora 21 Alpha Gets Off on the Right Foot

I say this often – a little too often – and I’ve hammered home the point in various blogs, to say nothing of calling out people who “review” alpha or beta versions of distro releases: Reviewing an alpha or a beta version is akin to sticking your finger in a bowl of cake batter and writing about how a baked cake is going to turn out.

That said, this is not a review of the Fedora 21 Alpha, released yesterday, but rather a test drive of a version that is destined to be improved upon when it is released in December.

So now you can have your cake batter and eat it, too.

First, a moment of silence for the untimely demise of the Fedora Release Name, as Fedora 21 doesn’t have one. Fedora had the best process for release names, causing spirited debate and possibly fisticuffs along the way: $CURRENT_RELEASE_NAME is a ________ and so is $NEXT_RELEASE_NAME, with the blank being filled in with whatever the current name was. Fedora 20 Heisenbug was the last of the named Fedora releases.

Continue readingFedora 21 Alpha Gets Off on the Right Foot
Seigo Throws Flame, Office Suite Kumbaya & OS Face Off

Seigo Throws Flame, Office Suite Kumbaya & OS Face Off

By Larry Cafiero on September 19, 2014 |

Browsers, Community, Operating Systems and Software

FOSS Week in Review

Flamethrowers and a kumbaya that will probably never happen: Yep, that’s the kind of week it was this week in the land of free/open source software.

Wearing your fireproof underwear? KDE’s Aaron Seigo – never one to shy away from saying what he thinks – lit into community managers in a Google+ post on Monday, calling the community manager role in free/open source software projects “a fraud and a farce.”

Aaron Seigo KDE
Aaron Seigo, shown here in 2011, is never one to shy away from a good discussion or debate.
Credit: Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from 8038433@N06’s photostream
“Communities (real ones) have facilitators and leaders of various forms and stripes,” Seigo writes. “It’s OK if they get paid so they are able to spend the time and energy facilitating and leading, but they damn sure are not ‘managers of the community.’ They are accountable to the community, selected by the community, derive their influence from community consensus and can be replaced by the community at the community’s behest.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Continue readingSeigo Throws Flame, Office Suite Kumbaya & OS Face Off
FOSS Around the World: Latin America

FOSS Around the World: Latin America

By Larry Cafiero on September 17, 2014 |

Operating Systems and Software

Too often coverage of free/open source software news and commentary tends to focus on either developments and activities in North America or in Europe. While much of the news is made on these two continents, there’s a wider world out there where folks are doing some substantial things, and promoting FOSS in their own way in their own areas.

Periodically, we at FOSS Force will be looking at areas of the world which have been either overlooked or neglected in digital news coverage. Today we’ll start south of the U.S. border with Latin America — Mexico, along with Central and South America, for those of you keeping track on maps at home.

We start this with a quick overview of the region itself, and the canvas is a large one.

Jon 'maddog' Hall (Photo: campuspartybrasil, CC-BY-SA-2.0)
Jon ‘maddog’ Hall
photo: campuspartybrasil, CC-BY-SA-2.0
Jon ‘maddog’ Hall travels extensively as executive director of Linux International and is likely the most well known de facto ambassador for all things Linux and FOSS. A world traveler, he regularly speaks in South America where he says the use of FOSS is varied.

“Central and South America is a very big region,” Hall said. “The spread of FOSS is uneven, as you might expect. Likewise, FOSS is more than just GNU/Linux, so the use of FOSS is also uneven.”

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Continue readingFOSS Around the World: Latin America
Jeff Hoogland Leaves BodhiBodhi Jeff Hoogland

Jeff Hoogland Leaves Bodhi

By Larry Cafiero on September 12, 2014 |

Distros, News, Operating Systems and Software

Jeff Hoogland, the lead developer of Bodhi Linux, said in a blog post on Friday that “for a variety of reasons,” he is stepping down from the leadership of his “labor of love.”

Bodhi Linux, based on Ubuntu, is a lightweight distro leveraging the Enlightenment Desktop. A note on the Bodhi Linux web page says, “We regret to inform you Bodhi Linux is no longer being maintained,” and has a link to Hoogland’s blog page.

Bodhi Jeff Hoogland
Jeff Hoogland steps down from Bodhi Linux
“I have worked with dozens of different people over the course of the last few years. I have made friends and learned more than I could have ever imagined,” Hoogland said in his blog post.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Continue readingJeff Hoogland Leaves Bodhi
Internet Slowdown Shifts Into High Gearinternet slowdown

Internet Slowdown Shifts Into High Gear

By Larry Cafiero on September 12, 2014 |

Business, Internet and News

Internet users spoke loudly, firmly, and in no uncertain terms on Wednesday in sending a message of overwhelming support for net neutrality protections during the Internet Slowdown campaign.

Tech companies, websites, public interest organizations and more than a million users joined forces to bring the message of net neutrality forward by posting icons and links on their sites symbolically representing a slow-loading Internet, and by directing those clicking on the links to messages to Congress, the White House and the Federal Communications Commission.

“The numbers tell the story: People everywhere are using the Internet to save the Internet from phone and cable companies,” said Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future. “We’ve shown that the best way to fight these powerful special interests in Washington is through mass action by people from outside Washington. The FCC and Congress can no longer dismiss the overwhelming consensus of public support for real Net Neutrality protections.”

Wednesday’s Internet Slowdown action generated just over 300,000 calls and nearly 2.2 million emails to Congress by Thursday afternoon. Facebook shares of the spinning “loading” icon topped 1.1 million. In addition, 722,364 filed comments Wednesday at the Federal Communications Commission, bringing the total number of comments since March 1 to 7.7 million.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Continue readingInternet Slowdown Shifts Into High Gear
Benjamin Kerensa on Firefox OS & Internet FreedomMozilla's Benjamin Kerensa

Benjamin Kerensa on Firefox OS & Internet Freedom

By Larry Cafiero on September 5, 2014 |

Browsers, Internet and Mobile

According to the Mozilla Developer Network, Firefox OS is an open source mobile operating system based on Linux, open web standards and Mozilla’s Gecko technology.

But there’s more to it that that: Firefox OS is about reinventing what mobile platforms can be, about pushing the boundaries of what is possible with the Web on mobile and about enabling entirely new segments of users to come online with their smartphone at various levels of participation, from users to developers.

Mozilla's Benjamin Kerensa
Benjamin Kerensa, Mozilla’s Early Feedback Community Release Manager.
Earlier this week, I took some time to talk with Benjamin Kerensa, the Early Feedback Community Release Manager for Mozilla, to discuss Firefox OS and the community around it.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Continue readingBenjamin Kerensa on Firefox OS & Internet Freedom
Random Thoughts, Cheap Shots, Bon Mots…Ruth Suehle of Red Hat

Random Thoughts, Cheap Shots, Bon Mots…

By Larry Cafiero on September 3, 2014 |

Distros, Humor, Internet and Operating Systems

To say that things are going at breakneck speed in the FOSS world –- so much so that it’s hard to keep track of –- well, that would be a lie. However, there are a few things that popped up on the proverbial radar over the past week…

Ruth Suehle added to Ohio LinuxFest keynoter lineup: Yep, the Raspberry Pi queen and ruler of all she surveys in the realm of Red Hat’s Open Source and Standards group, Ruth has joined the list of keynoters for the October event in Columbus. Ruth participates in the Fedora Project and is co-author of “Raspberry Pi Hacks” (written with fellow Red Hatter Tom Callaway). She also leads discussions about open source principles at opensource.com, and serves as a senior editor at GeekMom.com.

Ruth Suehle of Red Hat
Red Hat’s Ruth Suehle to keynote at Ohio LinuxFest.
Chances are that if you’ve ever been to a major Linux/FOSS conference –- or a major sci-fi/anime con –- you’ve probably heard Ruth speak. She joins Jon “maddog” Hall and fellow FOSS Force correspondent Ken Starks as OLF keynoters. Ohio LinuxFest will be held at the Greater Columbus Convention Center on October 24-25.

Linus being Linus: No shrinking violet by anyone’s standards, Linus Torvalds addressed the wider Debian community on Sunday at Debconf in Portland, and his talk had people agreeing and disagreeing, sometimes simultaneously.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Continue readingRandom Thoughts, Cheap Shots, Bon Mots…
Tux Paint: Doing FOSS RightTux Paint screenshot

Tux Paint: Doing FOSS Right

By Larry Cafiero on August 27, 2014 |

News, Reviews and Software

One could argue that the measure of how good software is, or what kind of effect it has on the wider world, can be based on the hard statistics of use, punctuated by glowing reviews, which add up to ongoing popularity and ubiquity. But the true impact of how software transcends mere popularity to positively change the world can be measured solely in how it affects people’s lives.

The journalist in me could give you just the specifics of the new Tux Paint release: Tux Paint 0.9.22 was released this week, thanks to the efforts of 170 contributors worldwide. This new version comes with a wide range of additions, like 14 new tools, 40 new template pictures, nearly 200 new stamps, SVG and KidPix support, an enhanced text tool, and accessibility improvements.

Tux Paint version 0.9.22, released last week, contains many improvements.
Tux Paint version 0.9.22, released last week, contains many improvements.
Or I could go into the expansion of 32 new languages featured in the latest release, including more than a dozen Indian subcontinental languages, including Nepali and Sanskrit; six European languages, including Bosnian and Valencian; nine new African languages, including Zulu and Sudanese; and the Canadian Inuit language of Inuktitut. This is 32 new languages atop the updates to the 90 current Tux Paint languages.

Of course, Tux Paint 0.9.22 also is available for multiple operating systems, including the usual suspects of Linux, MacOS, and Windows.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Continue readingTux Paint: Doing FOSS Right
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