FOSS Week in Review
Oops.
FreeNAS Logo Contest: Okay, artists, get those colored pencils sharpened, those brushes cleaned and ready, because you have an assignment — that logo isn’t going to design itself.
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
Larry the BSD Guy
First things first: Remember when I said I didn’t have access to Michael Larabel’s fine set of Phoronix tools to do diagnostic hardware comparisons? Well, while looking around for something else in BSD’s very cool AppCafe, I found them — Phoronix tools available for BSD users. So while I go sit in the corner with a pointy hat, I will apologize for that error.
FOSS Week in Review
I honestly wish this news was better: Please allow a moment of silence for what seems to be the passing of Firefox OS. As a ZTE Open owner and a one-time regular user of that phone (until I needed something more dependable), this hits a sentimental note with me, since I was truly hoping that Mozilla would get the OS for the phone up to speed so it wouldn’t — oh, just to give a personal example — abandon users while performing important, job-dependent communications, for example.
And now, for the wrap:
Dell Fixing UEFI for Linux? Linux users may be able to update their UEFI firmware on devices, if Dell has their way. The computer manufacturing giant is looking at making things easier for Linux users, and Richard Hughes writes on his GNOME blog that this capability might be available as early as Fedora 24. “With Dell on board, I’m hoping it will give some of the other vendors enough confidence in the LVFS to talk about distributing their own firmware in public,” Hughes writes, and we have our fingers crossed here.
Larry the BSD Guy
Parsing the developments from the BSD side of things this week for consumption by the general public is a little trickier than it is across the street on the Linux side, however with a little juggling (and an important note from iXsystems to come tomorrow in the weekly FOSS roundup), we’ll take a look at the new images ready for your testing and feedback. Also, I’ll answer some questions which arose in last week’s comments.
Before I do that, though, it bears noting that Susan Linton over at Ostatic.com has picked up the BSD ball and run with it in a recent item on that site. Of special note is this morsel: “PC-BSD is the Linux Mint of free BSDs, an easy-to-use desktop system.” Why it wasn’t referred to as the “vowel-laden-and-overbearing-Linux-distro of free BSD” is a mystery, but I’ll take Linux Mint any day. Also, extra points to Susan for putting the “f” in lower case in “free BSD” to emphasize “BSD which is free” as opposed to FreeBSD, which would have caused some confusion.
FOSS Week in Review
Larry the BSD Guy
My laptop cover always gets looks wherever I set up to work — usually at Firefly Coffee House in Santa Cruz, where once a five-year-old stared at my cover for literally three minutes. I timed him. But yesterday, I was at Aptos Coffee Roasting Company, not far from Cabrillo College, where I hunkered down while waiting for my daughter to finish her Japanese class (sorry, Firefly — but in my feeble defense, you are not open past six).
A father and son sat at a table nearby, laptops open and I assume they were working on things individually. At one point, the father got up and approached me.
FOSS Week in Review
The Thanksgiving holiday really put a damper on FOSS developments this week — but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to report. On the contrary. So without further adieu, and on the heels of Thanksgiving, help yourself to another slice of…
Pi Zero for $5: Our friends at Phoronix reported this week about the Pi Zero, the latest Raspberry Pi board, costing a grand total of $5 American.
Over the last several weeks, I have to confess to doing a little soul-searching in the wake of some developments in the Linux world, and I’ve come to a decision of sorts. It’s hard to say when the actual tipping point was, but you can probably mark it around the time Sarah Sharp closed the door on any further Linux kernel work, augmented by the accompanying “lack of understanding” by some who are significantly smarter than their responses would reflect.
Really, folks, I get it: Linus Torvalds is a great and historic man, one who changed the world for the better by developing a kernel that put a huge fast-forward on technology for all, on a far-more-level playing field than it could have been with the Linux kernel’s absence.
FOSS Week in Review
So before we start it should be noted that our friends on the Isle of Man have deemed today Ubuntu Community Appreciation Day, with the intention of thanking someone in the community for their contribution. So go ahead and thank someone, and remember where you heard it first.
Recently we’ve written on FOSS Force about the progress that Ken Starks’ front end for MaryTTS, temporarily named “SpeechLess,” has made in being released as beta software. When we last looked, Ken had assembled a three-man team to create a GUI for the speech program and, to quote him from his item, “it has come along nicely.”
Although the demo is web-based, the team has been able to construct the software so the entire thing is local, meaning little or no latency between hitting enter and having the text replicated to speech.