Press "Enter" to skip to content

Posts published in “Community”

Caleb Hawkins Talks Music & Open Source

By Phil Shapiro on June 13, 2017 |

Community

The Screening Room

Open source attracts some of the most wonderfully creative people. I learned this when video interviewing a longtime open source buddy of mine, Caleb Hawkins, a singer/songwriter in Indianapolis, Indiana. I met Caleb online via our shared interest in the Inkscape vector drawing program. Only after I met him did I learn of the neat ways he uses other open source programs, such as Audacity and Ardour. Meet Caleb in this video interview.

Continue readingCaleb Hawkins Talks Music & Open Source
Jono Bacon Asked Google Home ‘Who Founded Linux?’ You Won’t Believe What Happened Next!jono bacon google linux

Jono Bacon Asked Google Home ‘Who Founded Linux?’ You Won’t Believe What Happened Next!

By FOSS Force on May 20, 2017 |

Community, Reviews and Video

Excuse the hyperbole, but we’ve always wanted to use a click-baity sort of headline — just to see if they work. That being said, we’re not going to spoil the fun. To find the answer, you’re going to have to watch the video. Don’t worry, however — bad things rarely happen when Linux is involved.

Jono Bacon Google Home Linux

The Screening Room

We found this short eight minute video quite by accident while searching through the FOSS Force News Wire looking for something else. In it, we find the well known open source community manager, Jono Bacon, at home, apparently alone and in his kitchen, recording himself as he plays with his newly acquired Google Home device. This surprised us, as we didn’t know he actually had a home. It seemed to us he spends all of his time in his office, and we figured he lived there. We were also surprised to find him alone. A community manager, we figured, is absolutely always surrounded by his community.

Continue readingJono Bacon Asked Google Home ‘Who Founded Linux?’ You Won’t Believe What Happened Next!
Linus Torvalds Talks to Debian UsersLinux Torvalds Debian conference

Linus Torvalds Talks to Debian Users

By FOSS Force on May 12, 2017 |

Community, Interview, Operating Systems and Video

A little over two-and-a-half years ago, Linus Torvalds spent over an hour taking and answering questions from an audience of developers at DebConf14 in Portland, Oregon. Some of what he said is by now old news, but that’s interesting too, as it serves as a marker for where we’ve been.

Linux Torvalds Debian conference

The Screening Room

Usually when you see Linus Torvalds speaking at a conference, it’s in the form of an interview, with the interviewer more likely than not being his old friend Dirk Hohndel of VMware. Very famously, Torvalds “doesn’t do speeches.” However, back in August, 2014, he took another tack, which he sometimes does, and submitted himself to answering questions from the audience at the Debian developer conference, DebConf14, in Portland, Oregon.

Continue readingLinus Torvalds Talks to Debian Users
Red Hat’s Women in Open Source Award Winners, 2017Red Hat Summit Women in Open Source

Red Hat’s Women in Open Source Award Winners, 2017

By Phil Shapiro on May 9, 2017 |

Community, Interview, News and Video

Last week, Red Hat’s DeLisa Alexander presented the third annual Women in Open Source Award to Avni Khatri and Jigyasa Grover at Red Hat Summit 2017.

Red Hat Summit Women in Open Source

The Screening Room

Red Hat is a company that does many things right, including promoting women in tech. Learn about the two winners of this year’s Women in Open Source Award, announced at the Red Hat Summit conference in Boston last week.

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

Continue readingRed Hat’s Women in Open Source Award Winners, 2017
Sex, Love & Software: History of Free Software, Linux and Open Sourcefree software Linux open source

Sex, Love & Software: History of Free Software, Linux and Open Source

By FOSS Force on May 5, 2017 |

Community, Operating Systems, Software and Video

Take a trip through the history of free software, Linux and open source, starting from the early days in the 1980s through 2001, when this film was made.

free software Linux open source

The Screening Room

A few weeks back, when we featured Brian Lunduke’s interview with Richard Stallman, we lamented the fact that most users who come to GNU/Linux these days seem to have little knowledge of the history of free software, Linux and open source. This is not good, for without a community of supporters, free tech cannot survive.

Continue readingSex, Love & Software: History of Free Software, Linux and Open Source
Stuart Keroff Receives Distinguished Humanitarian Award for Asian PenguinsAsian Penguins

Stuart Keroff Receives Distinguished Humanitarian Award for Asian Penguins

By Phil Shapiro on May 2, 2017 |

Community, Operating Systems and Video

Asian Penguins is another illustration of giving the gift of Linux to help cross the digital divide.

Asian Penguins

The Screening Room

Stuart Keroff, a visionary middle school teacher in St. Paul, Minnesota, recently received a distinguished humanitarian award for his work in founding Asian Penguins computer club at the Community School of Excellence. This club refurbishes computers with Linux to be used both at the school itself and to deliver to the homes of students who don’t own a computer at home. View the video made by the Minnesota State University – Mankato Campus – to learn more about this award.

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

Continue readingStuart Keroff Receives Distinguished Humanitarian Award for Asian Penguins
Ostatic and Archphile Are DeadArchphile, OStatic

Ostatic and Archphile Are Dead

By Christine Hall on April 29, 2017 |

Community, Distros, Media and News

OStatic ceased publication without warning or explanation in February. Archphile yesterday announced on Twitter that its “officially dead.”

Ostatic, the once popular website for news and information about Linux and open source, has disappeared from the face of the earth. Also gone, Archphile, an Arch Linux-based distro targeting audio playback quality for ARM devices.

I’ve been meaning to write about the demise of Ostatic for a month or so now, but it’s not easy to put together an article when you have absolutely no facts. I first noticed the site was gone a month or so back, when an attempt to reach it turned up one of those “this site can’t be reached” error messages. With a little checking, I was able to verify that the site has indeed gone dark, with writers for the site evidently losing access to their content without notice. Other than that, I’ve been able to find out nothing.

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 readingOstatic and Archphile Are Dead
Libreboot Applies to Rejoin GNULibreboot logo

Libreboot Applies to Rejoin GNU

By Christine Hall on April 26, 2017 |

Community and News

Libreboot has now officially applied to rejoin GNU, which it left in September. According to Leah Rowe, the “initial responses from GNU’s leadership seems positive.”

Libreboot logo

Last week we reported that after reorganization, Libreboot was considering rejoining GNU and was seeking input from its community to determine the amount of support it had for such a move. From reading the comments posted both on our article on FOSS Force and on Libreboot’s website, it comes as no surprise that the project’s core members feel they have the necessary consesus to proceed.

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 readingLibreboot Applies to Rejoin GNU
Libreboot Wants Back Into GNULibreboot logo

Libreboot Wants Back Into GNU

By Christine Hall on April 22, 2017 |

Community, News and Software

The Libreboot saga isn’t over yet. Now the project wants back into GNU.

Libreboot logo

Early this morning, Libreboot’s lead developer Leah Rowe posted a notice to the project’s website and a much longer post to the project’s subreddit, indicating that she would like to submit (or resubmit, it’s not clear how that would work at this point) the project to “rejoin the GNU Project.”

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 readingLibreboot Wants Back Into GNU

Using SlideWiki for OpenCourseWare

By Phil Shapiro on April 18, 2017 |

Community, Tutorial and Video

Open source is about much more than free (as in beer and speech) software and hardware designs. It’s being harnessed to do things like bring free or affordable health care to undeveloped nations, and as the underpinning for free education.

The Screening Room

Collaborative teaching and learning can theoretically occur via a text wiki, but SlideWiki looks like it goes far beyond text wikis. This Google Hangout explains the rich feature set of SlideWiki, including machine translated versions of your digital presentations.

Phil Shapiro

For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.

Continue readingUsing SlideWiki for OpenCourseWare