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Posts published in “Distros”

Looking at the $15 PINE 64 Single Board

The Video Screening Room

These days you don’t have to spend much money to get impressive specs on a new computer, as long as you’re willing to do a little DIY work.

A German fellow with the YouTube username Rhymoore shows his PINE 64, the 64 bit single board computer that’s been taking preorders for $15 on Kickstarter, booting the Android based Remix OS on his 4K monitor. Glitches still exist, but those will likely get ironed out.

Five Linux Distros that Break the Mold

Do you want to try something completely different? Here are five Linux distros that are most likely different than anything you’ve taken for a spin.

One of the complaints we hear sometimes about the plethora of GNU/Linux distributions is that they’re all “cookie cutters.” One is just like the other, we’re told, so why have so many versions of the same thing? For starters, except for a couple of rare instances, no two Linux distros are exactly alike, not even when they start with the same base. The most obvious example here would be Ubuntu, which although based on Debian, offers the user an experience completely different from the parent distro. Likewise, Linux Mint is built with Ubuntu under the hood, but as many Mint users will attest, the distro is hardly just a rebranded *buntu.

Tiny Core Linux distro
Tiny Core Linux
Here’s a brief look at five distros that really break the mold. A few of them are the result of some out-of-the-box thinking. Others are designed for specific purposes. What they all have in common is that they’re not your daddy’s Linux distro.

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

Xubuntu Based Emmabuntüs 3, Version 1.03, Released

Emmabuntüs is a GNU/Linux distribution that’s definitely set apart from the crowd, as its developers are motivated less by a love for technology than by a connection with humanity.

The Emmabuntüs Community today announced the third maintenance release of Emmabuntüs 3, version 1.03, based on Xubuntu 14.04.4. Like its *buntu namesake, the distro ships with the Xfce desktop by default, but also includes LXDE as an option.

Emmabuntüs screenshotWhat sets Emmabuntüs apart from other GNU/Linux distributions is the fact that it’s a distro with a mission. The informal community responsible for the distribution initially came together sometime before 2012 with the purpose of creating a distribution to simplify the task of refurbishing used computers to be given to charity organizations, with the key recipient being Emmaus, a secular international organization founded in Paris in 1949 by Catholic priest and Capuchin friar Abbé Pierre to combat poverty and homelessness.

Ubuntu Coming to Windows 10

In its quest to become the Microsoft of the Linux world, Ubuntu and Microsoft are expected to announce today that Ubuntu will soon run on Windows 10.

Holy crap!

In Friday’s Week in Review I jokingly opined that I wouldn’t be surprised to see “Ubuntu for Windows” as a move by the folks at Canonical as part of their plans for world domination. Guess what? It’s really happening.

In an article published Tuesday, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes that “[a]ccording to sources at Canonical” a deal has been worked out between Ubuntu’s parent company and Microsoft that will lead to the GNU/Linux distro being able to run alongside Windows 10. According to Vaughan-Nichols, “This will not be in a virtual machine, but as an integrated part of Windows 10.”

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

Ethical Hackers Unethically Hacked, Keystroke IDs & More…

FOSS Week in Review

While Facebook and Google work to better identify you by your typing skills and Red Hat counts the bucks from its best ever year, Ubuntu finally makes it possible to launch from the bottom.

If you depend only on mainstream tech media’s coverage of FOSS, you might be excused for thinking that the biggest news of the week revolved either around Ubuntu’s new summer home in the world of BSD — which isn’t a Canonical project by the way — or Microsoft’s open sourcing of every scrap of code it can find that might benefit Microsoft if it were open sourced.

In my not-so-humble opinion, both of these stories were yawners. Of course somebody’s attempted to create a BSD *buntu. There are already Ubuntu flavors for every single desktop environment known to mankind, as well as a few DEs that are figments of Canonical’s imagination, so where else was there to go but to another operating system? What’s next? Given the way Ubuntu has been cozying up to Microsoft, I’m expecting Ubuntu for Windows.

As for Microsoft’s continuing open sourcing? There’s nothing new here, move on. When Redmond loves Linux and open source enough to quit suing open source projects over patents it claims it has — that will be news.

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

A Screencast Look at GalliumOS

The Screening Room

Our video editor takes a look at GalliumOS, a distro designed especially for use on Chromebooks.

When a group of talented people get together to create a Linux distribution optimized for use on Chromebooks, a suitable way of giving thanks is to install that operating system on a Chromebook and make a screencast showcasing the operating system at work. Back in December 2015, I did that with the outstanding GalliumOS distro.

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.

Dangerous TLDs, Ballmer’s Linux Love & More…

FOSS Week in Review

Two big open source conferences are coming up next week, while this week an automaker said it doesn’t have to pay attention to the GPL and the man credited with inventing email passed.

Although Microsoft mainly succeeded in its attempts to hijack the FOSS news scene this week by spreading open source love — better than spreading FUD, I guess — there was plenty of FOSS news happening away from the Redmond campus. Even Microsoft with all its billions, it seems, isn’t large enough to monopolize all of the news in the big, wide and wonderful world of FOSS.

Edward Snowden LibrePlanet 2016
Edward Snowden will be the opening keynote speaker, with Daniel Kahn Gillmor, at LibrePlanet 2016.

For starters, it’s conference season. Well, except for a lull in the dog days of summer, Linux and open source conferences are always in season, but there are a couple of big ones on the slate for next week.

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

India Nixes Software Patents, Linux Foundation Embraces Diversity & More…

FOSS Week in Review

India again shows sanity by doing away with “software only” patents, and the Linux Foundation continues to move towards diversity.

The old and the new both made big news on the FOSS front this week. Representing the old was what appears to be the ending of the SCO vs IBM case after something like 13 years, which means that Caldera/SCO now gets to go to its final resting place. For the new was the release of the Raspberry Pi 3, which comes wielding a 64-bit ARM processor with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

But that wasn’t the only news of interest to the FOSS world this week…

Barely a month after putting an end to a Facebook supported scheme, “Free Basics,” in favor of supporting Net Neutrality, India has declared software to be not patentable. According to the Software Freedom Law Centre in India, the patent office will now use a three part test to determine patentability:

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

A February Wrap for the Raspberry Pi

The Raspberry Pi Report

The Raspberry Pi managed to cram a lot of history into only 29 days this February, even without mentioning the introduction of the Pi 3 on Monday.

The month of February kept up with the trend of bigger and better things happening in the Raspberry Pi world. From new games to updates from the International Space Station, things keep moving on for the Raspbery Pi and the Raspberry Pi community. While quite a few things happened this past month, here’s a summation of the biggest stories.

Raspberry PiMore distros to choose from – February marked the arrivial of several new distros that Raspberry Pi users can now install. Tizen 3.0, Chromium 0.4 and Manjaro-ARM are available to download for the Raspberry Pi 2. The Manjaro-ARM project now allows Raspberry Pi users to enjoy Arch Linux without having to do an Arch install and is also broken down into four different editions. Media, Server, Basic and Minimal editions all cater to situations that most Raspberry Pi users fall into. Tizen users will be excited to see that Tizen 3.0 is now fully functional on the Raspberry Pi 2. This is a great move, since more users will be introduced to the Tizen platform who might not have had a chance to experience it before. Last, but not least is the release of Chromium 0.4. Chromium was already available, but with kernel improvements and more memory storage, version 0.4 is leaps and bounds ahead of Chromium 0.3

Isaac Carter

In addition to hosting a Raspberry Pi meetup in Washington D.C., Isaac Carter is a co-host on mintCast. He’s also a software engineer who enjoys working with Java, JavaScript, and GNU/Linux. When he’s not coding, you can find him reading on any number of subjects or on the golf course.