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Posts published in “Distros”

More Linux Site Hacks, ReactOS Ready to Go, Obama Signs ‘America Invents Act’

By Christine Hall on September 16, 2011 |

Business, Distros, Internet, Media, Mobile, News, Patents and Politics

Friday FOSS Week in Review

In many ways, FOSS news this week is like a soap opera with lots of stories being continuations from last week’s items. However, there is some new stuff to report. If you’re like me, all FOSS news is interesting….

Bartz Resigns from Yahoo Board

After being fired by telephone last Tuesday, Yahoo’s former CEO Carol Bartz resigned from the Internet company’s board on Friday. According to a Reuters report posted on Yahoo, the resignation was made public on Sunday and first reported by The Wall Street Journal:

Continue readingMore Linux Site Hacks, ReactOS Ready to Go, Obama Signs ‘America Invents Act’

Intel Still MeeGos, Apple Loses Again, Yahoo Presents ‘The Charlie Sheen Show’

By Christine Hall on September 9, 2011 |

Business, Distros, Hardware, Mobile, News and Patents

Friday FOSS Week in Review

What a wacky week for tech news this has been! I couldn’t make much of this stuff up if I tried – and if I did, you wouldn’t believe it. That’s one of the nice things about the Internet, I can provide you with links so you can see for yourself that these stories really happened…

Apple Loses Another iPhone Prototype in Bar

Less than a year and a half after an Apple employee lost a top secret prototype of an iPhone 4 in a bar, it’s happened again. This time the prototype of an iPhone 5 was lost at Cava 22, a bar located in San Francisco’s mission district. Although every tech site on the planet is covering this story, I think it’s only fitting to turn to Gizmodo for a quote, given their connection with the first lost prototype:

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 readingIntel Still MeeGos, Apple Loses Again, Yahoo Presents ‘The Charlie Sheen Show’

Will Google Keep Motorola?

By Christine Hall on September 7, 2011 |

Business, Distros, Hardware, Mobile and News

There’s been very little in the way of real news about Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobility since the deal was announced on August 15th. We know this acquisition was made mainly because Google desperately needs to beef up its mobile patent portfolio, and that Motorola has several boatloads of such patents. This means if this sale can pass antitrust muster with the DOJ, Google will be in a much better position to wheel and deal with the likes of Apple, maybe even Oracle, when it comes to Android and alleged patent infringements.

Everybody gets that – no argument. However, many tech writers have been wondering out loud how Android vendors like HTC and Samsung feel about Google competing with them in the consumer marketplace. Aren’t they worried that Google will give preference to Motorola at the expense of the other handset makers?

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 readingWill Google Keep Motorola?

Top 10 Reasons Why Red Hat is Moving to Downtown Raleigh

By FOSS Force on September 1, 2011 |

Business, Distros, Humor and News

It’s Thursday, and you know what that means? Even if we can’t get Christine to wake-up long enough to write one of her articles, you can always depend on us to be here like clockwork for the Top 10 List.

A while back, Red Hat announced they might be leaving the big city of Raleigh to find a new location to continue tweaking their code. A little later, they announced they’d decided to remain in the North Carolina capital city after all – but they’d be looking for new digs since they were getting somewhat crowded at their old location. This week they announced they’d found their new home, a big ol’ office tower in Raleigh’s downtown.

Obviously, much thought went into the decisions to stay in Raleigh and in deciding where in the city to relocate. Since we’re located just up the road from them, in Winston-Salem, we were able to infiltrate their organization with one of our agents, code name Ms. Dos, who was able to discover the Top 10 reasons why Red Hat is moving to downtown Raleigh…

  1. “Fedoras and panama suits are always in style!”
  2. “Moonshine – America’s open source likker.”
  3. “That wacky way the city ignores all rules of spelling.”
  4. “How ’bout them Canes, eh?”
  5. North Carolina – if it’s good enough for FOSS Force, it’s good enough for us!”
Continue readingTop 10 Reasons Why Red Hat is Moving to Downtown Raleigh

HP Says Farewell to WebOS, Tablets & PCs

By Christine Hall on August 18, 2011 |

Business, Distros, Mobile and News

In a somewhat surprising move, HP has announced they are dropping all devices running WebOS. The announcement came in a terse two sentences included in a press release issued today on Business Wire:

“In addition, HP reported that it plans to announce that it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.”

This announcement caught many off guard. The PR folks at HP have been busy extolling the virtues of the mobile operating system, which became their property when they acquired Palm last year for about $1.2 billion. In the April, 2010 press release that announced the Palm acquisition, a HP executive vice president saw a great future for HP and WebOS:

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 readingHP Says Farewell to WebOS, Tablets & PCs

Top 10 Things to Call a Linux Distro from Microsoft

By FOSS Force on August 18, 2011 |

Distros and Humor

Gosh, how the time flies when you’re having fun! Here it is, Thursday again, time for another Top Ten list. By now, we fully expected that we’d have heard from David Letterman or his lawyers about this, but we’re beginning to suspect he doesn’t even know we’re here. Just in case, however, we’re keeping all of our legal answers ready.

This week, we wondering what we’d call a Linux distro from Microsoft…

  1. Seattle’s Best.
  2. Breakable Linux.
  3. The best thing Microsoft ever came up with.
  4. Open Windows.
  5. Something that will never happen.
Continue readingTop 10 Things to Call a Linux Distro from Microsoft

Congress Considers Stepping on Rights, Windows Mobile Share Nil & Whose DNA Is It Anyway?

By Christine Hall on August 5, 2011 |

Browsers, Business, Distros, Internet, Mobile, News, Patents, Politics, Security and Software

Friday FOSS Week in Review

With the Black Hat Conference going on in Las Vegas, and with Congress messing around where they shouldn’t, this has been a busy week in the FOSS world. Some of the news is good; some of the news is not so good. I’ll start with a rant…

Proposed Data Retention Bill Would Chill Free Speech

The House will soon be considering a bill that will require ISP’s to maintain logs of their customers Internet use for a 12 month period. As I understand it, the law would include a customer’s browsing history, credit card numbers, etc. The stated purpose of the proposed law is to catch pedophiles visiting child porn sites, but everybody who knows anything about the Internet agrees it won’t be very effective at doing that. What it will do, if enacted, is bring Orwell’s “Big Brother” vision a little closer to home and make your network connected devices look even more like telescreens than they do now.

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 readingCongress Considers Stepping on Rights, Windows Mobile Share Nil & Whose DNA Is It Anyway?

Finnix Finishes First, MS Wants to Own Cloud, Google Beefs Portfolio & More…

By Christine Hall on July 29, 2011 |

Business, Distros, Hardware, Mobile, News and Patents

Friday FOSS Week in Review

Cool beans, it’s Friday! Time to get out of the office and enjoy! Trouble is, here at FOSS Force the temps and humidity are so high there won’t be anything to do but stay inside and hug the air conditioning. Anyway, this week’s Friday review is mostly good news for a change, and that’s good news, no?

And the Winner Is …Finnix!

On Monday, Linus Torvalds announced the official release of the new 3.0 Linux kernel and on Tuesday Softpedia announced the first distro to use the new kernel as the default install:

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 readingFinnix Finishes First, MS Wants to Own Cloud, Google Beefs Portfolio & More…

Grocklaw: Schwartz Publicly Praised Android as Java Platform

By Christine Hall on July 26, 2011 |

Business, Distros, Mobile, News, Patents and Software

Yesterday’s column on Android’s Patent Wars was written on Friday and scheduled for publication on Monday. Over the weekend, the folks at Groklaw dug-up an old page from the Wayback Machine that would seem to bode well for Google in their patent fight with Oracle concerning Android and Java.

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 readingGrocklaw: Schwartz Publicly Praised Android as Java Platform

Android’s Patent Wars – A Checklist

By Christine Hall on July 25, 2011 |

Business, Distros, Mobile, News and Patents

It’s not looking good for Android. Congress could fix this in a heartbeat by doing away with software patents, the only solution that makes sense, but they’re otherwise engaged right now and not likely to be much help. In the meantime, Android is involved in so many patent disputes it’s hard to keep count. Oracle’s suing Google, Apple’s suing HTC, and Microsoft is suing, or threatening to sue, anyone who makes a handset with the Android brand. Even with Groklaw doing their best to supply legal ammunition for Android’s defenders, it’s not looking like Android is going to get out of this unscathed, which will only cost consumers and enrich the trolls

Here’s a quick rundown on Android’s patent ills, just to help you sort out the players. The game is changing daily, so I may have left something or someone out. If so, please forgive me.

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 readingAndroid’s Patent Wars – A Checklist

Friday Foss Week in Review: Vive le OpenOffice Libre!

By Christine Hall on October 1, 2010 |

Business, Distros, Mobile and Software

There’s certainly not a lack of things to report on this week. As usual, some is good, some is not-so-good and some is enough to make you downright paranoid.

We’ll start with some good news:

LibreOffice Off and Running

Last week we got the news that many if not most of the development folks at OpenOffice.org have decided not to wait to see what Oracle will do, but have exercised their rights under to GPL to create LibreOffice. The new organization running the show is The Document Foundation.

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 readingFriday Foss Week in Review: Vive le OpenOffice Libre!
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