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VMware Makes Open Source Move, SCALE Gets Ready & More…

Also included: New releases for Skolelinux and Network Security Toolkit, KDE releases Plasma 5.7 and our writer eats crow.

FOSS Week in Review

A few weeks back I told you I was writing a distro review “for another website.” I did, and it’s done. And since I promised that I’d link you to it when it went up, I’ll reluctantly tell you that it’s a review of Fedora 24 on Distrowatch. Why am I reluctant? Because I made a big gaping error in the review, that’s why (yup, I’m fallible, just like everyone else). Until tonight or tomorrow when I’ll have time to post a mi culpa to the comments on Distrowatch, I’ll leave it to you to figure out where I erred, which I figure many of you will do quite handily, astute bunch that you are.

SCALE 15X logoThe review on Distrowatch was part of a one time trade that had Distrowatch’s Jesse Smith writing a review of Tiny Core Linux for FOSS Force. We got the better end of that stick, because so far no errors have revealed themselves in Smith’s review. I was hoping to write another review for Distrowatch in the future, but if that’s to be possible I’ll probably have to eat more than a single slice of humble pie.

June Another Great Month for the Raspberry Pi

Among other things, our Pi guy looks at the newest addition to the MagPi Essentials collection, Dave Akerman and a Raspberry Pi breaking a lofty record, and Tim Peake returning from space while leaving his Astro Pis in orbit.

The Raspberry Pi Report

Quite a few things have happened in the Raspberry Pi world since I last wrote. While the entire list of amazing stories would be too long to include everything here, I’ll try my best to include the stories from June that show how far things have come for the Raspberry Pi since my last column at the end of May.

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.

Oracle Loses Again, Red Hat Competes With FOSS & More…

Also included: LinuxQuestions.org has a birthday, six new distro releases, Ubuntu considering dropping 32-bit support and the feds were after Snowden.

FOSS Week in Review

Happy birthday America. And happy birthday to LinuxQuestions.org. America, more correctly known as United States of America since we’re not the only country on this big piece of land, turns 240-years-old on Monday, if you accept July 4, 1776 as it’s “born on” date. If it’s not too hot, I’ll be going to the Shoals community ballpark to watch the fireworks display and eat some 50 cent hot dogs. I’ll be ordering mine “all the way,” which around here means chili, slaw, mustard and onions. The birthday wish for LinuxQuestions.org is a little belated. The site was started by Jeremy Garcia sixteen years ago last weekend.

Now on to this weeks FOSS news highlights…

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

Fedora 24, SourceForge’s Dilemma & More…

Also included: Solus 1.2, Elementary Snaps, Microsoft fights OEM crapware and LibreOffice’s minor upgrade.

FOSS Week in Review

The biggest news this week was the much awaited release of Fedora 24.

It’s baseball season, and in baseball about this time of year talk turns to trades. Well, I’ve been traded for one game…er, review. That means that although I’ve downloaded and installed Fedora 24 on our test machine, I can’t really give it a full review here. However, I’ll make sure to point you to the review as soon as it goes up “on another network,” as Johnny Carson used to say. All I can tell you now is that so far it seems to do what it does well.

Other than Fedora, the most interesting story to me this week might have been missed by many FOSSers as it doesn’t involve FOSS at all, but our proprietary lover in Redmond.

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

SourceForge Seeks a Return to Relevancy

The new owners of SourceForge, once the primary code repository for open source projects, work to make good on a promise to restore a reputation that was tarnished by its former owners.

It’s been about 2 1/2 years since GIMP began what became something of a mass exodus of large open source projects away from SourceForge, which at one time had been the go-to code repository for open source projects.

The site’s reputation began to wane almost immediately after it was purchased from Geeknet in September, 2012, by Dice Holdings in a deal that included Slashdot and Freecode/Freshmeat. In July, 2013, Dice introduced DevShare, an optional profit sharing feature that included closed-source ad-supported content in the binary Windows installers and gave projects agreeing to use the feature a portion of the revenue.

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

Canonical Goes Snap Happy, Nextcloud 9 Released & More…

Also included: Two distros with new releases, Fedora 24 due on Tuesday and Ammon, Idaho thinks out-of-the-box.

FOSS Week in Review

When karma comes to visit, the one thing to remember is that in some way — which might even seem totally unrelated — you have some responsibility for that karmic bite. The best thing to do is to accept it with grace and to move on. I tell you this because that should give you a pretty fair assessment of what my life has been like since the last Week in Review.

But it hasn’t all been bad karma. There’s been good news on the FOSS front as well…

Move over LSB, Snaps are here: Once upon a time there was hope that Linux Standard Base would bring the ability to write-once-and-install-on-any-distro capability to GNU/Linux. Most folks quit believing that would ever happen about the time that LSB member distro Caldera shut down to try to make a living suing IBM as SCO. Although LSB is still being developed, it hasn’t been widely adopted and most of us have realized that the distro repository system that now dominates Linux is actually a strength despite the inconveniences.

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

How My Trip to SELF Turned Into a Nightmare

Our writer goes to the Queen City of Charlotte, North Carolina for the SouthEast LinuxFest. Instead of having a good time, however, the trip turned into a nightmare — but the fault lies with Econo Lodge, not with SELF.

What a great time I had during the day I spent at this year’s SouthEast LinuxFest. Those of you who read Friday’s Week-in-Review know that I had planned to stick around for the full three days of festivities at my favorite community oriented Linux and open source conference on the East Coast, but alas that wasn’t meant to be. But what a blast I had during the day I was there.

This, in spite of the fact that I didn’t get the opportunity to do anything or take in any of the lectures. I spent the day at the FOSS Force booth, the first ever for our site at a conference, writing Friday’s column between chatting with folks who stopped by the booth. Jeremy Sands, the events main organizer, was delightful as usual, and made sure that I got a couple of T-shirts.

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

Microsoft to Acquire LinkedIn for $26.2 Billion

With today’s announcement of Microsoft’s planned purchase of LinkedIn, it appears that the business oriented social site will soon become a platform for connecting with Redmond’s proprietary products.

Are you ready for MS LinkedIn? Too bad. It’s coming. Today Microsoft announced in a press release that it’s purchasing the social network for $196 per share in an all-cash deal worth $26.2 billion. Although the sale will require shareholder approval, that’s evidently not going to be a problem.

Microsoft's LinkedIn plansAccording to a PDF presentation posted by Microsoft, LinkedIn’s board has unanimously recommended the deal and the social site’s board chairman, co-founder and controlling shareholder, Reid Hoffman, is supporting the transaction and intends to vote his shares “in accordance with the Board’s recommendation.” The deal is expected to be completed by year’s end.

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

Microsoft’s BSD, SourceForge’s Speed Test & More…

Also included: Maru OS brings Android/Debian convergence, three new distro releases, Google making Android more proprietary and EFF asked to investigate Miscrosoft.

FOSS Week in Review

Here I am, sitting at the FOSS Force table in the land of the not-so-deep-south. I’m in Charlotte, in the northern Carolina, 33 miles exactly from the border with the other, southern, Carolina, which is probably good, just in case I need to make a quick getaway. I’m also almost exactly 90 miles from the termite eaten shack I call home up near the Virginia state line. Essentially this morning I’ve traveled from state to shining state.

I am, of course, at the SouthEast LinuxFest, which is Tux’s gift to the land of fatback, grits and turnip greens. This year’s trip is something of a working trip, because I really can’t afford to take three days away from work. So FOSS Force has a table here, convenient for me to get my work done, as I’m doing now, writing the weekend roundup. It’s just like my home office, except here I’m surrounded by Linux using and loving folks instead of by unswept cobwebs and more stink bugs than I can tolerate, which is how I live. It’s fun here. It’s different. Later on I’ll take in a lecture, which will be the first performance I’ve seen that’s not on a TV screen since last October.

But first, the FOSS 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

Women Dominate 2016’s O’Reilly Open Source Awards

In an illustration of the value of diversity, four out of five of the recipients presented with O’Reilly Open Source Awards at this year’s OSCON were women.

The Video Screening Room

At O’Reilly’s OSCON conference earlier this month in Austin, Texa, open source developers and evangelists who have earned the respect of their peers worldwide were honored. In case you run into these folks at upcoming conferences, this short video will help you recognize these open source luminaries.

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.

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