Operating Systems Archives - Page 16 of 39

PlayStation 4’s Linux Hack

By Hunter Banks on January 13, 2016 |

Gaming on Linux

Hopefully everyone had a pleasant holiday season. Only weeks into the new year and already some interesting gaming news has happened.

Noted hacker group fail0verflow has hacked the PlayStation 4, running a custom Linux port on the system. Linux has been run on prior Playstation systems, usually via USB boot, but no one expected it to happen on this system so quickly, with rough estimates of a hack being months, maybe years, down the line.

Hunter Banks

Hunter Banks has been a part of the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) Family for the past 13 years. When not writing about open source gaming, he’s working on creating his own games. Follow him on Twitter @SilvrChariot

Gmail and a Can of Spam

Gmail and a Can of Spam

By Ken Starks on January 12, 2016 |

Operating Systems, Security and Web Apps

The Heart of Linux

“You’ve got ~~mail~~ compromised mail!”

The emails started coming in slowly at first. Friends and colleagues were telling me that my Gmail address was pushing out spam.

“Spam? Really?”

My first inclination was to push those emails aside as a temporary albeit bothersome incident. Something similar had happened a few years earlier, but subsided quickly with no real or evident damage. I guessed that some bot did a drive by and picked up my email contacts and started pumping out spam and other messages.

But this incident wasn’t to be pushed aside. The emails started coming in faster and faster, until I acknowledged that I had a real problem.

Ken Starks

Ken Starks is the founder of the Helios Project and Reglue, which for 20 years provided refurbished older computers running Linux to disadvantaged school kids, as well as providing digital help for senior citizens, in the Austin, Texas area. He was a columnist for FOSS Force from 2013-2016, and remains part of our family. Follow him on Twitter: @Reglue

linuxlock.blogspot.com/

Arch Wins First of Two Round Poll

Arch Wins First of Two Round Poll

By FOSS Force on January 9, 2016 |

Community, Distros, Operating Systems and Polls

The FOSS Force Poll

The voting is over in the first round of our annual GNU/Linux distro poll, which sought an answer to the simple question, “What Linux distro do you currently use most?” The result was a complete surprise, at least to us. By a decisive margin, you voted for Arch Linux. The poll was certainly one for the record books. By the time it was closed to voting, a total of 5,784 of you had cast votes, more than double from any previous FOSS Force poll. The poll was online for approximately one week.

Shuttleworth at SCALE, Google Rolls Over & More…

Shuttleworth at SCALE, Google Rolls Over & More…

By Christine Hall on January 8, 2016 |

Business, Community, Distros, Mobile, News and Operating Systems

FOSS Week in Review

Wow. It certainly didn’t take long after the holidays for the FOSS news wire to heat up again. It’s like all the newsmakers have been chomping at the bit to get back to work doing what they do best, which would be, well, making news. Let’s start with some breaking news concerning a well known FOSS personality…

To SCALE or not to SCALE: If you live somewhere within driving distance of Southern California and you’ve been sitting on the fence trying to decide whether to attend SCALE 14X (that’s the Southern California Linux Expo for the jargon impaired), then we’re about to give you a tidbit that might help you make up your mind.

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

FreeBSD Foundation Takes Right Steps

By Larry Cafiero on January 7, 2016 |

Community, Operating Systems and Politics

Larry the BSD Guy

First things first: I’m the new kid on the BSD block. While in the process of still figuring things out on PC-BSD — dang that Synaptics! — and finding a place to contribute in the community, I have no real handle on the nuances of the inner workings of the wider BSD community. To my self-promoting credit, I am a quick study and the learning curve is not as difficult as I imagined. On the whole, I like what I see in those contributing to BSD, especially in the way of eagerness to help new users.

However, when Randi Harper decided to bail on participation in FreeBSD as she outlined in her blog, it raises the question, “Where have we seen this before?” Taking a step back, it raises the question, “Why does this keep happening in FOSS communities?”

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

FOSS Force’s Hot Nine for 2015

FOSS Force’s Hot Nine for 2015

By FOSS Force on January 4, 2016 |

Business, Distros, Media, Operating Systems and Web Apps

We’re going to pretend like we’re AM disc jockeys from the golden days of top 40 radio and countdown the top nine stories that appeared on FOSS Force last year. Along the way, we’ll offer a bit of commentary, and maybe remind you a time or two that things were much different way back in 2015.