Rob “drtorq” Reilly Combining steampunk with Linux and single board computers like the Raspberry Pi automatically seems like an idea fraught with cool possibilities. So…
Posts published in “Operating Systems”
In this week’s installment, our GNU/Linux newbie decides to go all in and take the training wheels off his Linux laptop.
The Linux Gadabout
The more I use Linux, the less I like Windows.
I doubt this will be a shocker — the majority of FOSS Force readers will probably nod their heads knowingly at this point. Additionally, my Mac using friends will smugly point out how they’ve been trying to steer me away from that Microsoft garbage for years, but Apple’s not kept me free from frustration, either. In fairness to all options on the table, I’m sure Linux won’t remain blameless as I log more time with it. I’ll even allow the possibility that Windows is just the easiest target for my unspent rage as it’s been on my radar the longest. But so far, most of the problems I’ve had with Linux (Ubuntu MATE, in particular) have been hardware related — that is, not the fault of Linux at all.
“Bob” Fogarty was the editor-in-chief at Chris Pirillo’s LockerGnome.com for nearly 12 years, and has written for ReadWrite.com and TheArtofCharm.com. He lives in San Diego with his wife and a medium-sized menagerie of beasties great and small. Follow him on Twitter: @Fogarty
Also included: Canonical joins The Document Foundations advisory board, Chromium coming to Fedora, OpenVZ now a complete Linux distro and GNU Linux-libre Kernel 4.7 released.
FOSS Week in Review
It’s not FOSS, but I reckon the biggest story in tech this week, ignoring claims of Russia hacking for Trump, is the sale of Yahoo to Verizon for $4.8 billion. Considering that traffic watcher Alexa says the site is the fifth most visited address on the web, that seems like something of a bargain to me. Add to that Yahoo’s prime Silicon Valley real estate and the price seems to be in the “it fell of the truck” category. The sale puts Verizon in control of both America Online and Yahoo, so I suspect we’ll be seeing Verizon trying to compete with Google and Bing for a share of the search advertising market.
Meanwhile in the world of FOSS…
LibreOffice has been in the news this week. The big story, which we first heard on Tuesday, is that Canonical has joined The Document Foundation’s advisory board. In case you’re new in town, TDF is the nonprofit that controls the development of LibreOffice.
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
In this week’s installment, our resident Linux newb goes on the prowl with one thought in mind: To find the best-of-breed FOSS music player for GNU/Linux.
The Linux Gadabout
I’ve decided to take a break from swimming upstream. Sure, I enjoy the puzzles presented by limited RAM and weird popcorn sounds that happen when caging Ubuntu MATE in a rickety Sony Vaio laptop that’s more than a decade old. I love the creative solutions the FOSS Force community shares in a concerted effort to get me back in the saddle and on my way. But I think Christine Hall summed it up best when commenting on my last column via Facebook:
“Bob” Fogarty was the editor-in-chief at Chris Pirillo’s LockerGnome.com for nearly 12 years, and has written for ReadWrite.com and TheArtofCharm.com. He lives in San Diego with his wife and a medium-sized menagerie of beasties great and small. Follow him on Twitter: @Fogarty
While Raspbian and Ubuntu MATE remain the go-to distros for many Raspberry Pi users, our Pi guy reminds us that there are others, and offers us a look at four alternatives.
The Raspberry Pi Report
It seems like every article one reads about the Raspberry Pi always makes a reference to Raspbian. If not, then the writer will probably write about how wonderful Ubuntu MATE is on the Raspberry Pi. Which begs the question: Are there any other OS options for the Raspberry Pi? While there’s nothing wrong with either distro, we should remember that the main appeal of using Linux is the freedom and amount of choice that is offered to the user. With that being said, here are four other distros that offer a great user experience on the Raspberry Pi.
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.
Also included: Microsoft shows love of Linux with gift of Skype and Torvalds continues to be Torvalds.
FOSS Week in Review
The biggest Linux story this week by mainstream tech sites’ standards was Skype working to include Linux users in its installed base by releasing a new Linux client to replace obsolete software that hadn’t been updated in at least two years. According to many of the comments on FOSS Force’s coverage, Skype might consider itself a day late and a dollar short.
The big problem, of course, is Skype’s ownership by Microsoft, whose love of Linux is so far unrequited. Add to that the fact that Skype, like Microsoft, doesn’t have the monopoly it once had and the result is a less than enthusiastic response. However, it wouldn’t surprise me if Ubuntu doesn’t start installing the Skype client by default once it comes out of beta.
Now on to some news that’s really newsworthy…
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
The continuing adventures of a new open source tinkerer who comes to realize that we embrace — or eschew — change for reasons that aren’t…
“Linux is a failed experiment,” she spit. “It has no business even existing in the tech world and I am fully capable of recovering any important files myself. I do not need your help.”
The Heart of Linux
I live in a pretty cool place. We were lucky enough to find a quiet retirement community for those over the age of 55 and/or those who have disabilities that prevent them from working. Our rent is controlled by the government, so we are living in a two bedroom, two bath apartment but are paying the average rent for a studio. How cool is that? The waiting list for these apartments is usually nine months, so we were happy to have the management call us and tell us that we could move-in less than ten days after filing our application.
This is an extremely nice complex. It’s what I call a Stepford complex, a neighborhood tucked away on a side street that, if you didn’t know it was here, you would never see. Everything is neatly built, with buildings perfectly in line with those on each side and with the unit across the street. The understated entrance is often blindly passed by, even when people are looking for it. The residents tend to be close to their neighbors and there isn’t a stranger in the whole place. New residents will find that within a week of their arrival, people will be standing at their door presenting them with cakes, pies, casseroles, cupcakes and cookies, all in the name of getting in the door and seeing who they are and what they are all about. Retirement communities are like that. Diane refers to folks like this as having “nose troubles.”
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
The continuing adventures of a new open source tinkerer who finds his diagnostic acumen sorely lacking during what should have been a simple RAM installation — thereby leaving the rest of us grateful he didn’t pursue a career in the medical field.
The Linux Gadabout
Perhaps Fred Sanford’s negative assessment of my intelligence was a bit hasty last week. As it turns out, this antediluvian Sony Vaio doesn’t so much object to an upgrade of mismatched RAM as it does to RAM that plain doesn’t work. Replacing an underinflated tire with a flat tire, so to speak, doesn’t help anybody.
Here’s how things went down.
“Bob” Fogarty was the editor-in-chief at Chris Pirillo’s LockerGnome.com for nearly 12 years, and has written for ReadWrite.com and TheArtofCharm.com. He lives in San Diego with his wife and a medium-sized menagerie of beasties great and small. Follow him on Twitter: @Fogarty
While the mainstream tech press is ready to embrace “the new Microsoft” as a friend to open source, many who fought in the trenches against the corporate giant will never be able to forgive and forget.
Op-ed
Every time I write an article criticizing the depth of Microsoft’s proclaimed love of Linux, as well as questioning the motive behind it, I receive return criticism, often from places I would’ve, in the past, least expected, such as from within the GNU/Linux community. In places like Slashdot, some open source subreddits, and even occasionally on FOSS Force, there are commenters who accuse me of letting the past blind me to the great work that Microsoft is now doing for Linux and open source.
Let’s forget for a minute that I have plenty of reasons for seeing Redmond as a continuing threat to free tech. Let’s forget the patent issues the company still uses as a threat, as well as the fact that all of its contributions to open source are to support Azure and Windows, the latter of which remains proprietary and definitely not free software. Let’s also forget that this love of Linux was announced when Microsoft began betting on the cloud, where embracing Linux became necessary for survival. Can you imagine a Windows only cloud service? Neither can I.
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
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 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