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Posts published in “Reviews”

Ubuntu MATE: Giving Raspbian a Run for Its Money

When most people think about working with or trying out the Raspberry Pi, they are usually envisioning using Raspbian. This isn’t by default, but rather because Raspbian is the only OS available for the Raspberry Pi that comes equipped with the tools that we all hear about such as Scratch, Sonic Pi, and support for using the GPIO pins. That’s all changed now with the latest release of Ubuntu MATE for the Raspberry Pi 2.

Ubuntu Mate logoIn this latest release, Ubuntu MATE now comes equipped with everything under the hood that Raspbian has to offer and then some. I’ll review some of the best parts about Ubuntu MATE and show why you might want to install Ubuntu MATE instead of Raspbian.

Running Linux Mint 17.2 Xfce

Linux Mint LogoThe good guys and gals at Linux Mint are on a roll, with three long-term support (LTS) releases in a row. It all started back in May of last year, with the release of 17.0, called Qiana, followed in January by 17.1, Rebecca. At that point it looked as if we’d hit the jackpot and could sit back and relax for at least a couple of years until the next LTS release, but the Mint folks had other plans and introduced yet another LTS, 17.2, Rafaela, this summer.

Although Rafaela with the “official” Cinnamon and MATE desktops came out at the end of June, those who prefer KDE or Xfce had to wait until the end of July for Mint to get those editions polished and ready for prime time. That’s okay. The Mint folks don’t like to release versions that still need work, which is one of the reasons why the distro remains the most popular desktop version of Linux on the planet.

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

Five Super Cool Open Source Games

In 2014 and 2015, Linux became home to a list of popular commercial titles such as the popular Borderlands, Witcher, Dead Island, and Counter Strike series of games. While this is exciting news, what of the gamer on a budget? Commercial titles are good, but even better are free-to-play alternatives made by developers who know what players like.

Some time ago, I came across a three year old YouTube video with the ever optimistic title 5 Open Source Games that Don’t Suck. Although the video praises some open source games, I’d prefer to approach the subject with a bit more enthusiasm, at least as far as the title goes. So, here’s my list of five super cool open source games.

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

A User’s Eye View of Bodhi 3.1.0 & Moksha

Bodhi Linux logoThe Bodhi development folks have been busy bees since lead developer Jeff Hoogland returned to retake his place beneath the Bodhi tree. First, there was the release of version 3.0.0 back in February. Then, a couple of weeks ago came the release of 3.1.0. Although this might be supposed to be a “minor” point grade release, it’s a “big deal” according to the distro’s website. Why? Because it introduces a new desktop called Moksha.

A new desktop for Bodhi might seem crazy, even heretical, since Bodhi has always been about the Enlightenment desktop. This has never been a distro for running KDE, GNOME, or any other desktop but Enlightenment. Sure, running another desktop could certainly be done, but it would be silly, as Bodhi has always been designed from the ground up to be a showcase for the simple elegance of Enlightenment. Running anything else on Bodhi would be akin to buying a bucket of Colonel Sanders’ Original Recipe and trying to fix it up to taste like Bojangles’.

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 Look at Mageia 5’s Magic

Mageia 5 blank KDE screenshotMageia 5, released on Friday and over a year in the making, is familiar territory to those of us who cut our Linux teeth on Mandriva back in the days when it was called Mandrake. That’s not to say that the distro is old or outdated, far from it, but any Mandrake old-timer will instantly recognize the roots of this 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

A Few Laps With Fedora 22

To great fanfare, Fedora 22 was released to the wider world yesterday. And to those who awaited it with bated breath, it does not disappoint.

A word to the uninitiated: As many of you already know, in the broadest terms, Fedora is a testbed for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Developments in Fedora – and there are many, leading to its cutting-edge reputation (which wrongfully scares some users from using it; more on this later) – sooner or later end up on RHEL for the commercial market.

Fedora logoSince the introduction of Fedora.next — the umbrella program for the roadmap for the distro going forward — the distro comes in three basic flavors: Workstation, Server and Cloud. Workstation is the desktop/laptop version — and workstation version for businesses. Cloud and Server are pretty self-explanatory.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Linux Mint Xfce: Moving From Maya to Rebecca

Dammit, Clement Lefebvre, you and your team at Linux Mint have gone and done it. Y’all, and the folks at Xfce too. Why couldn’t you just leave well enough alone? I was perfectly fine and dandy with Maya and now you’ve gone and ruined it by coming out with something five times better. Thanks for ruining my Saturday. Thanks a lot.

Linux Mint Welcome Screen
The Welcome Screen shows up after boot until and contains links to useful information about Linux Mint.
Click image to enlarge.
Here’s the problem. For the last couple of years or so we’ve been using Mint’s Xfce edition of Maya (that would be version 13 for those who read the box scores) on nearly all of the machines here at FOSS Force. As Maya will be supported until 2017, we had absolutely no plans to make any upgrades until then, as taking time out for the tedious process of upgrading our machines isn’t one of my favorite things to do — and I’m the one who’d be doing the upgrading.

When the folks at Mint released a new LTS Xfce version (Qiana) in June of last year, followed by another LTS (Rebecca) in January, we didn’t much care. We were more than happy with Maya, and following the age old philosophy of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” we decided to stay the course and keep using what we had until its sunset year arrived. As far as I was concerned, although approaching obsolescence, Maya was damned near perfect. How much better could the latest and greatest be?

However, you might notice that I write about Maya in the past tense. I confess. I killed her.

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

Kicking the Tires on an $89 Symple PC

About six weeks ago I told you about Symple PC, the new $89 PC preinstalled with Ubuntu. Now I’ve had a chance to take one for a test drive. The verdict? Just like I figured, it’s a good deal. After all, the price is nothing if not sweet, especially considering that these machines come with a one year full replacement warranty.

Symple PC
Excuse our mess – some things never change. Our Symple PC, set up and ready to take on a test drive.
Before I turn into Siskel and Ebert and give this computer two thumbs up, perhaps I’d better explain a few things first. On its own terms, the machine certainly would deserve the upturned thumbs, and maybe even a gold star on your refrigerator door. That doesn’t mean, however, that it’s necessarily a drop in replacement for the latest top-of-the-line offering from HP or Lenovo — even though for many uses it could be.

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

LQ Poll Results Expected and Unexpected

Linux Questions — the place you go where you really need a Linux or FOSS question answered because, well, most of the smart FOSS folks are there answering them — released the results of its Members Choice Awards for 2015.

So when the membership of LQ speaks — or at least votes on FOSS programs — you should probably listen. Don’t take my word for it: Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols thinks so, too.

There were some expected results: For example, LibreOffice wins the Office Suite category by a ton, garnering 86 percent of the vote. To break this down, that’s nearly 9 in 10 folks favoring LibreOffice to the second-place finisher, Apache OpenOffice, and the others.

Same with categories like Browser of the Year — Firefox, need we say more? — with the blazing vulpini taking 57 percent in a crowded field. Same for Android, the Mobile Distribution of the Year which finished 40 percentage points ahead of the second-place finisher. Even vim, at 30 percent in a crowded field, heads up the Text Editor category with three times the votes of Emacs.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Fedora 21 Alpha Gets Off on the Right Foot

I say this often – a little too often – and I’ve hammered home the point in various blogs, to say nothing of calling out people who “review” alpha or beta versions of distro releases: Reviewing an alpha or a beta version is akin to sticking your finger in a bowl of cake batter and writing about how a baked cake is going to turn out.

That said, this is not a review of the Fedora 21 Alpha, released yesterday, but rather a test drive of a version that is destined to be improved upon when it is released in December.

So now you can have your cake batter and eat it, too.

First, a moment of silence for the untimely demise of the Fedora Release Name, as Fedora 21 doesn’t have one. Fedora had the best process for release names, causing spirited debate and possibly fisticuffs along the way: $CURRENT_RELEASE_NAME is a ________ and so is $NEXT_RELEASE_NAME, with the blank being filled in with whatever the current name was. Fedora 20 Heisenbug was the last of the named Fedora releases.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Tux Paint: Doing FOSS Right

One could argue that the measure of how good software is, or what kind of effect it has on the wider world, can be based on the hard statistics of use, punctuated by glowing reviews, which add up to ongoing popularity and ubiquity. But the true impact of how software transcends mere popularity to positively change the world can be measured solely in how it affects people’s lives.

The journalist in me could give you just the specifics of the new Tux Paint release: Tux Paint 0.9.22 was released this week, thanks to the efforts of 170 contributors worldwide. This new version comes with a wide range of additions, like 14 new tools, 40 new template pictures, nearly 200 new stamps, SVG and KidPix support, an enhanced text tool, and accessibility improvements.

Tux Paint version 0.9.22, released last week, contains many improvements.
Tux Paint version 0.9.22, released last week, contains many improvements.
Or I could go into the expansion of 32 new languages featured in the latest release, including more than a dozen Indian subcontinental languages, including Nepali and Sanskrit; six European languages, including Bosnian and Valencian; nine new African languages, including Zulu and Sudanese; and the Canadian Inuit language of Inuktitut. This is 32 new languages atop the updates to the 90 current Tux Paint languages.

Of course, Tux Paint 0.9.22 also is available for multiple operating systems, including the usual suspects of Linux, MacOS, and Windows.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

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