These are the ten most read articles on FOSS Force for the month of August, 2014. 1. When Linux Was Perfect Enough by Christine Hall.…
Posts published in “Site News”
Maybe you didn’t notice, but I’ve been MIA here at FOSS Force for some time – since the first part of April to be exact. During that time I’ve basically been missing as a writer and editor and other than a couple of much appreciated articles by Ken Starks, FOSS Force has been a silent site.
Without going into too much detail, it started when I fell ill.
Nothing serious, but it zapped me of my energy. I was still able to perform my duties at my “day job” at a local university library, but left me without the energy needed to write and edit the site.
During this period, FOSS Force lost a couple of good volunteer writers who’d written articles for us but which I was unable to edit. Eventually they grew tired of waiting for me to reply to their emails and quit our site. For that, I am most sincerely sorry.
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
These are the ten most read articles on FOSS Force for the month of April, 2014. 1. What Would You Do to Improve Linux? by…
These are the ten most read articles on FOSS Force for the month of March, 2014. 1. Linux for Seniors 101 by Ken Starks. Published…
These are the ten most read articles on FOSS Force for the month of February, 2014.
1. Recommending Linux to a Friend by Ken Starks. Published February 21, 2014. Our Mr. Starks explains how he got one nothing-but-Windows user to try and like Linux.
2. Maintenance–The Achilles Heel of Linux by Ken Starks. Published January 30, 2014. Should Linux users fight back again “broken” aspects of their favorite distro because “that’s just the way it is?”
3. KDE Tops Desktop Poll by Christine Hall. February 12, 2014. Visitors to FOSS Force choose KDE as their favorite desktop.
Yesterday afternoon about one o’clock eastern time, we began a migration to a new server. You weren’t supposed to notice the change. Or, if you did, it’d be like, “Wow! Look at how much better this site performs now!” We had it planned so visitors would just connect to our old server until the DNS change propagated the Internet and — voila! — they’d suddenly be visiting us on our new and improved server, without even knowing.
It sounds like a plan, eh? That’s what we thought, until it didn’t work out.
These are the top ten most read articles on FOSS Force during the month of January: 1. Firefox OS: The Return of Microsoft’s Netscape Fears…
It only makes sense that the NSA be confronted online. After all, it’s the Internet the agency uses to spy on us. They’re not following us down dark streets or steaming open our snail mail. Instead, they’re monitoring our emails to discover who is in our circle and stalking us on Facebook and Google Plus. Especially if we use Windows, there’s no need for them to dirty their hands sifting through our garbage when they can enter through a virtual trap door on our computer to rifle through our word processor and spreadsheet files. Phone tapping? How old school in a world where every call we make, even from a land line, becomes VoIP somewhere along the line. When we use VoIP or Skype, they can easily listen. If we visit a website located in a country on their hit list, they sit-up and take notice.

The people at the NSA don’t care about our right to liberty, happiness or even life itself. They are obsessed with what they see as their mission and are convinced, as zealots are always convinced, that the ends justify the means. They embody the worst of Stalin, Mussolini, Franco and Pol Pot. They do so with an American twist, maintaining an illusion of freedom which keeps us pacified.
February 11th will be The Day We Fight Back.
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
FOSS Week in Review
In 2013, Linux hits grand slam
Now that companies are closing-out their books on the old year, it’s becoming evident that Linux devices were a big hit in 2013.
On Friday, CNET’s Brooke Crothers reported that Chromebooks, those nifty laptops running Google’s Chrome OS that let the cloud do the heavy lifting, accounted for 21% of all laptop sales last year. As impressive as that may be, the numbers get even better when Android tablets are added to the mix. According to market research company NPD Group, January to November saw 1.76 million Chromebooks and Android tablets sold, up from only 400,000 during all of 2012.
The OEMs, of course, are paying attention and are readying new Linux devices for the market.
What were the ten best stories we published on FOSS Force this year? Well, that would depend on a lot of things, wouldn’t it, such as who’s asking? We could tell you what we think our ten best stories were this year, but we’ll hold that until next week. Today we’re going to look at the ten stories that got the most reads on our site this year.