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Posts published in “Software”

New IoT Botnet, Attackers Target Tor, and More…

By Christine Hall on December 3, 2016 |

Browsers, Distros, News, Security and Software

New IoT Botnet, Attackers Target Tor, and More…Tor logo

Also included, Flash on life support, Mageia’s new release, Ubuntu sets date for “Zesty Zapus” and our News Wire gets an RSS feed.

Tor logo

FOSS Week in Review

Outside of FOSS, the news becomes too depressing and repetitive to read. Gamergate has taken over our country and is set to move into the White House and to have free rein in the halls of congress. Roles are being reversed and it’s rapidly becoming politically incorrect to express concerns for our mother the earth or for the creatures who inhabit it, while it’s perfectly fine to label anyone who advocates for equality as a “social justice warrior” who should have no place within any organization.

If you think I’m bummed out, you’re right. At least for the time being, in the world of FOSS life goes on as usual…

Continue readingNew IoT Botnet, Attackers Target Tor, and More…
Securing SourceForge With HTTPSSourceForge

Securing SourceForge With HTTPS

By FOSS Force on December 1, 2016 |

Admin, News, Software and Web Apps

SourceForge

SourceForge says, “With a single click, projects can opt-in to switch their web hosting from HTTP to HTTPS.”

SourceForge has added a feature that gives project websites the opportunity to opt-in to using SSL HTTPS encryption. Project admins can find this option in the Admin page under “HTTPS.”

Opting-in will also trigger a domain name change, from http://name.sourceforge.net to https://name.sourceforge.io. Visitors using the old domain will automatically redirect to the new domain.

Continue readingSecuring SourceForge With HTTPS
Talos’s $18K Linux Workstation, KDE 1 on Modern Metal & More…KDE Logo

Talos’s $18K Linux Workstation, KDE 1 on Modern Metal & More…

By Christine Hall on October 16, 2016 |

Desktops, Distros, Hardware, News and Software

Also included: Red Hat opens Ansible Galaxy, Yakkety Yak ready for downloads, and KDE and GNOME both get minor point releases.

FOSS Week in Review

Like practically everybody else who resides in the U.S., I’ve just about had it up to here (I’m holding my hand high above the top of my head) with this election. At this point, I just want the whole mess to be over. After the winner has been decided and the dust has settled, I’ll decide whether I want to become an expat on another planet in another solar system. What kind of visa will I need for that, I wonder.

Meanwhile, I keep my mind occupied by following 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

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingTalos’s $18K Linux Workstation, KDE 1 on Modern Metal & More…
Pixel Takes Raspbian to the Next LevelRaspbian Pixel

Pixel Takes Raspbian to the Next Level

By Isaac Carter on October 12, 2016 |

Browsers, Distros, Hardware and Software

Raspbian, the Raspberry Pi’s most well known distro, has an exciting new look and feel with Pixel.

The Raspberry Pi Report

A couple of weeks ago, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced they had tuned up the look and feel of Raspbian. The new buzzword created to help bring about the message that the UI had changed was dubbed “Pixel,” which stands for “Pi Improved Xwindows Environment, Lightweight.” While I’m not completely sold on trying to make Pixel stand for something, what I am completely sold on is what it has brought to the table for the Raspberry Pi. With Pixel, Raspbian has the look and feel of an elegant OS and I’m beyond happy that they have put this together for the Raspberry Pi community. I’ve tried out Pixel for the past week and here’s my take to date.

Raspbian Pixel
The splash screen for Raspbian’s Pixel.
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.

Continue readingPixel Takes Raspbian to the Next Level
Fedora Warns Against ‘dnf update’ in Graphical EnvironmentFedora logo

Fedora Warns Against ‘dnf update’ in Graphical Environment

By FOSS Force on October 5, 2016 |

Distros, News and Software

Users of Fedora 24 might want to put any update plans on hold until this bug issue is resolved.

Breaking News

A warning was published Tuesday by Adam Williamson on the Fedora website against running dnf update in a graphical environment in Fedora 24. The warning was issued after numerous users began reporting “duplicated packages” and “kernel updates not working” error messages after running the update.

Continue readingFedora Warns Against ‘dnf update’ in Graphical Environment
Tux Paint Needs Mac Devs, Firefox OS Ends & More…Tux Paint screenshot

Tux Paint Needs Mac Devs, Firefox OS Ends & More…

By Christine Hall on October 2, 2016 |

Community, Distros, News, Obits and Software

Also included: Debian developer Kristoffer H. Rose passes, two new distro releases, Apricity OS adds 32-bit, Canonical gets Kubernetes, Snapcraft gets a new release and getting ready for All Things Open.

FOSS Week in Review

Yikes! Remember last weekend when I was so happy that the dog days of summer had left us behind to be replaced with more comfortable autumnal temps? While that’s true, with nights getting chilly enough that I’m going to have to dig out my comforter, I forgot that this time of year is also the peak of the hurricane season. This means that for much of the next week I’m keeping a wary eye to the south, where Hurricane Matthew may or may not have my part of the Carolinas directly in its sights. It looks as if we’ll know better about what it has in mind by Tuesday afternoon.

Tux Paint screenshotTux Paint needs a Mac maintainer: Everybody’s favorite FOSS paint tool is having a little trouble running on Macs these days — specifically on OS X 10.11 El Capitan. Designed with kids in mind, the app is used extensively at schools, with many school systems now upgrading to El Capitan, which was released a year ago.

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
Continue readingTux Paint Needs Mac Devs, Firefox OS Ends & More…
Journalist Tom Henderson on Cloud Vendor Lock-InGom Henderson on vendor lock-in

Journalist Tom Henderson on Cloud Vendor Lock-In

By Robin "Roblimo" Miller on September 29, 2016 |

Business, Interview, Software and Video

There is little worse than deciding “you’ve had it up to here” with a particular vendor, only to discover that due to vendor lock-in, migrating away from the vendor’s proprietary platform would cost enough to put your company in the bankruptcy courts.

The Video FOSS Force Interview

This video is not technically about free or open source software, but it’s 100 percent about the danger of falling victim to proprietary vendors and their habit of making it hard to leave their sweet embrace once they get their paws on you. The Network World column by Tom Henderson that generated this interview is titled, The Many Dimensions of Cloud Value, and is subtitled, “Put your snorkels on: The marketing for cloud services is getting deep.” So is the marketing for many other proprietary something-as-a-something offerings ranging from operating systems to (obviously) cloud platforms.

Robin "Roblimo" Miller

Robin “Roblimo” Miller is a freelance writer and former editor-in-chief at Open Source Technology Group, the company that owned SourceForge, freshmeat, Linux.com, NewsForge, ThinkGeek and Slashdot, and until recently served as a video editor at Slashdot. Now he’s mostly retired, but still works part-time as an editorial consultant for Grid Dynamics, and (obviously) writes for FOSS Force.

Continue readingJournalist Tom Henderson on Cloud Vendor Lock-In
Contributing to an Open Source ProjectJavaOne logo - open source

Contributing to an Open Source Project

By Phil Shapiro on September 27, 2016 |

Community, Software and Video

There are many ways to contribute to an open source project. There are also many reasons for doing so. But before jumping in, you might want to know how things generally work within these projects.

The Video Screening Room

If you’re interested gaining some tips and insights into how to contribute to open source, this video of a presentation given on September 19 at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco by Gunnar Wagenknecht, a software engineer at Salesforce, and Wayne Beaton, director at the Eclipse Foundation, might be useful to you.

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.

Continue readingContributing to an Open Source Project
Krebs Goes Down, Opera Gets a VPN & More…Yahoo logo

Krebs Goes Down, Opera Gets a VPN & More…

By Christine Hall on September 24, 2016 |

Browsers, Distros, Media, News, Security and Software

Also included: Yahoo’s big hack, Garrett on Lenovo, new Audacious and GNOME, and Ubuntu get’s ready for Yakkety Yak.

FOSS Week in Review

I spent time this week terminating a Yahoo account I’ve had since way back in the last century. For years, the My Yahoo page was my “home” page whenever I fired-up the old dial-up to go online, but over time the portal (remember portals?) became less and less relevant and I found my visits to Yahoo becoming less and less frequent. By the time I closed the account, prompted by news of a massive hack involving 500 million accounts going back to 2014, I hadn’t visited my Yahoo page in well over a year. RIP Yahoo. It was nice knowing you.

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
Continue readingKrebs Goes Down, Opera Gets a VPN & More…
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