FOSS Force
The Heart of Linux
Reflections of a once upon a time everyday Windows user.
It’s hard to remember the span of time when I sat in front of my Windows computer on a daily basis. I sat comfortable in the understanding that using my computer came with some non-negotiable requirements, like the constant vigilance against malware threats and my system bogging down from the antivirus software helping me belay those threats. Who doesn’t remember the ever-popular monthly defragging, and for me at least, a complete wipe and reinstallation of Windows every six to eight months.
These things I accepted as a necessary part of using a computer every day.
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A few Windows folks will surely chime in, saying that they have used Windows since Captain Kangaroo was a corporal. They’ll say that they never had to reinstall their system due to it becoming unstable, sometimes rebooting for no reason at all and then booting into a black screen. A black screen that would eventually correct itself if you got up to fix a sandwich and take the dog out. A black screen that gave you no frickin’ idea of what it was, why it happened or how to fix it.
Newly discovered Windows security hole bypasses AppLocker and lets apps run without admin rights. Proof-of-concept code published.
This is one of those “look what I found while looking for something else” sort of stories. Casey Smith was trying to solve a problem and accidentally discovered a security vulnerability that affects business and server editions of Windows 7 and up.
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System76 is known throughout the world as one of the few companies exclusively selling new PCs and laptops preinstalled with GNU/Linux. The question is, will they run Windows?
Some things are so counterintuitive that they seem just plain wrong, like a crime against natural order. Things like running Windows on a System76 machine, which is something that would never have occurred to me to do, not even if it was the only computer available and I absolutely had to boot into Windows. It would be like putting ketchup on a delicately seasoned and perfectly grilled spencer steak.
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It’s something I would never do, and yet, I am responsible.
If there was ever a time to make the distinction between OSS and FOSS, it is now. Microsoft may be the largest open source company on the planet, but it will never be a FOSS company.
It was only a couple of years ago that the FOSS world was proclaiming that Microsoft was a dead company walking. The king was dead. Sales of new Windows releases were flat and Android was seriously kicking its butt in the mobile marketplace. FOSSers were sure they wouldn’t have Redmond to kick around for much longer.
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Times have changed. Android is still winning on mobile, but other than that, Microsoft is back on track and is maybe more secure than ever. That’s not good for FOSS.
The Video Screening Room
This movie trailer spoof sells a movie that’s definitely not coming soon to a theater near you. If it were, however, you can bet your booty it’d be released under a Creative Commons license.
When I found out that I was going to have the opportunity to substitute for Phil Shapiro for today’s video column, I jumped at the chance. Why? Because I want to share with you one of the great TV parodies that the JavaZone conference produces each year.
In case you don’t know, since its beginning fifteen years ago, JavaZone has grown to be the largest independent conference for Java developers on the planet. The conference is held each year in Oslo, Norway, with this year’s event scheduled for September 7-8.
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You don’t have to be a big Java fan to really like these folks, for they are 100 percent — that means totally for those of you who have trouble with numbers — behind open source. For the past six years or so, they’ve produced annual video parodies of popular television shows, which over time have become increasingly lavish productions.
Larry the BSD Guy It’s a sad day at the FOSS Force office. Larry Cafiero says goodbye and walks off into the sunset. This weekend,…
The Mexican distro Escuelas, or ‘School,’ Linux was designed to give extended life to aging hardware in financially strapped school districts in Latin America and is based on Bodhi Linux.
On Monday, a GNU/Linux distro designed to be used in schools, Escuelas Linux, released version 4.4. Just how dedicated to education are the developers of this distro? Plenty. In case your Spanish is as rusty as ours, the Spanish name Escuelas translates to “schools” in English.
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There are more than a few things that are unusual about Escuelas Linux. For one, although ultimately derived from Ubuntu, it’s not a first generation descendant on the Ubuntu tree, but traces it’s *buntu roots by way of Bodhi Linux. The distro also uses the Moksha desktop, which Bodhi developed after becoming unhappy with the direction that Enlightenment was taking.
The Video Screening Room
These days, GitHub is pretty much the warehouse district where nearly all open source projects are stored and maintained. There are some tricks to navigating the site, which can easily be mastered by watching tutorial videos.
If you’re an open source enthusiast, you need to be advocating for interested community members to familiarize themselves with GitHub, an amazing web tool for collaborative work. There are many introductory videos about GitHub on YouTube, but this one by Udacity I found particularly accessible.
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The Heart of Linux
The lead developer of a new text-to-speech app based on MaryTTS talks about what’s been done and what remains to do.
It’s been a while now since we talked about creating a front end GUI to the open source text-to-speech program, MaryTTS. I have a personal stake in this, as I lost my larynx, and thus my voice, due to throat cancer.
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The state of text-to-speech software in the Linuxsphere is horrible. Don’t get me wrong, the software is out there and much of it is fairly good. Where we fall down is that it requires using the command line to get much of it to work. Often TTS software in Linux comes in parts and pieces that have to be assembled in order to get it to work, and the terminal is where most of that work needs to be done.