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FOSS Force

‘Freedom Penguin’ Takes Flight, Distro Count & More…

FOSS Week in Review

Before we get rolling on the last FOSS Force item before the weekend, I’d like to welcome Hunter Banks to the FOSS Force team. Hunter is part of the FOSS-forward Banks family of Los Angeles — dad Phillip is a computer consultant and a long-time Southern California Linux Expo volunteer (along with brother Phillip Jr.), and sister Keila has been in both the FOSS and mainstream media on girls-in-tech issues — and he’s writing a Linux/FOSS gaming column.

Flying-penguinsWelcome to the team, Hunter!

Now, want to see something scary?

Kickin’ Back at Texas Linux Fest

It’s the one show I am most certain to make in a year’s time. The Texas Linux Fest (TLF). The only one I’ve missed was held in San Antonio, and being in the worst part of both chemo and radiation therapy, I wasn’t in the mood to travel across the street that year, not to mention to take a two hour drive each way.

Texas Linux FestBut this year was okay as far as travel went. It was held in San Marcos Texas, the home of Texas State University. You can’t get more “in between” Austin and San Antonio than that. Personally, I think the miracle-working staff for TLF should think about making this their permanent home. Being between two of the four largest cities in Texas, people from each don’t think twice about making the drive, as opposed to those that would have to drive to Dallas or the Metroplex.

For Linux, It’s Another Day, Another File System

In case you weren’t paying attention, there’s a new Linux file system on the horizon, thanks to a former Google engineer.

That engineer in question, namely Kent Overstreet, posted a message on LKML.org last week promoting the progress of Bcache File System, or Bcachefs, the first Linux file system written specifically for solid state disks. The purpose of the new file system is to ramp up the speed in the way Linux stores data on servers.

File system“Yet another new filesystem? Why?” Overstreet asks in his post. And then he adeptly answers the age-old question.

“Well, years ago (going back to when I was still at Google), I and the other people working on bcache realized that what we were working on was, almost by accident, a good chunk of the functionality of a full blown filesystem — and there was a really clean and elegant design to be had there if we took it and ran with it,” Overstreet wrote. “And a fast one — the main goal of bcachefs to match ext4 and xfs on performance and reliability, but with the features of btrfs/zfs.”

Boycott Novell Lenovo?

It was in 2009. I possessed the best laptop that I had ever owned…to that point in time anyway. Small, but not cramped. A display that was beyond any adjective. “Dazzling” is what comes to mind, but many would probably categorize that as marketing hyperbole. That’s fine. That laptop lasted almost to the end of 2013 before the motherboard suffered catastrophic failure. I had received the machine already much used. I liked it so much I actually mourned my loss.

Lenovo logoI never found one that was even close to the quality of my Lenovo X60s…until recently.

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.

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’.

Everywhere a Linux Fest, Linux Gaming Good to Go & More…

FOSS Week in Review

Steam logoFirst things first: When the sun comes up on a sleepy little town down around San Antone, it’ll mark the start of Texas Linux Fest, the sixth annual two-day Linux/FOSS hoedown deep in the heart of the Lone Star State, this year about halfway between Austin and San Antonio. Lots of great speakers with lots of great sponsors give this show a more local feel than the one earlier this week in the Pacific Northwest, so if you’re in the neighborhood, you should give the fest a visit.

Moksha: Just an Enlightenment Fork or the Birth of a new Desktop?

When Bodhi Linux came out with version 3.1.0 a week or so ago, the distro’s founder and lead developer, Jeff Hoogland, made it clear on the Bodhi website that this was a milestone release.

“This release is a bigger deal for the Bodhi team than our previous update releases have been in the past,” he wrote. “The reason for this is because this release is the first to use the Moksha Desktop which we have forked from E17. Because it is built on the rock solid foundation that E17 provides, even this first release of the Moksha Desktop is stable and is something I feel comfortable using in a production environment.”

Bodhi Linux logoLearning of this, and being a big Bodhi fan, I was eager to download and install this new version to take the newly forked desktop for a spin, which I did earlier this week.

Deep in the Heart of Texas Linux Fest 2015

While the rest of FOSS Nation oooohs and ahhhhs with all the developments currently coming out of LinuxCon in Seattle, the end of the week’s attention — and attendance — shifts to San Marcos, Texas.

San Marcos is an exciting, historic community in the heart of Central Texas midway between Austin and San Antonio. It is home to Texas State University (the alma mater of Lyndon Johnson), and — as the Chamber of Commerce likes to boast — home of the famous San Marcos outlet malls, the largest in the Southwest.

Texas Linux Fest LogoThis year, San Marcos is home to Texas Linux Fest 2015, which is being held Friday and Saturday of this week at the San Marcos Conference Center.

The Wages of Online Disrespect

To some, I am a Linux Guru because I have been using Linux as my only operating system since 2005. To others, I’m the oh-so-adorable-cheek-squeezing newbie who thinks his basic bash skills are a massive achievement. For those who first installed Slackware via a Dagwood sandwich pile of floppies, then I suppose the latter is right. I think we all carry a bit of each within us. But in the end, it doesn’t matter at all — that isn’t even in play. But let me tell you what is in play.

Tux skeletonRespect.

I’ve been a member of the Slashdot community since 2002. My sig line for helios17 is, if I may say so myself, pretty cool. Wanna know what it is? I mean without having to go look it up? Sigh…if you insist.

“Windows assumes you are an idiot…Linux demands proof.”

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