These are the ten most read articles on FOSS Force for the month of January, 2015. 1. Welcome the New Breed of Linux Users by…
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FOSS Week in Review
Well, much of the focus for the week was on the Federal Communications Commission vote on increased net neutrality protections, and according to rational news sources reporting on the issue (e.g., just about everyone but Fox News and their wannabes), this is a good thing.
Enough has been written about it, but I did want to point out a post by Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker, where she says, “We just accomplished something very important together. Today, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted for strong net neutrality protections. This happened because millions of people — including many hundreds of thousands
in Mozilla’s community — joined together as citizens of the Web to demand those strong protections.”
Those who’re new to Linux want the best distro out there for new users, which means simple things like ease of use, productivity, speed, and…
First things first: It’s a safe bet that Ruth Suehle could read the Raleigh phone book and make it sound interesting, with or without accompanying Lowenbrau slides. So it would come as no surprise that of all the great keynotes that have been given at the Southern California Linux Expo, Ruth’s Sunday keynote makes anyone’s SCALE short list as an all-time great.
Generally, many who attend three-day — excuse me, a four-day — event like SCALE start to wear down during the marathon grind. However, Ruth’s keynote injected a much-needed boost to kick off the final day.
There are many reasons why people use Bodhi Linux. Some use it because they really like the Enlightenment desktop, and Bodhi has pioneered the integration of Enlightenment to create a distro that is both beautiful, elegant and functional. Others use it because they want an operating system that stays out of their way, and although Enlightenment offers plenty of whistles and bells for those who need or want them, it can also be configured to be highly minimalist and use a very small amount of system resources.
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There’s a scene in the movie “Apollo 13” where astronaut Jim Lovell (played by Tom Hanks) is excitedly rushing through the house after finding out he’s been picked to go to the moon on Apollo 13. His wife asks, “Why 13?” “It comes after 12,” Lovell replies without missing a beat.
For all the angst and trepidation that accompanied the fact that this is “unlucky” number 13 in the series of Southern California Linux Expo conferences, the show has gone forward in a relatively painless manner with only run-of-the-mill minor snags here and there.
Knock on wood. Throw table salt over your shoulder.
What a difference 30 minutes makes: Early Friday morning — 8 a.m. is early Friday morning for most — the registration area for SCALE 13x was relatively quiet and lightly populated with folks checking in, ready for a day of SCALE 13x. By 8:30, the line was around the lobby and down the hall.
Attendance for SCALE looks like it may break previous records. Steve Bibayoff, who works the Free Software Foundation booth, asked me Friday evening if his badge number was any indication of how many people have registered so far.
His badge number is a number just south of 3100; by a factor of less than 10.
FOSS Week in Review
Larry’s at SCALE 13x, covering the event for us while fulfilling his duties as the conference’s publicity chair, so he twisted my arm to again take care of the week’s news review. Well, he didn’t really twist my arm; he asked politely. And promised to give me some piece of conference swag he has no use for. Can’t wait to see what it is.
New Xfce due next week
Speaking of Larry, back in December he helped quash a rumor that the popular Xfce desktop had been abandoned. Now we have further evidence that he wasn’t just talking through his hat — as if there was ever any doubt.
Today the folks at Softpedia announced that Xfce 4.12 will be released by the end of February, or most likely on March 1st:
It was a first for the Southern California Linux Expo — a midweek start on Thursday for SCALE 13x, and those of us on the SCALE Team did not know what to expect. The day was composed of a variety of sessions — an all-day Intro to Chef, Puppet Labs held its separate-registration Puppet Camp LA, openSUSE held its mini-summit, PostgreSQL held the first of its two-day PostgreSQL days, Fedora held its Fedora Activity Day, and an all-day Apache session.
Frankly, we weren’t disappointed.