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Microsoft’s Linux OS & Open Source Cred

By Christine Hall on September 24, 2015 |

Business, Humor and Operating Systems

Microsoft’s Linux OS & Open Source CredTux

Microsoft has gone and built a Linux distro. Well, maybe it’s not a distro but some sort of Azure switch to use in the cloud. But anyway, Microsoft want’s you — meaning you open sourcers who never do anything but throw brickbats at the fine folks in Redmond — to know that it’s built on Linux. So there. Microsoft does love Linux, as if there was ever any doubt.

Microsoft logoGreat. Just great.

I’m sure they would’ve preferred to build their switch-masquerading-as-an-operating-system on Windows, but they couldn’t figure out how to pull all of the crap they didn’t need out of the Windows bloat. Of course, they could’ve used BSD and made the whole kit and caboodle proprietary, which would be more their speed, but that wouldn’t have given them any open source cred, which they’re so desperately trying to garner. Since there’s no need to make it proprietary as it’s going to be sitting on Azure where it can be used without ever having to show the source code, why not use Linux to prove their newfound love for open source?

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Being Thoughtful About FOSS History

By Larry Cafiero on September 23, 2015 |

Community, Media and

Time to saddle up the rant stallion and take him out of the stable: This comes up from time to time on social media — as it did again several days ago — and it’s really about time it stops.

Dennis Ritchie and Steve Jobs died pretty close to each other, time-wise. That may sound like the start of a joke — “Dennis Ritchie and Steve Jobs meet at the pearly gates, and…” — but we’re not going there today. Many people are under the impression that while Steve Jobs got all the attention as the “messiah of computing” when he died, Dennis Ritchie was completely ignored.

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In the Seed of a Raspberry Is the Future of Linuxraspberry pi

In the Seed of a Raspberry Is the Future of Linux

By Isaac Carter on September 22, 2015 |

Hardware and Operating Systems

There’s no need to fret over the future of desktop Linux; Raspberry Pi has that covered. It’s expanding the future of Linux in other ways as well. Let me explain.

At this very moment, thousands of children are hard at work tinkering with wires and connecting circuits to watch lights flicker on and off. They are typing lines of Python and are awestruck as a robotic arm comes to life for the first time. Smiles are widening on each child’s face as new boundaries are being crossed and experiments are taking shape. Linux has brought this joy into the lives of each of these children. How? Through the small but very powerful computer called the Raspberry Pi.

Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pi 2 Model B v1.1
Photo by Multicherry

How is the Raspberry Pi expanding the future of Linux? When it comes to learning the craft of creating code, there are several beautifully crafted frameworks that can get children up to speed faster than any IDE or code book. First and foremost is the programming language Scratch. This language, created by the Lifelong Kindergarten group out of MIT, is geared towards teaching children how to program through an easy to navigate drag-and-drop interface. This interface allows the user to see their code come to life much more quickly than they would through a text editor or an IDE, which is exactly what is needed for a child’s attention span.

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The Great Austin, Texas Linux Radio Advertising CampaignVU Meter

The Great Austin, Texas Linux Radio Advertising Campaign

By Ken Starks on September 22, 2015 |

Business, Humor, Media and Operating Systems

Back in the early 90s, I spent four hours of my mornings co-hosting a local AM radio talk show in Austin, Texas. Truth be told, I fell into the job. I most certainly wasn’t looking for a job in talk radio, or any job for that matter, but from the first day, the host and I clicked perfectly. She was the “straight man” in our duo. Her explosive laughter pegged the needles constantly.

VU meterWe were an AM show but there was also an FM show going on at the same time in the next room, with a wall of plate glass window separating the AM and the FM folks. Often, we would cut up and the audience had no idea that the FM guy was silently doing outlandish things for the AM folks entertainment. We’re gonna leave it at “outlandish.” Sometimes, it went just a tad bit farther than that.

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FOSS the Solution to Piracy Newspaper SaysDhaka

FOSS the Solution to Piracy Newspaper Says

By Christine Hall on September 21, 2015 |

Business, Copyright, News and Software

It’s not news that parts of the world are awash in pirated software, mainly Windows and MS Office. What is news is that in many countries, governments are no longer turning a blind eye to software piracy at the corporate level.

Recently in China, once considered something of a safe haven for piraters, a two year joint effort by Chinese police and the U.S. FBI led to 25 arrests and the seizure of $500 million in counterfeit Microsoft and Symantec software products, which included over 290,000 counterfeit discs and fake certificates of authenticity. The incident reportedly led to the bringing down of two criminal organizations that were responsible for distributing up to $2 billion in pirated software.

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FSF turns 30, Italian Military Goes LO and ODF & More…FSF 20th Anniversary

FSF turns 30, Italian Military Goes LO and ODF & More…

By Larry Cafiero on September 18, 2015 |

Community and Software

FOSS Week in Review

First things first: If you noticed the abscence of the clockwork-like timing of each of FOSS Force’s articles this week, it’s because our editor-in-chief Christine Hall lost a battle with gravity involving a staircase and spent some time recovering from a good banging-up. When you get a chance, wish her a speedy recovery.

FSF30-lettermark-effectsSpeaking of things as certain as gravity…

FSF Turns 30: Mark your calendars for Oct. 3. The Free Software Foundation — you know, the guys and gals who continue to tirelessly advocate for “free-as-in-freedom-and-beer” technology — is gearing up for its 30th birthday party. The party will feature an address by FSF founder and president Richard Stallman. You can learn more about the event on the celebration page and the RSVP form is open. If you so desire to use a hashtag on social media (though the FSF has this caveat about social media), knock yourself out with #FSF30.

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Virtual Reality & Open SourceOpenSpace3D logo

Virtual Reality & Open Source

By Hunter Banks on September 15, 2015 |

Gaming

When the Oculus Rift first debuted as a kickstarter project in 2012 it brought the possibility of virtual reality (VR) gaming back to the public at large. Nintendo tried it’s hands at virtual reality when it released its Virtual Boy in 1995. The Virtual Boy was an ambitious project that just didn’t find its market at the time. According to critics and testers at its preview, among the primary problems were “its high price, the discomfort caused by play…and what was widely judged to have been a poorly handled marketing campaign.”

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Booting Windows 10…Out the DoorBoot

Booting Windows 10…Out the Door

By Ken Starks on September 15, 2015 |

Operating Systems

I’ve talked about it here before. Ken’s Rule.

It’s a simple rule I developed years ago when worry was beginning to cause me to become ill. As a business owner, I worried about a lot of things, both business and personal, and it was herding me toward a heart attack or a stroke. Ken’s Rule is easy in concept but it takes practice to put into play.

BootThe thing that is worrying or bothering you? Jump ahead 24 hours in your mind. What will you most likely be doing? Does that thing you are worrying about now have any bearing on your life 24 hours later? Has that thing you are worrying about followed you? Has worrying about it made it better or go away? No? Then stop worrying. If what you are worrying about isn’t going to be important 24 hours from now, just stop it. Stop injuring yourself. And for those who don’t realize it…worry can often lead to anger. In fact, it most often does.

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Finding Linux & FOSS Where You Least Expect ItPanama City

Finding Linux & FOSS Where You Least Expect It

By Juan Courville on September 14, 2015 |

Community

It wasn’t that long ago that being a Linux or FOSS user in Panama was a lonely experience. Like everywhere else, the country was an established Microsoft camp and you either bought proprietary software — Windows, Office and the like — or pirated what you needed. There were no other options.

Back in the days when the PC and the Internet were starting to change how work is done in Latin America, I was a project manager in small business finance. Even though I’m an industrial engineer by training, because I’m tech oriented I was asked questions about network security, wireless, storage, what sort of program we could use at the office…stuff like that. My conclusion? We were either going to have to buy expensive software licenses and new hardware or find another way.

Panama City
Panama City
In those days, “another way” was hard to find. Outside of certain tech circles, no one even knew what open source was. I had tried Red Hat, with poor results, and had seen an early version of Star Office (the granddaddy of LibreOffice, which I’m using to write this article), but didn’t care much for either and went back to proprietary for a while. Along the way I tried one of the first — if not the first — live distro’s around: Knoppix.

But as I said, life was pretty lonely for a FOSS user back then.

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The Firefox Is in the Hen HouseFirefox logo

The Firefox Is in the Hen House

By Christine Hall on September 14, 2015 |

Browsers, Business and Internet

Way back when, before Google got into the software biz with stuff like Android and Chrome, Firefox cut a deal with the ad-agency-masquerading-as-a-search-engine which probably made Mozilla’s browser the most well funded open source project outside of Linux. The deal — simply to make Google the default search engine in Firefox — was a no brainer, not only for Google and Mozilla but also for the browser’s user base, as most users would most likely choose Google anyway, since Google then, like today, was overwhelmingly the most used search engine in the solar system.

Firefox logoThe deal created a river of money flowing into Mozilla’s coffers — $138 million in 2011 alone — allowing rapid development of Firefox, proper maintenance of Thunderbird and Bugzilla, and the creation of Firefox OS. Although there was a bit of grumbling from some FOSSers who would’ve preferred a default search engine that was more respectful of user privacy rights, the deal was generally seen as a good thing for the free and open source community.

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