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FOSS Force

Linux Mint Xfce: Moving From Maya to Rebecca

By Christine Hall on May 26, 2015 |

Desktops, Distros, Operating Systems and Reviews

Linux Mint Xfce: Moving From Maya to RebeccaLinux Mint Rebecca menu

Dammit, Clement Lefebvre, you and your team at Linux Mint have gone and done it. Y’all, and the folks at Xfce too. Why couldn’t you just leave well enough alone? I was perfectly fine and dandy with Maya and now you’ve gone and ruined it by coming out with something five times better. Thanks for ruining my Saturday. Thanks a lot.

Linux Mint Welcome Screen
The Welcome Screen shows up after boot until and contains links to useful information about Linux Mint.
Click image to enlarge.
Here’s the problem. For the last couple of years or so we’ve been using Mint’s Xfce edition of Maya (that would be version 13 for those who read the box scores) on nearly all of the machines here at FOSS Force. As Maya will be supported until 2017, we had absolutely no plans to make any upgrades until then, as taking time out for the tedious process of upgrading our machines isn’t one of my favorite things to do — and I’m the one who’d be doing the upgrading.

When the folks at Mint released a new LTS Xfce version (Qiana) in June of last year, followed by another LTS (Rebecca) in January, we didn’t much care. We were more than happy with Maya, and following the age old philosophy of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” we decided to stay the course and keep using what we had until its sunset year arrived. As far as I was concerned, although approaching obsolescence, Maya was damned near perfect. How much better could the latest and greatest be?

However, you might notice that I write about Maya in the past tense. I confess. I killed her.

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Nitpicking LinuxArguing Linux

Nitpicking Linux

By Ken Starks on May 26, 2015 |

Community, Operating Systems and Politics

We can be a quarrelsome people. We can. All of us. Millions of us.

Millions of people, representing different cultures, languages, religions and political or moral belief structures. But somehow we pull it off — this whole “Linux thing.” From where I stand, this cohesion may well be noted by people hundreds of years from now as a model of cooperation.

Arguing LinuxYeah, that’s a stretch but work with me here.

To press the point just a bit more, there are times when I sit back in amazement when considering what we have accomplished to this point. And indeed, we are taking part in a history changing endeavor.

Dethroning a king can be messy.

However, at the micro level…the place where we stand face to face…I don’t think many of us see the macro, the historical value of what it is we do. It’s difficult to see the whole ship when you are painting it from two feet away.

Which is leading up to this…

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Our Fundraiser Extended, New Perk & Some Deals

By FOSS Force on May 23, 2015 |

Site News

Well, maybe we can’t call it our May Pledge Drive any more. We’ve extended our IndieGoGo fundraising campaign, which was scheduled to end a week from tomorrow. The campaign will now remain active until Monday, June 15. We’re doing this, of course, in order to have a better shot at reaching our $6,000 goal. So far we’ve raised $1,030. With the extension, we can do this, but much work needs to be done.

This is important. This money will be necessary if we are to live up to our name and become a legitimate force in the FOSS world (sorry, we couldn’t resist). For those of you who don’t already know about our campaign, all of the money will be used to pay the writers and journalists who get down in the trenches and get the story told — the stories that are important to the FOSS community.

If you’ve already contributed to our campaign, we thank you. If not, please know that we are depending on those who value our site to make a contribution, so we can offer you even more than we do now. As our writer Larry Cafiero said in a Facebook post a few weeks back: the time has come for us to ramp up our coverage.

If you visit our IndieGoGo fundraising page, you’ll see that we’re offering some pretty cool perks — so you can get something beyond the mere satisfaction of being a big help if you want. In fact, we just added a really nice perk today, and lowered the asking price on some others.

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SCALE 14X Moves, Canonical Considers IPO & More…Mark Shuttleworth 2006

SCALE 14X Moves, Canonical Considers IPO & More…

By Larry Cafiero on May 22, 2015 |

Business, Community, Distros, News and Operating Systems

FOSS Week in Review

While the week started out with some of us waxing nostalgic about penguins on racing cars, it seems that the march of progress and onward-and-upward improvement continues, if news from the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) is of any indication.

SCALE moving: According to a highly placed source in the SCALE hierarchy — of course, that would be me — SCALE has outgrown a series of hotels over the last several years, and the 2016 edition of the expo will be held at the Pasadena Convention Center from Jan. 21-24, 2016.

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Ubuntu & the Windows Subscription GambitUbuntu logo

Ubuntu & the Windows Subscription Gambit

By Christine Hall on May 21, 2015 |

Business, Distros and Operating Systems

If you believe what you read, which isn’t always a good idea, Nadella & Company is good with the fact that Windows’ market share is shrinking and the company is more than willing to share market space with others, like OS X, Chrome OS, and presumably Linux. The common knowledge is that the folks in Redmond have come to accept the future and understand that Windows will no longer continue being the cash cow on which an empire was built. Microsoft, going forward, will be more humble than it was in the past and will be leaving its plans for world domination behind.

Ubuntu logoI suspect this new Microsoft is humble like a fox, or more precisely, like a particular lab rat I used to watch on television: that each night as the lights are being dimmed, somewhere in the maze of the Redmond campus an assistant turns to Satya Nadella and says, “What are we going to do tomorrow, boss?”

“The same thing we do every day, Pinky — try to take over the world.”

In other words, the humbleness is a distraction and Microsoft’s new face is merely a mask. It seems that Nadella, the man behind the mask, is sneaky in ways that Ballmer only wanted to be, but couldn’t because his brain wasn’t wired to understand subtlety.

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Windows New ClothesMicrosoft Windows Logo

Windows New Clothes

By Christine Hall on May 20, 2015 |

Operating Systems and Software

I can’t remember when an upcoming release of Windows was more boring, at least not since the 3.X days. Essentially, Microsoft is downplaying this release — just as it did with Windows 7 after the Vista fiasco. While the Windows 8s haven’t been as much of a public relations nightmare as Vista (at least they work), they’ve been a big disappointment for the marketing department.

Microsoft Windows LogoMaybe there’s another reason for downplaying this release.

Perhaps Microsoft isn’t making as much noise as usual because it’s afraid that if people look too closely, they’ll find that its latest and greatest is like an operating system put together at a Goodwill, with parts borrowed from Android, Chrome OS, GNU/Linux and iOS.

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The Day Linux Crashed

The Day Linux Crashed

By Larry Cafiero on May 20, 2015 |

Community and Operating Systems

OK, class, open your history books.

The end of May usually brings many people’s attention toward Indianapolis, home of the Colts, Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), and a 500-mile race on a 2.5-mile rectangular track affectionately known to those who follow auto racing as “the Brickyard.”

As a greenhorn Linux newbie eight springs ago, I happened upon an article on LXer about this guy in Texas who had an idea on how to promote Linux. Oh, it was a crazy idea all right, but thinking about it at the time, it was one that might…just…work. For the Indianapolis 500 in 2007, the idea — this crazy plan — was to put Linux on the side and nose of a car, and while penguins couldn’t fly, they still could go just over 220 and turn left.

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Learning Linux: Who’s Teaching Whom?Jesse

Learning Linux: Who’s Teaching Whom?

By Ken Starks on May 19, 2015 |

Community

Anomalies.

That’s what we are. We, as in those 50 years of age or more who not only know how to use a computer, but who make them do our bidding. Those of us who can upgrade to the latest kernel, edit photos in GIMP, use Audacity to edit sound files, or who think nothing of burning an ISO and creating a USB device that has our entire desktop system ready to carry in our pockets.

Nuclear SkullReferring to us as anomolies in this sense isn’t hyperbole or overstatement. I see it almost every day. I am in a unique position, able to work with at least two generations of computer users:

  1. The generation who will put the first footprint on Mars and cure diabetes.
  2. The generation who cannot understand the difference between a right and a left mouse click.

I am going to be more honest with you than I should, and it’s probably not in my best interest. There was a time when I hit the wall. I could no longer sit with someone, holding their hand while they struggle to understand the simplest computer tasks.

Continue readingLearning Linux: Who’s Teaching Whom?