FOSS Force

Building an Open Source Eco-Village

By Phil Shapiro on February 21, 2017 |

People involved in the maker movement are coming up with all sorts ideas to both help the planet and improves people’s lives — such as this idea for an open source village.

The Screening Room

If you’re looking for people thinking outside the box, open source people spend most of their day thinking outside the box. Witness Alex Cureton-Griffiths talking about his ideas, at MakerBay Central in Hong Kong, for an open source village in China. Yes, the text in his LibreOffice presentation appears reversed, but that’s a feature, not a bug. (Give me a few weeks to figure out why.)

System76 Saying Goodbye to Bland Design

By Phil Shapiro on February 17, 2017 |

Hardware and Video

Considering that System76 chose to unveil its new design plans to The Linux Gamer — no invite went to FOSS Force, BTW — we can’t help but wonder if a System76 Steam Machine isn’t in the works.

The Screening Room

Gardiner Bryant, famed Linux gamer in Maine, recently produced this interesting video hinting at upcoming new Linux hardware from System 76.

Why I’m Not a Full-Throttle FOSS Advocate

Why I’m Not a Full-Throttle FOSS Advocate

By Robin "Roblimo" Miller on February 16, 2017 |

Browsers, Community and Software

“Software Freedom” shouldn’t mean “use free software or else.” It should mean you are free to use the software you choose.

Roblimo’s Hideaway

I have the Chrome web browser running full-screen on my Ubuntu desktop. Not Chromium, but proprietary Chrome — because it suits my needs better than open source Chromium. I also like Chrome better than Firefox, and I say this after using only Firefox for a week and trying hard to like it.

Some of this may be habit. We humans tend to prefer the familiar to the unfamiliar, and I’ll admit that I have gotten used to Chrome and its features.

DuckDuckGo Ups Ante: Gives $300K to ‘Raise the Standard of Trust’

By FOSS Force on February 15, 2017 |

Business, Community, Internet and News

For the seventh year in a row, the search engine that promises not to stalk your online moves puts its money where its mouth is, this year by donating $300,000 to organizations that work towards online privacy.

The search engine DuckDuckGo isn’t Google — in more ways than one. For starters, its whole premise is to not follow you around as you surf the web. It’s also not rich, so it doesn’t have gazillions of dollars to throw at whatever project strikes its fancy. However, the people who run the little search engine that can are very generous with what money they do have.

As they have for the last seven years, this year they’ve been busy handing out money again.

‘Think WordPress’ Documentary Trailer

By Phil Shapiro on February 14, 2017 |

Internet, Video and Web Apps

While Linux runs the Internet, it’s the free and open source content management platform WordPress that runs most of the websites we visit to stay informed and entertained.

The Screening Room

Open source activism takes many forms, including the creation of documentaries that celebrate and explain open source solutions. Two bold women in France, Deborah Donnier and Emilie Lebrun are working on a 50-minute documentary in French that celebrates and explains WordPress.

You can view the beautifully done trailer of their project here — with English subtitles.

No, OpenSUSE and SUSE Downloads Haven’t Been Hacked

No, OpenSUSE and SUSE Downloads Haven’t Been Hacked

By Christine Hall on February 13, 2017 |

Distros, News and Security

No matter what you might have heard or read, it appears as if last week’s defacement of openSUSE’s news site didn’t affect download images of either openSUSE or SLES.

openSUSE News WordPress — Screenshot courtesy Schestowitz.com

There’s a good chance you’ve already heard the news that a week ago today the openSUSE News site was defaced with an anti-ISIS message by a Kurdish group. Yup, that happened and was quickly fixed. You might also have heard that the hack went much deeper and that openSUSE, perhaps even SUSE, might have hosted hacked versions of their distros with a newly added backdoor. Nope. All indications are this never happened.

‘Night in the Woods’ Improving Games by Open Sourcing Code

‘Night in the Woods’ Improving Games by Open Sourcing Code

By Phil Shapiro on February 10, 2017 |

Community, Gaming and Video

“Night in the Woods,” the much anticipated crowdfunded game scheduled to be released next week — with a GNU/Linux version, BTW — built a development community by open sourcing code.

The Screening Room

Game software developer Jon Manning has created a very well-done 60-second promo for his upcoming talk at the Games Developer Conference in San Francisco, Feb 27-March 3, 2017 – Making Night-in-the-Woods Better with Open Source.

Poverty Helps You Keep Technology Safe and Easy

Poverty Helps You Keep Technology Safe and Easy

By Robin "Roblimo" Miller on February 9, 2017 |

Humor, Internet and Security

In the technology age, there might be some before unknown advantages to living on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. The question is, do they outweigh the disadvantages.

Roblimo’s Hideaway

Earlier this week I saw a ZDNet story titled Vizio: The spy in your TV by my friend Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols. Scary stuff. I had a vision of my wife and me and a few dozen of our closest friends having a secret orgy in our living room, except our smart TV’s unblinking eye was recording our every thrust and parry (you might say). Zut alors! In this day of Internet everywhere, we all know that what goes online, stays online. Suddenly our orgy wasn’t secret, and my hopes of becoming the next President were dashed.

Except… lucky me! I’m poor, so I have an oldie-but-goodie dumb TV that doesn’t have a camera. There’s no way my old Vizio can spy on us. As Mel Brooks didn’t quite say, “It’s good to be the poverty case.”

Back Yard Linux

Back Yard Linux

By Christine Hall on February 9, 2017 |

Community and Operating Systems

It’s not as lonely being a Linux user as it once was. These days you’re liable to find people throughout your neighborhood using Linux.

My how times have changed.

It wasn’t long ago that Linux users couldn’t get any respect. People on the street had absolutely never even heard of Linux, and if you needed the services of technical support, like from your ISP, you might as well forget it. Back in the day, the help desk’s favorite thing to say was “we don’t support Linux.”

What they meant, of course, was that they had no clue on how to do anything in Linux. They were skilled at guiding users through arcane parts of Windows to determine whether the problem was with the company’s servers or with the customer’s computer. If the truth be known, they didn’t really know anything about Windows either, but they had a script.

‘Open Source’ Is Now a Word?

‘Open Source’ Is Now a Word?

By Christine Hall on February 8, 2017 |

Humor and News

So far there’s been no news on Microsoft’s reaction to “open source” being officially recognized by the arbiters of the English language.

“Open source” is now officially a word according to Merriam-Webster, according to my good friends at Ars Technica. Actually, I don’t know anybody at Ars Technica, but whenever you’re stealing news from another news source, you’re traditionally allowed to refer to everyone who works there as “my good friends.” The theory is that if they think you’re a friend of theirs, they won’t sue you.

Charlie Reisinger’s ‘The Open Schoolhouse’

By Phil Shapiro on February 7, 2017 |

Community, Reviews and Video

The Screening Room

Charlie Reisinger is the IT Director of the Penn Manor School District, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He recently finished writing a spellbinding book describing how his school district decided to adopt open source software and methods. When reading this book, I sent an email to Charlie saying: “This book reads as if it’s your doctoral thesis — it’s a multiyear capstone project.” Charlie responded, “It felt in some way like that while writing the book.” Charlie went on to tell me that the reason he wrote the book was to help other school districts make the plunge into open source. “Come on in – the water is warm!” is the reassuring tone throughout the book.

Here is my video review of this book. Note — at 27-minutes long, it’s much longer than my other video book reviews. I had no choice but to give the book its due. It’s a masterful piece of storytelling that offers hope to students and teachers everywhere.

All Things Open AI

The Linux Foundation Member Summit

Open Networking and Edge Summit

RIoT Developer Day

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2025

Building an Open Source Eco-Village

People involved in the maker movement are coming up with all sorts ideas to both help the planet and improves people’s lives — such as this idea for an open source village.

The Screening Room

System76 Saying Goodbye to Bland Design

Considering that System76 chose to unveil its new design plans to The Linux Gamer — no invite went to FOSS Force, BTW — we can’t help but wonder if a System76 Steam Machine isn’t in the works.

The Screening Room

Why I’m Not a Full-Throttle FOSS Advocate

“Software Freedom” shouldn’t mean “use free software or else.” It should mean you are free to use the software you choose.

Roblimo’s Hideaway

DuckDuckGo Ups Ante: Gives $300K to ‘Raise the Standard of Trust’

For the seventh year in a row, the search engine that promises not to stalk your online moves puts its money where its mouth is, this year by donating $300,000 to organizations that work towards online privacy.

‘Think WordPress’ Documentary Trailer

While Linux runs the Internet, it’s the free and open source content management platform WordPress that runs most of the websites we visit to stay informed and entertained.

No, OpenSUSE and SUSE Downloads Haven’t Been Hacked

No matter what you might have heard or read, it appears as if last week’s defacement of openSUSE’s news site didn’t affect download images of either openSUSE or SLES.

‘Night in the Woods’ Improving Games by Open Sourcing Code

“Night in the Woods,” the much anticipated crowdfunded game scheduled to be released next week — with a GNU/Linux version, BTW — built a development community by open sourcing code.

The Screening Room

Poverty Helps You Keep Technology Safe and Easy

In the technology age, there might be some before unknown advantages to living on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. The question is, do they outweigh the disadvantages.

Roblimo’s Hideaway

Back Yard Linux

It’s not as lonely being a Linux user as it once was. These days you’re liable to find people throughout your neighborhood using Linux.

‘Open Source’ Is Now a Word?

So far there’s been no news on Microsoft’s reaction to “open source” being officially recognized by the arbiters of the English language.

Charlie Reisinger’s ‘The Open Schoolhouse’

The Screening Room