Companies that traditionally focused on proprietary software are now playing catch up in order to compete by utilizing open source development. The Video Screening Room…
FOSS Force
These are the ten most read articles on FOSS Force for the month of June, 2016. 1. Why I’m Unlikely to Ever Return Microsoft’s Love…
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The continuing adventures of a new open source tinkerer who finds his diagnostic acumen sorely lacking during what should have been a simple RAM installation — thereby leaving the rest of us grateful he didn’t pursue a career in the medical field.
The Linux Gadabout
Perhaps Fred Sanford’s negative assessment of my intelligence was a bit hasty last week. As it turns out, this antediluvian Sony Vaio doesn’t so much object to an upgrade of mismatched RAM as it does to RAM that plain doesn’t work. Replacing an underinflated tire with a flat tire, so to speak, doesn’t help anybody.
Here’s how things went down.
While the mainstream tech press is ready to embrace “the new Microsoft” as a friend to open source, many who fought in the trenches against the corporate giant will never be able to forgive and forget.
Op-ed
Every time I write an article criticizing the depth of Microsoft’s proclaimed love of Linux, as well as questioning the motive behind it, I receive return criticism, often from places I would’ve, in the past, least expected, such as from within the GNU/Linux community. In places like Slashdot, some open source subreddits, and even occasionally on FOSS Force, there are commenters who accuse me of letting the past blind me to the great work that Microsoft is now doing for Linux and open source.
Let’s forget for a minute that I have plenty of reasons for seeing Redmond as a continuing threat to free tech. Let’s forget the patent issues the company still uses as a threat, as well as the fact that all of its contributions to open source are to support Azure and Windows, the latter of which remains proprietary and definitely not free software. Let’s also forget that this love of Linux was announced when Microsoft began betting on the cloud, where embracing Linux became necessary for survival. Can you imagine a Windows only cloud service? Neither can I.
Open source is no longer just about the software that sits on your computer. Open methods are being used to develop everything from better automobiles to life altering medical devices.
The Video Screening Room
This inspiring short video from Red Hat, uploaded Monday to YouTube, suggests why open source methods can yield flourishing results.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IOuDi644ac?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]
If you’re an open source enthusiast, make sure you are subscribed to the Red Hat Videos YouTube channel to stay in the loop about future videos they upload. Maybe one of those videos will cover some open source project you’re working on. Also, ask yourself what youngsters do I know who would find this video to be inspiring. Share the link to this video with them and you will have planted a seed that could someday grow into a mighty oak.
Just because it can be kept running doesn’t mean it hasn’t outlived its usefulness.
The Heart of Linux
A month or so ago on Google Plus a spirited discussion took place on old hardware. Many held the belief that if old hardware can be used, for any reasonable need, it should stay out of the recycle cycle for as long as its able to be used, for any reasonable need. Well yeah…ya think? My organization has been doing this going on eleven years now.
To that point, there was a report that a mail server failure in a large business office remained a mystery for two days until someone found an old Pentium II back in the corner of some obscure closet with a burned out power supply. It is reported that the Slackware/Debian/Red Hat machine had been plugging away as a mail server for a number of years, completely unattended. That’s feasible I suppose, but I further suppose that it’s a modern day parable about how open source can indeed, carry the day.
If GNOME hadn’t irked many users when it redesigned its approach to the desktop with GNOME 3, there would be fewer popular desktop environments for Linux.
I recently took my first look at GNOME 3. I’d played around with GNOME 2 a couple of times back in 2002 and 2003, not caring for it very much. This was in small part due to the fact that on Mandrake 9.X, GNOME was unstable and prone to crashing, but mainly because I found it wasn’t configurable enough for my taste. I stuck with KDE, which even back in the dark ages of the early 21st century was uber configurable.
When the brouhaha exploded after the release of GNOME 3, I wasn’t much interested in having a look for myself. However, a few weeks back I finally got some hands-on experience when I wrote a review of Antergos, which I installed with GNOME, not so much because I wanted to give the DE a look but because it’s the distro’s default.
Also included: Solus 1.2, Elementary Snaps, Microsoft fights OEM crapware and LibreOffice’s minor upgrade.
FOSS Week in Review
The biggest news this week was the much awaited release of Fedora 24.
It’s baseball season, and in baseball about this time of year talk turns to trades. Well, I’ve been traded for one game…er, review. That means that although I’ve downloaded and installed Fedora 24 on our test machine, I can’t really give it a full review here. However, I’ll make sure to point you to the review as soon as it goes up “on another network,” as Johnny Carson used to say. All I can tell you now is that so far it seems to do what it does well.
Other than Fedora, the most interesting story to me this week might have been missed by many FOSSers as it doesn’t involve FOSS at all, but our proprietary lover in Redmond.
Joe Colantonio wants to “show you how to succeed with all your testing efforts.” He says, “Automation testing, like all development efforts, is difficult. Most projects don’t succeed.” Frankly, it’s all a little over our heads.
The Video Screening Room
In this new video, Joe Colantonio, speaking from his home in Providence, Rhode Island, asks the sensible question, “Why re-create the wheel from scratch when there are a lot of open source solutions that might well fit your software testing needs?” In this video, he goes on to explain the high points of these six open source programs:
Do you love Microsoft? Dr. Roy Schestowitz doesn’t. He also led a “Boycott Novell” movement back when there was a Novell to boycott, and he…