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FOSS Force

IBM’s Linux Birthday, Oliver Stone’s ‘Snowden’ PSA & More…

By Christine Hall on August 5, 2016 |

Desktops, Distros, Hardware, Media, News and Software

IBM’s Linux Birthday, Oliver Stone’s ‘Snowden’ PSA & More…Wi-Fi

Also included: FCC requires TP-Link to allow users to install open source firmware on routers, five new distro releases, new releases of LibreOffice and KDE Plasma, and Microsoft releases Skype 1.3 Alpha for Linux.

FOSS Week in Review

Maybe because we’re in the last 30 days or so of real summer — as opposed to calendar summer — or perhaps because most ‘Mericans are glued to their TVs as the Clinton/Trump heavyweight bout gets underway in earnest, but this has been a slow news week in the FOSS world. However, there are some notable items worth mentioning.

Wi-FiFCC supports open source Wi-Fi firmware. For the last several months many open sourcers have been up in arms because it looked as if the door was being closed on open source on Wi-Fi routers after the agency changed it’s rules around radio interference on the 5 GHz band, making it difficult for router makers to allow users to install open source firmware on their routers. All along, the FCC claimed that shutting out open source use wasn’t part of the game plan, but we FOSSers are a suspicious lot and we weren’t buying it.

Continue readingIBM’s Linux Birthday, Oliver Stone’s ‘Snowden’ PSA & More…
Airbnb’s Brenden Matthews on HadoopHadoop on Mesos

Airbnb’s Brenden Matthews on Hadoop

By Phil Shapiro on August 5, 2016 |

Software and Video

Want to learn more about big data? This video by Brenden Matthews on running Hadoop on Mesos will be a good start.

The Video Screening Room

Apache Hadoop is open source software for handling large data sets using distributed computing. This engaging video by Airbnb engineer Brenden Matthews explains Hadoop in historical context. I found it useful for familiarizing myself with general Hadoop terminology and concepts.

Continue readingAirbnb’s Brenden Matthews on Hadoop
Dumping Windows Overboard Because Linux Does It AllLinux

Dumping Windows Overboard Because Linux Does It All

By Robert Glen Fogarty on August 4, 2016 |

Gaming and Operating Systems

In this week’s installment, our GNU/Linux newbie decides to go all in and take the training wheels off his Linux laptop.

The Linux Gadabout

The more I use Linux, the less I like Windows.

I doubt this will be a shocker — the majority of FOSS Force readers will probably nod their heads knowingly at this point. Additionally, my Mac using friends will smugly point out how they’ve been trying to steer me away from that Microsoft garbage for years, but Apple’s not kept me free from frustration, either. In fairness to all options on the table, I’m sure Linux won’t remain blameless as I log more time with it. I’ll even allow the possibility that Windows is just the easiest target for my unspent rage as it’s been on my radar the longest. But so far, most of the problems I’ve had with Linux (Ubuntu MATE, in particular) have been hardware related — that is, not the fault of Linux at all.

Continue readingDumping Windows Overboard Because Linux Does It All
When Slashdot Was the Hub for FOSS News and DiscussionSlashdot Timothy Lord

When Slashdot Was the Hub for FOSS News and Discussion

By Robin "Roblimo" Miller on August 4, 2016 |

Community, Distros, Internet, Media and Video

The original Slashdot crew was declared redundant in early 2016 by the site’s latest owner, Slashdot Media. Timothy Lord was the last of the early Slashdot editors to be let go, and has posted more stories on Slashdot than anyone else, ever, so we turned to him to learn how and why Slashdot helped the FOSS movement grow and eventually infiltrate mainstream IT.

The FOSS Force Video Interview

Starting in the last years of the last century, when Linux and free software were first making their mark on the world, a website called Slashdot was the king-hell news and discussion site for such things, along with a variety of other topics that interested the kind of people you might meet at a LUG meeting or in the CS department of your local university. The original Slashdot tagline (no longer visible on the site) was “News for nerds, stuff that matters.” And one of the people who worked on Slashdot during those heady days was Timothy Lord, who is such a devout Linux person that he has a Tux tattoo (which we forgot to have him show in the video, darn it).

Continue readingWhen Slashdot Was the Hub for FOSS News and Discussion
Encrypted File Sharing Service Tresorit Offers Linux Desktop Client, But…Tresorit Linux Client

Encrypted File Sharing Service Tresorit Offers Linux Desktop Client, But…

By Christine Hall on August 3, 2016 |

Reviews, Security and Web Apps

At first glance, Tresorit’s end-to-end file sharing service looks like it might be able to overcome its proprietary nature and win favor with some Linux users. Unfortunately, the service comes with another issue that might be an insurmountable deal breaker for some.

The FOSS Force Review

On Thursday I received an email from Eszter Szilva, a PR manager at Tresorit, which is an “end-to-end encrypted file sharing service.” She was offering an invitation to take a peek at the company’s just released client for GNU/Linux. I must admit I was a little excited by this, despite the fact that I already figured the service was also end-to-end proprietary. I was willing to ignore that, thinking it’s about time for companies to start treating Linux users with the same respect given to users of other operating systems.

Continue readingEncrypted File Sharing Service Tresorit Offers Linux Desktop Client, But…
A Review of the Pocket CHIP ComputerPocket CHIP computer

A Review of the Pocket CHIP Computer

By Phil Shapiro on August 2, 2016 |

Hardware, Reviews and Video

The CHIP computer, a SBC that runs on Debian and is billed as “the world’s first $9 computer,” has been released. This video review of the Pocket CHIP offers a good preview of what it’s about.

The Video Screening Room

The runaway Kickstarter success CHIP computer is now shipping, both the computer motherboard itself and the neat Pocket CHIP handheld device. A thorough video review of the device was created by gadget reviewer Lon Seidman.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnDbB6YlPvo?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

To remind you what the CHIP Kickstarter campaign looked like on its first day, here is a screencast I made showing the contributions coming in on the first evening. This 30 second video is sped up to show several hours of Kickstarter contributions.

Continue readingA Review of the Pocket CHIP Computer
Ghosts in the Voting MachinesVoting Machine

Ghosts in the Voting Machines

By Christine Hall on August 2, 2016 |

Hardware, Politics and Security

Whether or not foreign governments are planning on manipulating our election results in November, it’s past time we started taking the security of electronic voting seriously.

Op-ed

Even if it turns out that the FBI’s suspicions that Russian government forces are behind the hacking of the Democratic party turn out to be untrue, the fact our government is willing to publicly speculate on the possibility should be cause for some alarm. While it’s true that from a hacking sense the Democrats’ computers were probably low lying fruit and easy pickings, so are many of the voting machines that will be called into service in November’s general election.

Voting Machine
Joebeone at en.wikipedia [GNU Free Documentation License]
For decades we’ve known that many voting machines are subject to tampering, and many reasonable people are suspicious that tampering on the state level has already affected the outcome of some elections. This year we can double down on those concerns. In an era when politically motivated officials have been putting in place draconian voter restrictions in order to quell largely unproven fraud by a handful of individual voters, we’ve connected our voting machines to the Internet, which is an open invitation to foreign governments that might have a reason to want to have control over who governs us. In light of the recent allegations against Russia, that should be worrisome.

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Become a Better Open Source Advocate by Becoming a Better Human Beingjoining hands

Become a Better Open Source Advocate by Becoming a Better Human Being

By Phil Shapiro on August 1, 2016 |

Community

The best role models for any cause, open source or otherwise, are people you would admire even if they didn’t support your cause. In other words, your support of open source will be more meaningful if you strive to be a good person.

People who care deeply about open source often ask themselves the question, “How can I become a better open source advocate?” That’s an interesting question, to be sure, but the answer might not take you far. Consider asking yourself a more probing question: “How can I become a better human being?”

joining hands

To my mind, the world does not need better open source advocates. What the world needs is better cellists who love open source, better choreographers who love open source, better architects, city planners, animators, schoolteachers farmers, designers, writers, filmmakers, doctors, nurses, legislators and school superintendents who love open source. By becoming a better human being, you advance the cause of open source.

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Software Freedom in Kosovo, Waiting for Xfce Mint & More…LibreOffice logo

Software Freedom in Kosovo, Waiting for Xfce Mint & More…

By Christine Hall on July 29, 2016 |

Browsers, Community, Desktops, Distros, News, Operating Systems and Software

Also included: Canonical joins The Document Foundations advisory board, Chromium coming to Fedora, OpenVZ now a complete Linux distro and GNU Linux-libre Kernel 4.7 released.

FOSS Week in Review

It’s not FOSS, but I reckon the biggest story in tech this week, ignoring claims of Russia hacking for Trump, is the sale of Yahoo to Verizon for $4.8 billion. Considering that traffic watcher Alexa says the site is the fifth most visited address on the web, that seems like something of a bargain to me. Add to that Yahoo’s prime Silicon Valley real estate and the price seems to be in the “it fell of the truck” category. The sale puts Verizon in control of both America Online and Yahoo, so I suspect we’ll be seeing Verizon trying to compete with Google and Bing for a share of the search advertising market.

Meanwhile in the world of FOSS…

LibreOffice logoLibreOffice has been in the news this week. The big story, which we first heard on Tuesday, is that Canonical has joined The Document Foundation’s advisory board. In case you’re new in town, TDF is the nonprofit that controls the development of LibreOffice.

Continue readingSoftware Freedom in Kosovo, Waiting for Xfce Mint & More…
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