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Michael DeHaan on Achieving Project Adoption

By Phil Shapiro on April 1, 2016 |

Software, Tutorial and Video

Michael DeHaan on Achieving Project AdoptionMichael DeHaan

The Video Screening Room

While open source software has many advantages over proprietary software, it takes more than writing good code to find a user base for a project.

Starting a successful open source project requires a lot more than technical skills. You need to have wise strategies, which Michael DeHaan, founder of the IT automation company Ansible, clearly explains in this valuable video. In this talk, recorded March 22 on the Centennial Campus of North Carolina State University, he explains that for users to adopt your open source creations, the documentation needs to be outstanding. Your web site needs to be very well done. Learn these and other tips in this video.

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Our ‘Breaking Encryption for the Man’ Poll

By Christine Hall on March 31, 2016 |

Mobile, Politics and Security

First it was the NSA, the FBI and every big city cop shop on the planet insisting we need legislation to force safe, secure and for their eyes only back doors in damn near every device on the planet, presumably including light switches, garbage disposals and dishwashers. Eventually they came to see that doors, hidden or not, are merely temptations for hackers to break on through, and just decided to go on the down low for a while so they could pull a sneak attack later when we least expect it, which is a favorite trick of government types.

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Xubuntu Based Emmabuntüs 3, Version 1.03, ReleasedEmmabuntüs screenshot

Xubuntu Based Emmabuntüs 3, Version 1.03, Released

By FOSS Force on March 30, 2016 |

Community, Distros, Hardware and News

Emmabuntüs is a GNU/Linux distribution that’s definitely set apart from the crowd, as its developers are motivated less by a love for technology than by a connection with humanity.

The Emmabuntüs Community today announced the third maintenance release of Emmabuntüs 3, version 1.03, based on Xubuntu 14.04.4. Like its *buntu namesake, the distro ships with the Xfce desktop by default, but also includes LXDE as an option.

Emmabuntüs screenshotWhat sets Emmabuntüs apart from other GNU/Linux distributions is the fact that it’s a distro with a mission. The informal community responsible for the distribution initially came together sometime before 2012 with the purpose of creating a distribution to simplify the task of refurbishing used computers to be given to charity organizations, with the key recipient being Emmaus, a secular international organization founded in Paris in 1949 by Catholic priest and Capuchin friar Abbé Pierre to combat poverty and homelessness.

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Ubuntu Coming to Windows 10Ubuntu logo

Ubuntu Coming to Windows 10

By Christine Hall on March 30, 2016 |

Business, Distros, News and Operating Systems

In its quest to become the Microsoft of the Linux world, Ubuntu and Microsoft are expected to announce today that Ubuntu will soon run on Windows 10.

Holy crap!

In Friday’s Week in Review I jokingly opined that I wouldn’t be surprised to see “Ubuntu for Windows” as a move by the folks at Canonical as part of their plans for world domination. Guess what? It’s really happening.

In an article published Tuesday, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes that “[a]ccording to sources at Canonical” a deal has been worked out between Ubuntu’s parent company and Microsoft that will lead to the GNU/Linux distro being able to run alongside Windows 10. According to Vaughan-Nichols, “This will not be in a virtual machine, but as an integrated part of Windows 10.”

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SCO Again Returns From Dead, Plans AppealSCO Logo

SCO Again Returns From Dead, Plans Appeal

By FOSS Force on March 30, 2016 |

Business, Copyright and News

FOSS Force has learned that we shouldn’t write obituaries until we actually see a death certificate. SCO intends to file an appeal over the dismissal of its case against IBM.

On Feburary 29, we told you that SCO was “undeniably and reliably dead” after the company signed off on Judge David Nuffer’s dismissal of what remained of its case against IBM. Guess what? We were wrong. The once upon a time Linux and Unix company, which developed and distributed the Caldera GNU/Linux distribution, evidently has not yet been pulled from life support. On Tuesday, the company filed notification that it intends to appeal Judge Nuffer’s ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

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Beware the Pis of MarchLego NesPi Raspberry Pi case

Beware the Pis of March

By Isaac Carter on March 30, 2016 |

Hardware

The Raspberry Pi Report

It’s beyond amazing how many different projects people have created for the Raspberry Pi. Here’s a look at four which are particularly noteworthy.

Well ladies and gentlemen, it’s the end of March. Normally this last-of-the-month article would be a summary of the biggest stories that happened during the month of March concerning the Raspberry Pi. This month, though, I thought I would change it up and discuss some of the biggest projects that were talked about this past month. In no particular order, here is what the month of March had to offer in the way of amazing DIY Raspberry Pi projects.

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A First Look Tutorial of Newly Open Sourced OpenToonzOpenToonz screenshot

A First Look Tutorial of Newly Open Sourced OpenToonz

By Phil Shapiro on March 29, 2016 |

Software, Tutorial and Video

The Video Screening Room

The same 2D animation software that’s used by Studio Ghibli in the making of its feature length anime films is now available as OpenToonz under an open source license.

OpenToonz, 2D animation software based on the proprietary Toonz, was released as open source on Saturday and the OpenToonz tutorials are already rolling in to YouTube. This one by Ryan A. Boone, of Tacoma, Washington, caught my eye. I learned some helpful tips and tricks watching this.

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The Great 2016 Dell Latitude MassacreReglue placing laptop

The Great 2016 Dell Latitude Massacre

By Ken Starks on March 29, 2016 |

Community and Hardware

The Heart of Linux

The story of a donation that should have happened, but didn’t.

That sinking feeling. The feeling you get in the microseconds after someone sneaks up from behind and scares the bejeebus out of you. The feeling you get when you pat your back pocket and discover your wallet isn’t there. The gut dropping three seconds directly after reading the email notifying you of imminent layoff. The feeling that something has taken place that is going to impact your life, and possibly the lives of others, in the most unpleasant of ways.

Reglue placing laptop
Not to be confused with Michael Stipe, that’s me in the corner handing over the Samsung paper thin laptop mentioned in this article to a deserving family.
I had one of those moments just last week. As much as I tell myself that I can’t erase the event or remind myself that suckification happens…it still nags at me like a tenacious ear ache or like a hangnail that induces the impulse to scream every time it’s brushed against something. It’s the feeling that washes over you when you find out you have lost something extremely important and there is no way in the real world that you will be able to reverse that loss.

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Free Tech Refresher: OSS Isn’t Always FOSSFSF Respects Your Freedom Mark

Free Tech Refresher: OSS Isn’t Always FOSS

By Christine Hall on March 28, 2016 |

Business, Community, Copyright, Operating Systems and Software

In recent years, it has become common for the terms “open source” and “FOSS” to be used interchangeably. While it’s true that all FOSS is also open source, it’s also true that being open source doesn’t necessarily mean it’s FOSS.

In the early 21st century, practically anyone using GNU/Linux knew the difference between proprietary, open source, and free and open source software. In those days distinguishing between proprietary, freeware, shareware and truly free software was a piece of cake. This was in large part due to the fact that open source was a relatively new concept, with the term first receiving widespread use in 1998. There were other reasons as well, mostly having to do with the Linux users of the day.

Hardly anybody installed Linux without doing some research first, and very few installed Linux expecting it to look and act like Windows. Although Windows 95 had been out five or more years, most users making the leap to Linux were people who cut their teeth on the command line and who remembered when 640 KB was the absolute amount of RAM in an “IBM compatible,” an ancient name for the PC.

They also weren’t strangers to configuring their systems. Many users of the day could still remember installing “expanded memory” on MS-DOS machines to allow RAM to be increased above the 640 KB memory barrier to a full megabyte, “extended memory,” which allowed RAM to be extended beyond that newly established megabyte absolute, or DriveSpace to encrypt on-the-fly and nearly double the amount of data on the hard drives of the day that might be as small as 40 MB.

A majority of users could remember when home computers were rarely networked, with those that were by way of “walled garden” services such as CompuServe, Prodigy, America Online or private bulletin boards.

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Ethical Hackers Unethically Hacked, Keystroke IDs & More…Red Hat 5.2 shrink wrapped box

Ethical Hackers Unethically Hacked, Keystroke IDs & More…

By Christine Hall on March 25, 2016 |

Business, Desktops, Distros, Internet, Operating Systems and Security

FOSS Week in Review

While Facebook and Google work to better identify you by your typing skills and Red Hat counts the bucks from its best ever year, Ubuntu finally makes it possible to launch from the bottom.

If you depend only on mainstream tech media’s coverage of FOSS, you might be excused for thinking that the biggest news of the week revolved either around Ubuntu’s new summer home in the world of BSD — which isn’t a Canonical project by the way — or Microsoft’s open sourcing of every scrap of code it can find that might benefit Microsoft if it were open sourced.

In my not-so-humble opinion, both of these stories were yawners. Of course somebody’s attempted to create a BSD *buntu. There are already Ubuntu flavors for every single desktop environment known to mankind, as well as a few DEs that are figments of Canonical’s imagination, so where else was there to go but to another operating system? What’s next? Given the way Ubuntu has been cozying up to Microsoft, I’m expecting Ubuntu for Windows.

As for Microsoft’s continuing open sourcing? There’s nothing new here, move on. When Redmond loves Linux and open source enough to quit suing open source projects over patents it claims it has — that will be news.

Continue readingEthical Hackers Unethically Hacked, Keystroke IDs & More…
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