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Posts tagged as “BSD”

BSD Is Ready for SCALE 14X

SCALE 14x

Larry the BSD Guy

First things first: Were I to give an award for Best Presentation Title for SCALE 14X, it would clearly go to iX Systems’ Community Manager (and all-around BSD documentation queen) Dru Lavigne for “Doc Like an Egyptian” — she wins hands down, without question. Dru speaks at SCALE on Saturday, Jan. 23, at 3 p.m.

Speaking of SCALE, the first-of-the-year Linux/FOSS event for 2016 starts next week on Thursday and runs through Sunday. Next to the Rose Bowl and the Tournament of Roses Parade, both of which took place on New Year’s Day, SCALE is the third largest event in Pasadena this month.

BSD variants and a BSD certification exam highlight the presence of the Unix family at SCALE.

FreeBSD Foundation Takes Right Steps

Larry the BSD Guy

First things first: I’m the new kid on the BSD block. While in the process of still figuring things out on PC-BSD — dang that Synaptics! — and finding a place to contribute in the community, I have no real handle on the nuances of the inner workings of the wider BSD community. To my self-promoting credit, I am a quick study and the learning curve is not as difficult as I imagined. On the whole, I like what I see in those contributing to BSD, especially in the way of eagerness to help new users.

However, when Randi Harper decided to bail on participation in FreeBSD as she outlined in her blog, it raises the question, “Where have we seen this before?” Taking a step back, it raises the question, “Why does this keep happening in FOSS communities?”

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

FOSS Force’s Hot Nine for 2015

We’re going to pretend like we’re AM disc jockeys from the golden days of top 40 radio and countdown the top nine stories that appeared on FOSS Force last year. Along the way, we’ll offer a bit of commentary, and maybe remind you a time or two that things were much different way back in 2015.

You Might’ve Noticed a Few Changes Around Here…

If you’ve been visiting FOSS Force for a while, you might have noticed some changes around here. Nothing serious. We didn’t do anything drastic like change our layout or put our content up in twenty page slide shows or anything like that. But we’ve expanded, and I think, improved our content. We’re offering more coverage of FOSS than ever before, while also expanding into territories of free tech that lie outside the arena of software and Linux.

FOSS Force beggingYou might have also noticed that the expansion began just after our May fundraising campaign in which you gave us $2,300 to improve our site. Thanks to you, we have been able to pay our writers — not much mind you, truthfully a small fraction of what they should be paid — which has been a key element to our improved coverage.

Christine Hall

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

BSD: A Brief Look Back at 2015

Larry the BSD Guy

This is the time of year when we look back and go, “Wow. How did this all ever happen?” Or something to that effect. And after about a month of PC-BSD daily use, the verdict so far (subject to appeal) is overwhelmingly positive with a couple of bumps (e.g., someday I will turn off tap-to-click on my touchpad).

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

A BSD Wish List for 2016

Larry the BSD Guy

FOSS Force editor Christine Hall beat me to the punch — that’s the luck of the draw (or lack thereof on my part) in my having a column appearing later in the week — on what she hopes to see in 2016 in the FOSS realm. So I’m taking a page from her playbook and, as a new PC-BSD user, I have a wish list for what I’d like to see on *BSD going forward into the new year.

Google Hangouts iconFirst things first: I know that the wide number of variants in the BSD family are primarily aimed at servers. That said, it’s clearly understandable that with the exception of PC-BSD and BSD variants like GhostBSD, desktop/laptop users are not the primary focus in the BSD constellation.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Plotting Out the BSD Year

Larry the BSD Guy

FreeBSD's Beastie BSDFirst things first: Remember when I said I didn’t have access to Michael Larabel’s fine set of Phoronix tools to do diagnostic hardware comparisons? Well, while looking around for something else in BSD’s very cool AppCafe, I found them — Phoronix tools available for BSD users. So while I go sit in the corner with a pointy hat, I will apologize for that error.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Dell Frees UEFI, iXsystems Wins Double Silver & More…

FOSS Week in Review

I honestly wish this news was better: Please allow a moment of silence for what seems to be the passing of Firefox OS. As a ZTE Open owner and a one-time regular user of that phone (until I needed something more dependable), this hits a sentimental note with me, since I was truly hoping that Mozilla would get the OS for the phone up to speed so it wouldn’t — oh, just to give a personal example — abandon users while performing important, job-dependent communications, for example.

And now, for the wrap:

Fedora logoDell Fixing UEFI for Linux? Linux users may be able to update their UEFI firmware on devices, if Dell has their way. The computer manufacturing giant is looking at making things easier for Linux users, and Richard Hughes writes on his GNOME blog that this capability might be available as early as Fedora 24. “With Dell on board, I’m hoping it will give some of the other vendors enough confidence in the LVFS to talk about distributing their own firmware in public,” Hughes writes, and we have our fingers crossed here.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

PC-BSD 11.0-Current Images Ready, and Let’s Read Some Mail

Larry the BSD Guy

Parsing the developments from the BSD side of things this week for consumption by the general public is a little trickier than it is across the street on the Linux side, however with a little juggling (and an important note from iXsystems to come tomorrow in the weekly FOSS roundup), we’ll take a look at the new images ready for your testing and feedback. Also, I’ll answer some questions which arose in last week’s comments.

BSD logoBefore I do that, though, it bears noting that Susan Linton over at Ostatic.com has picked up the BSD ball and run with it in a recent item on that site. Of special note is this morsel: “PC-BSD is the Linux Mint of free BSDs, an easy-to-use desktop system.” Why it wasn’t referred to as the “vowel-laden-and-overbearing-Linux-distro of free BSD” is a mystery, but I’ll take Linux Mint any day. Also, extra points to Susan for putting the “f” in lower case in “free BSD” to emphasize “BSD which is free” as opposed to FreeBSD, which would have caused some confusion.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

Is That Linux? No, It’s PC-BSD

Larry the BSD Guy

My laptop cover always gets looks wherever I set up to work — usually at Firefly Coffee House in Santa Cruz, where once a five-year-old stared at my cover for literally three minutes. I timed him. But yesterday, I was at Aptos Coffee Roasting Company, not far from Cabrillo College, where I hunkered down while waiting for my daughter to finish her Japanese class (sorry, Firefly — but in my feeble defense, you are not open past six).

A father and son sat at a table nearby, laptops open and I assume they were working on things individually. At one point, the father got up and approached me.

Larry Cafiero

Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero

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