An article in which we ponder desktop Linux's rising usage numbers, and debate ChromeOS's status as a Linux operating system.
Posts tagged as “chrome os”
Based on this video, it appears as if this Chromebook from Samsung would be a great machine with GNU/Linux installed on it.
The Viewing Room
When watching this video, imagine how nice this Chromebook would be with a full Linux install.
For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.
Chromebooks are really nice laptops, except for one tiny problem which is…well, Chrome OS. This week, our contributing video editor found an easy to follow step-by-step guide for installing Ubuntu on a Chromebook Pixel. Problem solved.
The Video Screening Room
The Chromebook Pixel of 2013 is a lovely computer. Want to make it even lovelier? Install Ubuntu on it. This well-done tutorial video shows and explains all the steps.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Girn7mgoRco?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]
In three years time, the Chromebook Pixels of 2013 will be six years old and you’ll be able to buy one quite affordably on eBay.
For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.
The Video Screening Room Running a GNU/Linux distro within Chrome OS greatly increases the capabilities of a Chromebook. Leo Laporte is a longtime technology commentator…
The Video Screening Room
While the initial reaction from the FOSS community to Android Apps on Chromebooks will probably be a little cooler than lukewarm, the fact is that this might eventually be good for free and open source software.
When Google announced this week that future Chromebooks (and some current ones) will be able to run Android apps, a booming thunderclap spread across Silicon Valley — and could be heard in the four corners of the world. This news is indeed a game changer, reported nicely here in video form by The Verge.
For the past 10 years, Phil has been working at a public library in the Washington D.C.-area, helping youth and adults use the 28 public Linux stations the library offers seven days a week. He also writes for MAKE magazine, Opensource.com and TechSoup Libraries. Suggest videos by contacting Phil on Twitter or at pshapiro@his.com.
The Heart of Linux
It didn’t happen slowly. On the contrary, it was a thunderbolt…a deep, thrumming, resounding sense of being right, of being at the right place at the right time. A sense of finding something that you knew without doubt would be important in your life. There wasn’t any need to “think it through” or “evaluate the situation.” The moment I realized the power under my fingertips, even my self-identity changed. With that moment growing like a supernova inside of me, I fully took on that new identity. As that blazing power exploded from within me, I knew who I was. I was now a firebrand. It was six years ago this month that I knew who I was.
I was a Linux Advocate. I just opted out of the cape.
It didn’t take me long to realize the uphill trudge I had ahead of me. The battle between GNU Linux and just Linux was enough to confuse any convert-to-be in front of me. When it takes more than a few sentences to explain something to almost anyone, their interest wanes quickly. It doesn’t help that I was trying to sell subscriptions to a divided camp either.
A helpful tip for those coming of age as a Linux Advocate: Temper your rhetoric when explaining just how much Microsoft sucks. It’s easy to come off as a wild-eyed zealot. These are lessons in advocacy learned rather quickly. And yeah…, that whole wide-eyed zealot thing? It didn’t work out so well for me. Nor will it for you.
As I did then, I still do.
Ken Starks is the founder of the Helios Project and Reglue, which for 20 years provided refurbished older computers running Linux to disadvantaged school kids, as well as providing digital help for senior citizens, in the Austin, Texas area. He was a columnist for FOSS Force from 2013-2016, and remains part of our family. Follow him on Twitter: @Reglue
The FOSS Force Poll
Now that Microsoft has been pretty much neutralized as a threat, who’s next on the list to be free tech’s “public enemy number one?”
Oracle? While it’s true that the company is more thuggish than Redmond ever dreamed of being, Oracle has never really been a threat to anyone but the database and high finance crowds. Also, the company’s recent financials indicate the company, like Microsoft, isn’t what it used to be.
Apple? So long as it continues to be an overpriced walled garden, it’s not likely to pose much of a threat. It’ll always be held in disdain by free tech folks, but always in the number two position because it’s easily ignored.
My guess is that the company poised to win the most-hated-in-free-tech prize is Google.
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
Microsoft continues its slide into irrelevance, as least as far as consumer tech is concerned. Even the company’s successes, like the Surface Pro, are only relative successes. No matter how hopeful sales figures for the Pro may look, the device is still roadblocked by Redmond’s lack of apps for its mobile devices. Evidently, the holiday shopping season was dismal for Redmond, even in some areas where it would be expected to dominate as usual.
Take laptops, for instance, where Windows sales performance was laughable.
On Friday, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols posted a story on Computerworld illustrating just how low Windows has fallen. He points out that according to Amazon’s sales figures for the holidays, the top three best selling laptops were all running Chrome OS (with Linux inside), with nary a Windows machine in sight.
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
There was a time, back before smartphones and tablets, when most of us used, at most, only three operating systems. Indeed, for the average computer user there was only one operating system that mattered and that was Windows, which held a 95% market share. Even those of us who used Linux or Apple at home usually had to use a Windows computer at work–which remains true today.
However, today’s computer users daily come into contact with many other operating systems than merely Linux, OS X and Windows. Smartphone and tablet users boot into Android and iOS, with some even using the more open Firefox OS and Sailfish OS. To traditional consumer computers we can now add Chrome OS for those who don’t mind doing most of their work in the cloud.
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