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Posts tagged as “Linux”

More Linux Phones, More Mint Hack & Just Plain More…

By Christine Hall on February 26, 2016 |

Browsers, Community, Copyright, Distros, Mobile, Obits, Operating Systems and Security

More Linux Phones, More Mint Hack & Just Plain More…

FOSS Week in Review

As Linux Mint scrambles to get security back on track, numerous prototypes of Linux phones are on display and Ubuntu gathers awards at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona.

What a week in the FOSS world. So much has happened since our last Week in Review that I think I’ll skip the idle chitchat about the weather and such and get straight to business. Well, I will take the time to tell you that it’s been damned cold in these parts and I’m more than ready for spring…

Linux Mint LogoThe Great 2016 Linux Mint Hack: The hack at one of the crown jewels of Linux distros has undoubtedly been the biggest story this week. I’ll not bore you by repeating details which most of you have probably already read by now, but will direct those of you who don’t know to FOSS Force’s coverage on Sunday, and to our report on Monday in which Freedom Penguin Matt Hartley helps me take a look at the nature of the crack/hack.

The good news is that things are slowly — very slowly — returning to normal for the Mint team. By midweek, things were under control enough that the switch could be flipped on Mint’s server, putting the website back online. On Thursday I had a very brief email discussion with the distro’s project leader Clem Lefebvre — “very brief” because Lefebvre was more than little busy at the time. He and his team are in up to their elbows, working to make sure that everything works and plays well with the hardening they’ve done to Mint’s server, as well as working overtime to find any niggling security issues. In other words, they have it all under control, even as they work to get it more under control.

Continue readingMore Linux Phones, More Mint Hack & Just Plain More…
Tomorrow’s Veterinarian Using Linux TodayCow and girl

Tomorrow’s Veterinarian Using Linux Today

By Ken Starks on February 23, 2016 |

Community and Operating Systems

The Heart of Linux

In Southeast Texas, a young girl easily harnesses the power of GNU/Linux as she prepares for her future as a veterinarian in America’s heartland.

This past Sunday I had scheduled a Reglue installation for a young lady a couple of towns east of Taylor. This part of Central Texas is dotted with small towns. Some towns flourished during the golden age of the railroad, some grew to support miners for a local aluminum mine, and even others gathered as a farming and cotton textile hub. I like spending some time in these places, since my small town is much like these. They are barely a shadow of their former selves, their industries having dwindled or disappeared, but for some reason they remain.

Caldwell, Texas
Photo: Billy Hathorn at en.wikipedia.

The upside to these small towns is almost always the presence of extremely good school systems. The class sizes are at most 20 kids, but most often, in the mid teens. Some teachers who began their teaching careers here remain until they retire, at least those who do not have to move away due to spousal employment circumstances. It is not rare to have a fifth grade teacher attending his or her student’s high school graduation.

When I visit kids from these heartland towns, I feel like I’ve stepped into an alternate time. Not of time past, but a different kind of time. A time where grade school kids are challenged by their homework assignments and look forward to that challenge, high school kids take food orders on roller skates evenings and weekends at the local Sonic drive-in, farm kids work the land with their parents, and almost every boy learns how to turn wrenches with his dad on Saturday mornings. A time where being referred to as “Sir” or “Ma’am” is the norm.

Ken Starks

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

linuxlock.blogspot.com/
Continue readingTomorrow’s Veterinarian Using Linux Today
#codeforaubrey, WebKit Linux Risk & More…Aubrey Howell

#codeforaubrey, WebKit Linux Risk & More…

By Christine Hall on February 19, 2016 |

Browsers, Community, Distros, Hardware, Mobile, News and Operating Systems

FOSS Week in Review

The good news this week is that the latest Linux vulnerability finally scared me enough to take the time to fix the issues I’ve been having with the updater on the Linux box we use here at the office and get our machine up-to-date with all the latest patches. Other than that, it’s just been the usual, which can be summed-up as waiting for Godot, who so far remains a no show…

Now for this weeks roundup:

Often the best place to find hope is in the middle of despair. I think somebody famous once said that; if not, I’ll take credit for it. Anyway, there’s been an example of that adage this week which has me feeling…well, full of hope, and at the same time, concerned for someone I’ve never met.

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

FOSSForce.com
Continue reading#codeforaubrey, WebKit Linux Risk & More…
Singing About the Year of the Linux Desktop

Singing About the Year of the Linux Desktop

By Robin "Roblimo" Miller on February 19, 2016 |

Humor and Media

In this riff, we leave no stone unturned as we trip through the past seeking portents of the elusive Year of the Linux.

The first song I heard about the Linux Desktop was Hold On, It’s Coming, released in 1971 by Country Joe McDonald. This was an amazing prediction, considering that Linus Torvalds was only two years old at the time. Is it possible that young Linus heard this piece and it spurred him to create the GNU/Linux operating system? We may never know.

Robin "Roblimo" Miller

Robin “Roblimo” Miller is a freelance writer and former editor-in-chief at Open Source Technology Group, the company that owned SourceForge, freshmeat, Linux.com, NewsForge, ThinkGeek and Slashdot, and until recently served as a video editor at Slashdot. Now he’s mostly retired, but still works part-time as an editorial consultant for Grid Dynamics, and (obviously) writes for FOSS Force.

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Manjaro Now Available for Raspberry PiManjaro Arm welcome

Manjaro Now Available for Raspberry Pi

By Isaac Carter on February 17, 2016 |

Distros and Operating Systems

The Raspberry Pi Report

The popular GNU/Linux distro Manjaro is now available in four flavors for the Raspberry Pi and other ARM devices.

While Manjaro Linux has been available for desktop Linux environments for a few years now, it has not been available for ARM devices. This past week marked a huge turning point for Raspberry Pi users, as the Manjaro Arm project marked its first alpha release. The reason this is such big news is that many Raspberry Pi users did not have a great entryway into Arch Linux prior to the Manjaro Arm Project. Arch has always been available for the Raspberry Pi, through either a direct download or using NOOBS, but neither is as user friendly as most other Raspberry Pi distros. This is where Manjaro Linux comes into the picture. Manjaro provides a more user-friendly approach to Arch with the goal of getting users into the Arch space who found either the installation or documentation a bit overwhelming.

Manjaro Arm welcome

With the Manjaro-Arm Project, Raspberry Pi users can now experience for themselves the simplicity of Arch Linux through several different editions. These featured editions are Media, Server, Base and Minimal.

Isaac Carter

In addition to hosting a Raspberry Pi meetup in Washington D.C., Isaac Carter is a co-host on mintCast. He’s also a software engineer who enjoys working with Java, JavaScript, and GNU/Linux. When he’s not coding, you can find him reading on any number of subjects or on the golf course.

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What a Deal: Ad-Free, No CAPTCHA and You Help Keep Us FundedFOSS Force fundraiser

What a Deal: Ad-Free, No CAPTCHA and You Help Keep Us Funded

By Christine Hall on February 16, 2016 |

Site News

Things were going good for our Indiegogo fundraising campaign, then they stalled.

In case you don’t know, we’re in the midst of our 2016 Indiegogo fundraising campaign, seeking to raise a total of $3,700 to keep us funded. Actually, this is the amount by which we missed our last fundraising campaign last May, in which you generously contributed $2,300 to FOSS Force to enable us to offer a small amount of pay to our writers. The money contributed to our current campaign will be spent the same way. If we’re successful, this will fund us until at least the end of the year and perhaps forever, if revenue from other sources such as advertising continues to rise. The campaign went up in early January and currently has 23 days left.

Seven days ago, when we hit the halfway point of the campaign, things were looking good. With 30 days left in the campaign, we were only three percentage points from having raised half of our campaign goal. Our self-set daily goal, the amount we need to collect on a daily basis to meet our goal, was stable at around $55. Then things came to a screeching halt. Since February 7, the campaign has seen only two contributions for a total of $35, which has pushed our daily goal up to $85.

We need to turn this around. Our funding goal is not arbitrary, not if we are to continue to offer you at least the same level of coverage as you have come to expect from us. If we don’t make our goal it will mean we’ll have to cut back on our content — the only place we can cut — offering you less just when we need to be offering you more. This, of course, will lead to lower traffic to our site, which will lead to lower ad revenue…I think you see where this is going.

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

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingWhat a Deal: Ad-Free, No CAPTCHA and You Help Keep Us Funded
Year of Linux Depends on How You Define LinuxAndroid mascot

Year of Linux Depends on How You Define Linux

By Ken Starks on February 16, 2016 |

Operating Systems

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.

Android mascotA 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

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

linuxlock.blogspot.com/
Continue readingYear of Linux Depends on How You Define Linux
LXer Suffering From Scattered OutagesLXer temporary landing page

LXer Suffering From Scattered Outages

By FOSS Force on February 15, 2016 |

Community, Internet, Media and News

Breaking News

Last updated Tuesday, February 16 at 12:15 a.m.

If you’ve been trying to get on LXer and having no luck, it’s not just you. Today the site is unreachable for at least much of the U.S.

The popular Linux and FOSS website LXer seems to be unreachable in many parts of the U.S. today. In the areas affected, users trying to reach the site are taken to a Network Solutions holding page instead.

We first became aware of the problem at about 7 a.m. EST when an attempt to access the site took us to a Network Solutions landing page. We had visited the site several times in the previous hour without difficulty. At about 8 a.m., access to the site returned briefly, but by 9 a.m. the site was again unreachable. We haven’t been able to access the site since.

LXer temporary landing page
Many of those attempting to visit the popular Linux and FOSS site “LXer” today are seeing this page instead.
Continue readingLXer Suffering From Scattered Outages
Poll: You Say, ‘Ship Ubuntu Tablets by the Boatload’Ubuntu tablet

Poll: You Say, ‘Ship Ubuntu Tablets by the Boatload’

By FOSS Force on February 12, 2016 |

Distros, Hardware, Mobile and Polls

The FOSS Force Poll

Our latest poll indicates that many FOSS advocates will end up purchasing a Ubuntu tablet when they become available in March.

Granted, you’re a special audience with a special interest. For the most part you use Linux, and not because you’re a mooch and it doesn’t cost you anything, but because you recognize it as the best that’s available. Certainly it doesn’t hurt that it’s free and open source software. Indeed, you probably think that’s what makes it best, as you most likely see FOSS as the best software development model.

You use GNU/Linux on your desktops and laptops, and most likely use Android on your mobile devices, mostly because it uses the Linux kernel and at least claims to be open source. But you know the difference between OSS and FOSS and would like nothing better than to be able to run GNU/Linux, real honest-to-goodness FOSS, on your phone or tablet — especially now that Firefox OS has been removed from the shelf.

That’s what we figured going in with our latest poll. It was an educated guess, for sure, but it turned out to be correct.

Continue readingPoll: You Say, ‘Ship Ubuntu Tablets by the Boatload’

SCO v. IBM: Judge Rules for IBM in Interferance Claims

By Christine Hall on February 10, 2016 |

Business and News

Judge grants IBM’s request for summary judgement and orders parties to reach dismissal agreement by February 26.

Two SCO stories in a week? As Yogi Berra would say, it’s 2003 all over again. But this time with a big difference. It’s almost over.

I told you on Monday that Judge David Nuffer with the US District Court in Utah had shot down SCO’s attempts to bring an action for Unfair Competition against IBM because the issue is already covered by another breach of contract claim by SCO. On Tuesday, Judge Nuffer issued a ruling on a pair of interference claims which effectively takes whatever winds were left out of SCO’s sails.

Bankrupt SCO, of course, lost their big $1 billion case against IBM long ago when Novell, in a separate case, proved that it, and not SCO, owned the copyrights that SCO was suing over. But SCO’s been struggling to stay alive, hoping to at least win a few bucks from IBM as compensation for all it went through.

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

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingSCO v. IBM: Judge Rules for IBM in Interferance Claims
No Linux for Batman, XCOM 2 Arrives & More…Batman: Arkham Knight

No Linux for Batman, XCOM 2 Arrives & More…

By Hunter Banks on February 10, 2016 |

Gaming, Hardware and News

Gaming on Linux

Although Warner Brothers has abandoned plans for a Linux port of Batman: Arkham Knight, there’s lots of excitement over last week’s day-one release of XCOM 2.

Seemingly out of the blue, Batman: Arkham Knight’s planned Linux and OS X release has been cancelled. In all likelihood, this cancellation stems from the litany of problems with the game’s Windows port, which has been panned by critics and players as glitch plagued and often almost unplayable.

Hunter Banks

Hunter Banks has been a part of the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) Family for the past 13 years. When not writing about open source gaming, he’s working on creating his own games. Follow him on Twitter @SilvrChariot

Continue readingNo Linux for Batman, XCOM 2 Arrives & More…
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