Posts tagged as “Linux”

A Screencast Look at GalliumOS

By Phil Shapiro on March 25, 2016 |

The Screening Room

Our video editor takes a look at GalliumOS, a distro designed especially for use on Chromebooks.

When a group of talented people get together to create a Linux distribution optimized for use on Chromebooks, a suitable way of giving thanks is to install that operating system on a Chromebook and make a screencast showcasing the operating system at work. Back in December 2015, I did that with the outstanding GalliumOS distro.

Phil Shapiro

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.

Busy Week: UbuntuBSD, FreeNAS 9.10 Released

By Larry Cafiero on March 24, 2016 |

News, Operating Systems and Software

Larry the BSD Guy

While the entire BSD world has been buzzing over Ubuntu’s BSD release, the FreeNAS project has been busy releasing version 9.10 as a major precursor to version 10.

Most of the attention this week has been around the release of UbuntuBSD, which in and of itself is a noble effort for those who want to escape from systemd, as the developers have dubbed it according to Phoronix. This manifestation joins Ubuntu 15.10 Wile E. Coyote — sorry, Wily Werewolf — to the Free BSD 10.1 kernel.

To its credit, UbuntuBSD uses Xfce as its default desktop. It also joins a list of other marriages between Linux distros and the BSD kernel: Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, ArchBSD (now PacBSD), Gentoo/BSD and others along the FOSS highway. It’s worth a look and we’ll be giving it a test drive sometime soon.

But for now, there’s a more interesting and significant development in the BSD realm rising on the horizon.

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 Usability Study of GNOME

By FOSS Force Guest Writer on March 23, 2016 |

Desktops, Operating Systems, Software and Tutorial

Gina Dobrescu and Jim Hall

“Thou shalt make thy program’s purpose and structure clear … for thy creativity is better used in solving problems than in creating beautiful new impediments to understanding.”
~ “The Ten Commandments for C Programmers” by Henry Spencer

How easily can you use your computer? Today, the graphical desktop is our primary way of doing things on our computers; we start there to run web browsers, music programs, video players, and even a command line terminal. If the desktop is too difficult to use, if it takes too many steps to do something, or if the cool functionality of the desktop is hidden so you can’t figure out how to use it, then the computer isn’t very useful to you. So it’s very important for the desktop to get it right. The desktop needs to be very easy for everyone to use.

Whenever we think of how easily you can use a program, we’re really talking about the usability of that program. Developers sometimes discount usability and think of usability as making things look nice instead of adding new, useful features. Other times, developers assume usability is too difficult, something that only experts can do. But usability is a very important part of software development.

Oops! We Broke the DRM on This Blu-ray

By Ken Starks on March 22, 2016 |

The Heart of Linux

Looking for a way to store a Blu-ray movie on a hard drive and finding it.

Most people who’ve read my work in the past 10 years can attest to the fact that I am not shy about pointing out less than acceptable performance or function within the Linuxsphere. Be it the code or coders, I’m gonna talk about what’s wrong and how I believe it might be fixed. I rarely criticize anyone or anything without offering some way to make it right.

In between my articles here on FOSS Force and my Blog of Helios, I can be found most days popping in and out of my Google + stream where I engage in all manner of discourse. My stream includes, but isn’t restricted to, astrophysicists, hipsters, infantry brigade commanders, poets, slackers, delta force team members (not currently deployed), kernel contributors, distro creators, top 40 country western artists, local talk show hosts and just folks like you and me.

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/

Why Dell Should Offer Linux Across Product Line

By Christine Hall on March 21, 2016 |

Business, Hardware and Operating Systems

Dell has been quite successful recently selling a line of computers preinstalled with GNU/Linux. So much so that the company posted a blog on March 10 extolling the fact that Precision 5510, 3510, 7510 and 7710 mobile workstations are all available worldwide with Ubuntu preinstalled. What’s more, the company doesn’t hide Linux availability in the fine print or make potential customers find a special page to order from, which had once been its practice. Just go to the page for Precision laptops, find the one you want and tic the Ubuntu Linux option in the Operating System box in the Build My Dell section.

Here’s the big surprise, especially for those of you trying to stay on top of the Microsoft tax: Choosing Ubuntu over Windows comes with a $101.50 reduction in price. That’s quite a discount — much, much more than I remember back in 2007 when Dell made its first foray into offering Linux.

Dell isn’t targeting the everyday consumer with these offerings, but has its sights set on the developer set, which is fair enough given that many Linux users ply their trade in IT. Indeed, as Agam Shah pointed out Friday on CIO, the company sees its Linux line as an opening “for the open-source community to develop tools, drivers and software for laptops, tablets and other emerging form factors.”

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

Great Wide Open Day One in Twitter Pics

Great Wide Open Day One in Twitter Pics

By Christine Hall on March 17, 2016 |

Business, Community and News

Although the second Great Wide Open conference in Atlanta comes a full two years after GWO number one, the wait doesn’t seem to have spoiled the fun.

If there was ever an open source conference that doesn’t need any help from the press, it’s this year’s Great Wide Open in Atlanta. In spite of getting very little media attention, IT-oLogy, the nonprofit behind the event, was able to announce nearly two weeks ago that tickets to the second day of the two day conference were already sold out, with less than 200 remaining tickets for day one. Day one was Wednesday, and as logic would dictate, day two is today.

This comes as something of a surprise, as this isn’t an established conference with a history like, say, OSCON, SCALE or even All Things Open, which these days is probably the flagship event of the same IT-oLogy that’s putting on this show down in the land of magnolia blossoms.

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

Our First Look at the Raspberry Pi 3

Our First Look at the Raspberry Pi 3

By Isaac Carter on March 16, 2016 |

Hardware and Reviews

The Raspberry Pi Report After putting the new Raspberry Pi 3 through its paces, the device gets a big thumbs up from our reviewer. When…

Linux Forums Through the Eyes of a New User

Linux Forums Through the Eyes of a New User

By Ken Starks on March 15, 2016 |

Community and Software

The Heart of Linux

Ken Starks throws down the gauntlet and puts a hundred bucks on the line in an attempt to see if civility can be brought to the forums and a particular change made to LibreOffice.

It was last Wednesday that I dropped into one of the forums where I lurk on occasion and even on fewer occasions might post. One of our newer Reglue kids had emailed me with a question about something I’ve been teaching our kids for a while now, but even though I had explained this to her just a month ago, I had to ‘splain it to her again.

I had to remind her how to change the format in Writer before she sent her document off to a Windows user.

Go ahead and roll your eyes, you who are all-knowing. It’s an easy thing for us, but I want those of you who care to see things through the eyes of a new Linux user.

Ken Starks

linuxlock.blogspot.com/

Microsoft Does to Oracle What Oracle Tried To Do to Red Hat

Microsoft Does to Oracle What Oracle Tried To Do to Red Hat

By Christine Hall on March 14, 2016 |

Business, Operating Systems and Software

In 2006, Oracle began trying to abscond with RHEL’s paying user base. On Thursday, Microsoft announced that it’s now going to give Oracle a similar treatment. What’s that they say about paybacks?

Microsoft has declared war on Oracle, which is the type of story I wish was on Netflix. If it were, I’d make some popcorn, mix it with some M&Ms, sit back and binge watch. As it is, I’ll have to watch it unfold the old fashioned way, as it happens.

Some of you might remember the hostilities which broke out between Red Hat and Oracle after Red Hat acquired JBoss. Until then, the two companies had worked hand in hand in something of a partnership which saw Red Hat helping its customers get Oracle’s business stack up and running on RHEL servers. According to news reports of the day, Oracle’s head honcho, Larry Ellison, thought he had Red Hat in his back pocket and happily referred clients who were interested in migrating Oracle’s stack to Linux from Unix or Windows to the Raleigh, N.C. based company.

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

Dangerous TLDs, Ballmer’s Linux Love & More…

Dangerous TLDs, Ballmer’s Linux Love & More…

By Christine Hall on March 11, 2016 |

Community, Copyright, Distros, News, Obits and Security

FOSS Week in Review

Two big open source conferences are coming up next week, while this week an automaker said it doesn’t have to pay attention to the GPL and the man credited with inventing email passed.

Although Microsoft mainly succeeded in its attempts to hijack the FOSS news scene this week by spreading open source love — better than spreading FUD, I guess — there was plenty of FOSS news happening away from the Redmond campus. Even Microsoft with all its billions, it seems, isn’t large enough to monopolize all of the news in the big, wide and wonderful world of FOSS.

For starters, it’s conference season. Well, except for a lull in the dog days of summer, Linux and open source conferences are always in season, but there are a couple of big ones on the slate for next week.

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

AI // Forward

Mautic World Conference 2025

ATO Meetup: AI and Linux in 2025

SeaGL (the Seattle GNU/Linux Conference)

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2025

Posts tagged as “Linux”

A Screencast Look at GalliumOS

The Screening Room

Our video editor takes a look at GalliumOS, a distro designed especially for use on Chromebooks.

Busy Week: UbuntuBSD, FreeNAS 9.10 Released

Larry the BSD Guy

While the entire BSD world has been buzzing over Ubuntu’s BSD release, the FreeNAS project has been busy releasing version 9.10 as a major precursor to version 10.

A Usability Study of GNOME

Oops! We Broke the DRM on This Blu-ray

The Heart of Linux

Looking for a way to store a Blu-ray movie on a hard drive and finding it.

Why Dell Should Offer Linux Across Product Line

Great Wide Open Day One in Twitter Pics

Although the second Great Wide Open conference in Atlanta comes a full two years after GWO number one, the wait doesn’t seem to have spoiled the fun.

Our First Look at the Raspberry Pi 3

Linux Forums Through the Eyes of a New User

The Heart of Linux

Ken Starks throws down the gauntlet and puts a hundred bucks on the line in an attempt to see if civility can be brought to the forums and a particular change made to LibreOffice.

Microsoft Does to Oracle What Oracle Tried To Do to Red Hat

In 2006, Oracle began trying to abscond with RHEL’s paying user base. On Thursday, Microsoft announced that it’s now going to give Oracle a similar treatment. What’s that they say about paybacks?

Dangerous TLDs, Ballmer’s Linux Love & More…

FOSS Week in Review

Two big open source conferences are coming up next week, while this week an automaker said it doesn’t have to pay attention to the GPL and the man credited with inventing email passed.