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
Posts tagged as “Linux”
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.
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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
Free open source software. FOSS. The vision of one man…a vision tenacious enough to catch fire and spread around the globe. Free open source software is a staple of the enterprise for most of the world. We have one man to thank for that. Richard Stallman’s courage and foresight will be known and built upon long after we are gone. His contribution is truly his timeless, global legacy.
The only sad part of the story, at least so far, is that the United States has stubbornly dug in her heels. She has chosen to pay homage to the Microsofts and the Apples in our nation. We remain as one of the only nations in the world that openly shuns FOSS in the enterprise. We not only shun it, we work directly against it in the halls of our Senate. That’s due to one simple thing.
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Money.
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
Mageia 5, released on Friday and over a year in the making, is familiar territory to those of us who cut our Linux teeth on Mandriva back in the days when it was called Mandrake. That’s not to say that the distro is old or outdated, far from it, but any Mandrake old-timer will instantly recognize the roots of this distro.
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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
It’s generally fairly easy for new Linux administrators to get up and running with the basics of installing, configuring and managing Linux systems at a basic level. Truthfully, though, it takes years to get the in-depth knowledge required in many server environments today. One thing I really recommend learning early on — i.e. from the beginning — is security.
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I participate in a group of professional penetration testers (the nice folks who help you test your security as if they were the bad guys) called Charlotte Hackers Anonymous. I asked the group what they thought were the most important tips for new system administrators, and below are their tips, along with my thoughts on each.
Don Parris wears a Facility Services cape by day, and transforms into LibreMan at night. He has written numerous articles about free tech, and hangs out with the Cha-Ha crowd, learning about computer security. He also enjoys making ceviche with his wife, and writing about his travels in Perú.
FOSS Week in Review
Yep, it looks like the end of the week is upon us once again, and with it there has been a lot of news in the FOSS realm. What you might have missed, if you weren’t paying attention, is the following:
Happy 13th, Tux Paint: There was reason to break out the candles this week — 13 of ’em — and put them on a cake before saying “Happy Birthday” to Tux Paint. Tux Paint was first released to the wider world on June 16, 2002. Now that it’s a teenager, we can see what fantastic progress the New Breed Software folks have achieved in this time.
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You’ve read the articles: “Linux sysadmins in demand,” yadda yadda yadda. You’ve been using Linux for some time and have been thinking, “Gee, I wish I could make a living with Linux.”
You can get the training; but it costs so much, you might say. Well, now you can get a scholarship, so there’s no excuse not to go for it.
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The Linux Foundation, ever in the forefront of shaping the future of Linux, has announced the 2015 Linux Training Scholarship Program, which aims to provide educational funds “to up-and-coming developers and sysadmins who show incredible promise…but do not otherwise have the ability to attend Linux Foundation training courses,” according to a page on the Foundation’s website.
The SouthEast LinuxFest (SELF) was packed on Saturday, meaning that Jeremy Sands (who told me that day two is always much busier than opening day) knows SELF. Maybe I should’ve asked his advice when I was booking my room in Charlotte. Here’s what I learned on my own: There’s a big difference between a Red Roof and a Red Hat. The later is dependable. The former took three tries to get me into a room that was kinda/sorta what I’d reserved — with Wi-Fi that didn’t work more often than it did.
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Francois Dion’s keynote, “Team Near Space Circus: Computing at 80,000 Feet” was nothing if not fascinating, and I was happy to get filled in on the details of a story I knew a little about because it happened in my backyard, meaning the Winston-Salem, N.C. area (in Mocksville, if you’re planning to take the test).
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
Day one of this year’s SouthEast LinuxFest (SELF) was kind of slow, without the bone crushing crowds I expect to see at an open source conference. However, talking with the go-to person at SELF, Jeremy Sands, I understand that this is normal for this conference. It seems that Charlotte is a city with a strong work ethic, keeping the crowd away until the weekend. Still, nearly five hundred in attendance isn’t deserving of sneers — especially on a “slow” day.
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Somehow I managed to get up on time to make the hour and a half trip from my house to the Charlotte area in plenty of time for the 9 A.M. opening, groggy from only getting about three hours sleep, then wondered why I bothered arriving early. After all, the first presentation I planned to attend wasn’t until 11:30, and with no keynote address scheduled for Friday morning, that left me with a lot of time on my hands.
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
FOSS Week in Review
As we get ready for a wild weekend of Linux, barbecue and guns at SouthEast LinuxFest — and FOSS Force’s Christine Hall will be on the scene reporting from Charlotte — we should first go to our eye in the sky to see what the traffic is like during FOSS rush hour for presentation proposals.
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