Posts tagged as “Linux”

When the Greatest Generation Can Use Our Help

By Ken Starks on January 13, 2015 |

The Greatest Generation. Those who blitzed the beaches of Normandy and faced their own death with nothing but the rifles they carried and the cast-in-stone conviction that they were our last hope to save the world. They embodied the heroism of a generation who protected us from the most vile of villains: Jack-booted thugs who would force their ideas of a perfect world upon us.

Those rifles and convictions ultimately saved our way of life.

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That kind of bravery can’t be quantified or even verbally expressed. They were our moms and dads, our aunts and uncles, and our grandfathers and grandmothers. The Greatest Generation lived their lives based on ultimate truths and values. A handshake was a bond and the guy on the radio or TV was to be believed.

And that’s the problem. The Greatest Generation ultimately fell victim to their own honor and social beliefs.

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/

Jeff Hoogland On the Future of & Life After Bodhi

Jeff Hoogland On the Future of & Life After Bodhi

By Christine Hall on January 12, 2015 |

Community, Desktops, Distros and Operating Systems

The FOSS Force Interview

Jeff Hoogland comes by the respect he has within the Linux community the old fashioned way; he’s earned it. He’s done so, in large part, by creating the Bodhi Linux distro, which is not only very popular with a large and loyal user base, it’s rock solid, stable and even elegant. It’s also not a “cookie cutter distro” by any stretch of the imagination — there’s nothing else like it on the DistroWatch’s list. He also likes to share his ideas with the community, which he does through his blog, Thoughts on Technology.

Unlike many Linux developers, he doesn’t earn his living in the software business — not entirely anyway. He’s a mathematician by trade, who pays his room and board as an adjunct faculty member teaching mathematics at ITT Technical Institute in Springfield, Illinois.

In his free time, he’s a gamer. Oddly, his game of choice isn’t played with a joystick hooked-up to a computer, but something a little more retro — the 1990s fantasy trading card game Magic: The Gathering. Evidently, he’s quite good at it.

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Oh yes, he’s also a family man, but more on that later…

It’s been exactly four months since Hoogland steped down as lead developer for Bodhi Linux, a move that naturally caused some concern among the distro’s users. Wondering myself about the future of Bodhi and Hoogland’s personnel plans, last week I sent him a message, asking if he’d be interested in doing an email interview with FOSS Force, which he quickly agreed to do. Not wanting to take too much of his time, I kept the interview short, at only a dozen questions.

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

‘Linux Advocates’ Throws in the Towel

‘Linux Advocates’ Throws in the Towel

By FOSS Force on January 10, 2015 |

Internet, Media and News

The website Linux Advocates is no more. The site, which focused on a variety of Linux issues, went offline on January 7th with little fanfare and no advance notice. The site had been being published for two years, having gone live in early 2013.

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Before taking the site down, a notice was posted by site owner Dietrich Schmitz, which can still be read on the site’s Facebook page.

CES: Smart TVs on Linux; SCALE prep underway

By Larry Cafiero on January 9, 2015 |

Community, Distros, Hardware, News and Operating Systems

FOSS Week in Review

First things first: Thanks to Christine Hall for standing in for me last Friday for the weekly wrap-up. As some of you know, I was pretty much in the dark for the first five days of the year after a fire in my building (nowhere near me) early on New Year’s Day morning caused the power to be shut down.

As we start 2015, with the Consumer Electronic Show in full swing in Lost Wages (more on this in a bit), let’s take a look at some of the happenings in the FOSS realm.

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SCALE 13x in the starting blocks: The team organizing the Southern California Linux Expo’s 13th edition, more commonly known as SCALE 13x, has begun to ramp up preparations for the show. This year, SCALE 13x adds a day to become a four-day event running from Thursday, February 19 through Sunday, February 22 at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport hotel. The speakers have been chosen and the SCALE Team is in the process of sending out acceptances and rejections — so if you’ve heard you’re in, congratulations. If you haven’t heard either way, you will soon.

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

Firefox OS: It’s Not You, It’s Me

By Larry Cafiero on January 7, 2015 |

Hardware, Mobile and Operating Systems

I hate breakups. Even when they’re for the best, breakups have a tendency never to go well when executed — a difficult but apt word for it — and there’s always some heartbreak involved.

So it breaks my heart to tell everyone that Firefox OS and I must go our separate ways.

It’s not you, Firefox OS. It’s me. While I know you’ll go on to thrive and find digital happiness without me in the wider FOSS world, I am sorry I’m not going to be a part of your future.

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For the last year, you and I have been pals joined at the hip — the hip pocket, at least — as the OS on my ZTE Open phone. You know I’m not very demanding; the ZTE with Firefox OS did what was expected of it when it comes to my very limited use of mobile devices. To me, using mobile means taking calls, making calls, and texting. That’s really it. We’ve discussed this before, and the limited-albeit-growing selection of software for Firefox OS phones and tablets is a testament to your predicted longevity and bright future.

Firefox OS, it’s just that I need a little more dependability. We’ll get to that in a minute.

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

When ‘Release Early, Release Often’ Is a Problem

When ‘Release Early, Release Often’ Is a Problem

By Christine Hall on January 5, 2015 |

Desktops, Operating Systems and Software

Last Wednesday, when Larry Cafiero published his story negating the rumors of Xfce’s demise, a few snarky commenters on Reddit said the rumor might as well be true, given the snail’s pace of development at Xfce. I paid these comments little mind. Over the years, I’ve learned to expect Reddit readers to be glad to find fault with software projects, almost without exception.

Here on FOSS Force, the comments were a bit more thoughtful and a lot more mixed. Most of our readers agreed that the development process at Xfce is slow, but most seemed to think that despite the mantra “release early, release often,” sometimes a slow release cycle is a good thing.

A reader calling himself “woolie” maybe put it best:

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“hey, chill off people, Xfce is perfect as is today, why would one add stuff that is not necessary? just to prove to some insecure, unstable person, that it is ‘still in development’?… preposterous!”

Woolie, I concur 100 percent.

Continued development on a project for the sake of continued development is often counterproductive. Sometimes a project arrives at a point where it’s time to take a rest and just concentrate on fixing bugs and staying on top of security issues for a while.

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

A FOSS Wish List for 2015

By Christine Hall on January 1, 2015 |

Distros, Hardware, Humor, Mobile and Software

First my FOSS predictions for 2015: cloud, systemd, vulnerabilities, containers, and Linus uses the “F” word.

Let’s forget predictions; they’re boring. They’re either too obvious or they’re not likely to happen. So is my wish list, with two major exceptions. First, wishes are much more subjective, making them much more fun for the wisher. Second, when predictions don’t happen, they’re wrong. When I wish for things and they don’t happen, they’re still things I wish for, so they’re not wrong, they’re just not happening. Caution must be exercised, however. Remember the old proverb ascribed to the Chinese about the possibility of wishes coming true…

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Oh, one last thing about how I wish. Sometimes I wish in very great detail. My friends who believe in magic tell me this is good, that it will help bring my wishes to fruition. Time will tell. Stay tuned…

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

Despite Rumors, Xfce Alive & Kicking

By Larry Cafiero on December 31, 2014 |

Desktops, News and Software

Rumors: They exist, for better or worse, and there’s not much you can do about them. In addition, rumors are the starting blocks for the old Churchill adage that “a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”

Three times this month, Xfce came up in conversation — online, of course, and in the realm of social media and in forum discussions — and the context in which each conversation came up had the desktop on the brink of closure, with one unwitting person saying that Xfce was dead.

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Nothing could be further from the truth, and several in the discussions rose to Xfce’s defense on the absurdity.

Xfce lead developer Olivier Fourdan “won’t really comment on the rumors,” he said, “but as long as there are users and developers, the project is not dead.”

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

2014’s Five Biggest Stories Affecting FOSS

By Christine Hall on December 30, 2014 |

Business, Community, Distros, Internet, News, Operating Systems, Patents, Politics and Security

Another year has come and gone, and as you might have guessed, 2014 still wasn’t the year of the Linux desktop.

Covering FOSS and Linux isn’t nearly as exciting as it was a decade or so ago — but that’s a good thing. Back then, we were at war with nearly every proprietary software vendor on the planet and faced threats from all directions, including up and down. To be sure, we didn’t start the wars we were fighting, as PROFAL (the People’s Republic of FOSS and Linux) only wished for peaceful coexistence.

The dust settled long ago and it appears as if we won most of these wars we didn’t start. Even our old arch enemy Microsoft is now waving the flag of peace and is seeking to normalize relations with us. And our old arch-arch enemy, SCO, doesn’t even exist any more — at least not in any form that we would recognize as the SCO of old. May Caldera rest in peace.

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That doesn’t mean there’s not still news to be covered in the FOSS world. There is — and plenty of it. But these days, it’s mostly about advancements in technology, new start-ups and new alliances. We still face threats, to be sure, from crackers, spooks, politicians, the RIAA and the MPAA, but these forces threaten all of computerdom, not just FOSS, so we’ve been able to nurture some new strange bedfellows to join us in our struggles.

As years go, 2014 wasn’t the most boring year in the history of the free software movement, but it also wasn’t overly exciting. Again, that’s a good thing as it means there was no battening down the hatches and stuff. Still, there were many trends in the news this year which directly affect the purveyors and users of FOSS.

Here’s my top five list:

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

Whether Online or Off: Be Nice to Each Other

Whether Online or Off: Be Nice to Each Other

By Ken Starks on December 30, 2014 |

Community, Distros and Internet

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
–Mark Twain

We’ve talked about this before.

A while back I was an observer during an extremely short span of time. An instant when a choice was going to be made and that decision was going to be life-changing. I want to share that specific moment with you, as well as how that one short space in time changed one person’s life forever.

We learned a social rule early on in school. Those of us who were part of a Kindergarten curriculum were taught it when we were what…five or six years old?

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“Be nice to each other.”

It’s a simple thing really. Not as much of a rule as it is a tool for successful social interaction. Being a jerk or an aggressive asshat is only effective in the short-term. Continuous expression of said asshattery will eventually brand you as outside of the herd…the social herd as it were.

You can see it daily if you look for it. The jerk who isn’t invited for drinks and fun after work. The mouthy bully who ends up being the last one to go home because no one wants to help him finish up. I’ve also seen it in horrible circumstances. Nightmare circumstances where castigation from the group can be hot-metal-projectiles-ripping-into-your-body-and-rending-you-assunder deadly. I don’t want to specifically talk about it. Just look up the term “military frag” and you’ll understand.

Ken Starks

linuxlock.blogspot.com/

Richard Stallman Lecture: Free Software vs Malware and the Need for Reverse Engineering

All Things Open Meetup — June 2026

AlmaLinux Day: Los Angeles

Open Source Monitoring Conference

Posts tagged as “Linux”

When the Greatest Generation Can Use Our Help

Jeff Hoogland On the Future of & Life After Bodhi

The FOSS Force Interview

‘Linux Advocates’ Throws in the Towel

CES: Smart TVs on Linux; SCALE prep underway

FOSS Week in Review

Firefox OS: It’s Not You, It’s Me

When ‘Release Early, Release Often’ Is a Problem

A FOSS Wish List for 2015

Despite Rumors, Xfce Alive & Kicking

2014’s Five Biggest Stories Affecting FOSS

Whether Online or Off: Be Nice to Each Other