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Posts tagged as “Linux”

Tuxmachines Tentatively Sold to Techrights

The passage of time is sometimes just too sad, but we must accept the inevitable.

One of the most popular Linux sites, Tuxmachines.org, announced on October 28th that it has been tentatively sold for $1,000. The Clarksville, Tennessee based site, owned and operated by Susan Linton, made the announcement in a short post on the site:

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“I guess tuxmachines.org has been sold for $1000. I know it’s kinda low, but times have changed and the new owner plans to carry on the tuxmachines tradition.

“I suppose that’s all I should say for now until the deal is written in stone.

“Thanks everyone for everything: all the visits, all the jokes, comments, and donations. But more on that later as well.”

Although Ms. Linton doesn’t identify the purchaser, it was evidently bought by Roy Schestowitz who is perhaps best known for publishing the FOSS site Techrights. Mr. Schestowitz blogged about the purchase of the site on October 30th.

WordPress Becomes Big Brother & More…

FOSS Week in Review

Is Netflix coming soon to a Linux near you?

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Saurav Modak at Muktware was observant enough to note last week that Netflix is now offering-up programming with a choice heretofore unavailable. For the time being they’re still pretty much married to Microsoft’s dead or dying Silverlight, but they’ve taken HTML5 on as a lover. This gives users of the popular movie outlet a choice that, at the very least, should make things easier for Linux users who insist on using the Netflix service:

“Although hackers have already made a workaround to stream Netflix videos in Linux machines, performance is generally low and video playback is not hassle free. Some workarounds include running the entire browser in Wine, or running a Silverlight plugin in Wine and make it compatible with the browser. But all of them come at a cost of performance. Switching to HTML5 from Silverlight will greatly reduce all these hassles, as all you will need is a latest standard compatible browser to stream movies and TV shows. This will also allow support for mobile devices and tablets which are adopting more HTML5 standards day by day.”

Is Microsoft Committed to Open Source?

It would’ve been very easy to just ignore the presentation titled “Microsoft and Open Source” at the All Things Open conference in Raleigh last week, except for one thing–the presenter.

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The folks in Redmond didn’t grab just anybody to speak for them. They sent someone with some serious open source cred, Ross Gardler, who is currently President of the Apache Foundation and is a co-founder of the OpenDirective project. He’s been employed by Microsoft Open Technologies for the past year or so.

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

PHP Attacked, the Shuttleworth Tea Party & More…

FOSS Week in Review

NSA: Locking the barn door after the horse is stolen

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On Monday, Reuters reported in an exclusive story that the NSA had failed to install some super duper software meant specifically to protect the agency from inside threats at the site in Hawaii where Eric Snowden downloaded thousands of classified documents. In other words, after spending who knows how much taxpayer money developing internal security software, made by Raytheon by the way, and getting it installed and tweaked at NSA installations everywhere, little Eric Snowden was shuffled off to one of the only, if not the only, locations where internal security wasn’t in place. In hindsight, this made the NSA akin to two lengths of case hardened steel chain being bound together by a link made from a paper clip.

SolusOS: Life Happens…Distros Die

switchboardThe emails began about 7 AM.

“Is Ikey serious. Is this a joke. WTF?”

“Ken, have you seen this?”

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“This has got to be a joke…right? Everything was OK yesterday? What happened?”

Here in the US, those of us who follow such things woke up to somber news:

It is with a heavy heart that I must announce the closure of SolusOS. Simply put, there is no longer enough manpower to fulfil [sic] the vision. What began as a Debian derivative evolved into an independent distribution, without the large development team required to back such an effort.”

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

ATO: Weathersby on Firefox OS and Clark on Open Source Hardware

The All Things Open conference is off and running!

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If there was any doubt that Raleigh would be the perfect place to hold a major tech conference, an open source conference at that, those doubts are now laid to rest. In spite of a super large room, this morning’s keynote addresses, by Andy Hunt and Whurley, were presented to a standing room only crowd. The line lor lunch, provided free with admission, was…well, let’s just say something about the mouth of a gift horse, if you catch my drift.

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

Our Coverage of ‘All Things Open’

The All Things Open conference is this Wednesday and Thursday and I’m looking forward to being there.

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Although Raleigh, where the conference is happening, is only an hour and a half from my home, I haven’t been there since the mid-nineties. That would’ve been back when I was living and hanging-out in Chapel Hill, the southwestern point of the region called the Triangle which includes Raleigh and Durham as it’s other two points. Chapel Hill is an über cool blend of students from the University of North Carolina and old hippie-leftie types–perfect for an old devotee of Leary and Ram Dass like myself. Alas, as much as I’d like, I won’t have time nor money to visit my old stomping grounds. I’ll be in the area to work and get back home. No playing or partying will be on the agenda for this trip. Oh well…

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

SolusOS: A Linux Distro Stands Its Ground…

Ikey Dohertyr of SolusOS
Ikey Doherty, creator of SolusOS
We’ve all heard the term, “Standing on the shoulders of giants.” In the Linux world, it’s more of a rule than an exception. I mean, a lot of Linux distros use another distro to base upon.

Debian begat Ubuntu who Begat Mint and Zorin who begat…

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Sorry for going all biblical on you but you get the idea. At some point in the Linux world, most of us are beholden to code not written by us but still often changing it for the better.

But every now and then, you run into someone who is no longer happy with all the begitting, begotting and begatting.

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

IT-oLogy: Opening Doors in Raleigh With ‘All Things Open’

The story behind All Things Open (ATO) is IT-oLogy, the nonprofit behind the conference coming to Raleigh later this month. This occurred to me last week as I was preparing for the event, on a night when I’d decided I knew as much as I wanted to know for the moment about the speakers and their workshops and started to look into IT-oLogy.

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IT-oLogy school kids
IT-oLogy working with grade school students
Like most, I imagine, I was basically ignorant about the organization. I knew a few scattered facts. I also knew that in our dealings with them, FOSS Force has been treated with respect and encouragement. As I read about them, and started to connect the dots, I began to realize that IT-oLogy and All Things Open are joined at the hip. This conference isn’t separate from them; it’s just part of what they do.

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

Would It Be a Disaster If Ubuntu Ceased to Exist?

Over the past few years Ubuntu has become somewhat divided from the rest of the Linux community and it could easily be renamed “Linux Marmite,” as you either love it or hate it.

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A number of reasons are often cited for disliking Ubuntu. Top of the list seems to be Unity. I maintain that Unity is a really good desktop environment. I spent some time working with it and I find it incredibly intuitive but my view of Unity is in the minority. I think that people coming to Linux for the first time and choosing Ubuntu as their distribution of choice will probably not be as put off by the experience as users that were brought up on Gnome 2.

Gary Newell

Gary Newell is 38 years old and lives with his wife and 3 children in the North East of Scotland. His blog, Everyday Linux User, a top ten finalist in our Best FOSS or Linux Blog competition, provides news, reviews and how-tos about Linux for the average ordinary everyday Linux user.