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Posts tagged as “ubuntu”

The Great Austin, Texas Linux Radio Advertising Campaign

Back in the early 90s, I spent four hours of my mornings co-hosting a local AM radio talk show in Austin, Texas. Truth be told, I fell into the job. I most certainly wasn’t looking for a job in talk radio, or any job for that matter, but from the first day, the host and I clicked perfectly. She was the “straight man” in our duo. Her explosive laughter pegged the needles constantly.

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VU meterWe were an AM show but there was also an FM show going on at the same time in the next room, with a wall of plate glass window separating the AM and the FM folks. Often, we would cut up and the audience had no idea that the FM guy was silently doing outlandish things for the AM folks entertainment. We’re gonna leave it at “outlandish.” Sometimes, it went just a tad bit farther than that.

Real Linux Coming to Tablets

Ever since I bought my roommate a second generation Nexus 7 tablet a few years back for Christmas, I’ve been intrigued by the possibilities the small form factor offers. The problem is that Android is geared almost solely to push e-commerce, and to that end wants to share information with practically everyone. Even worse, it’s not really free-as-in-freedom.

Jolla Tablet
The Jolla Tablet running Sailfish OS is now taking preorders in the U.S. and other countries.
That hasn’t kept roomie from loving hers, and spending hours with it daily. She’s even made herself something of an expert at using Android, which is amazing, given that she can’t use a Linux or Windows box for more than fifteen minutes without asking me how to do something or another.

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Things are looking up for those of us who think we might like using a tablet if only we could find one with a real honest-to-goodness operating system like good ol’ GNU/Linux. There are a couple of Linux based tablets in the pipeline now — with one already taking preorders for a second-round limited production run and the other promising to take preorders any day now.

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

‘Freedom Penguin’ Takes Flight, Distro Count & More…

FOSS Week in Review

Before we get rolling on the last FOSS Force item before the weekend, I’d like to welcome Hunter Banks to the FOSS Force team. Hunter is part of the FOSS-forward Banks family of Los Angeles — dad Phillip is a computer consultant and a long-time Southern California Linux Expo volunteer (along with brother Phillip Jr.), and sister Keila has been in both the FOSS and mainstream media on girls-in-tech issues — and he’s writing a Linux/FOSS gaming column.

Flying-penguinsWelcome to the team, Hunter!

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Now, want to see something scary?

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

Good News, Bad News for Canonical & More…

FOSS Week in Review

It’s been a busy week on the Isle of Man, and elsewhere, so let’s not tarry and dive in, shall we?

Canonical Opens Ubuntu One: After dropping its Ubuntu One cloud storage service a year ago, Ars Techinca reports Canonical this week released the system’s file-syncing code under the Affero General Public License Version 3.

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Ubuntu One logo“The code we’re releasing is the server side of what desktop clients connected to when syncing local or remote changes,” said Martin Albisetti, Canonical’s Director of Online Services, in a post on the Ubuntu site. “This is code where most of the innovation and hard work went throughout the years, where we faced most of the scaling challenges and the basis on which other components were built upon.”

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

Lenovo Announces New ThinkPad P50, P70 ‘Mobile Workstation’

ThinkPad aficionados, are you ready?

While both bending the language and changing definitions of hardware on the fly, Lenovo announced on Tuesday the Lenovo ThinkPad P50 and P70, the new ThinkPad hardware to be available in Q4.

But first, let’s set things straight: The ThinkPad is no longer a laptop, according to the Lenovo press release. The first paragraph of the press release says the company “unveiled the beginning of a new family of mobile workstation innovations.” So I guess that’s what we’re calling them now – mobile workstations.

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P70
The Lenovo ThinkPad P70 should be out later this year.
Fine.

Anyway, the new ThinkPad P70 comes with the most memory and storage ever found in a laptop…sorry, a mobile workstation. Namely, maxing out at 64GB of DDR4 ECC memory and with the ability to handle up to four storage devices and up to a terabyte of SSD storage. It also utilizes the latest PCIe technology for speeds up to five times faster than current SATA technology. But wait, there’s more: The ThinkPad P70 “comes with two Intel ThunderboltTM 3 ports for ultra-fast connectivity and a 4K UHD display or optional FHD touch,” according to the release.

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

RMS Likes Crowd Supply, Riddell Pokes Ubuntu & More…

FOSS Week in Review

While Larry Cafiero is up in Portland having himself a merry auld time at OSCON, I’m in the sweltering heat and humidity of North Carolina, normal for this time of year, with dreams of All Things Open swirling through my head. ATO, because it’s the next conference I’ll be able to attend — and because it happens in October, when the weather around here is much more tolerable.

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Crowd Supply logoWhile Larry’s been keeping an eye on things at the self-proclaimed most-important-open-source-conference-in-the-multiverse, I’ve been keeping an eye on the happenings in the FOSS world elsewhere. In the process, I’ve managed to make Larry part of this Week in Review.

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

FSF, Canonical Breakthrough; OSCON & More…

Editor’s note: FOSS Force will be offering live video streaming of all OSCON keynote addresses beginning Wednesday, July 22, 2015 at noon EDT.

FOSS Week in Review

I was ready to pack my bags for OSCON on Friday with a pretty quiet week, and a quick roundup which would allow me to hit the road and head north to Portland. No such luck. We have OSCON coverage coming next week — more on this later — but some of the more scintillating stories of the week include the following:

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FSF, Canonical Makes Progress on Licensing: The $140,000-plus in donations is still missing, but that’s not the biggest news coming from Canonical this week. After two years of wrangling between the Free Software Foundation and Canonical — with a little help from the Software Freedom Conservancy — the FSF announced that they have made some progress on updated licensing terms for, as the FSF calls it, “Ubuntu GNU/Linux.”

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

Microsoft Writes Check, Free OSCON Passes & More…

FOSS Week in Review

Money: Can’t live with it, and can’t live without it. OK, maybe you actually can live with it, but money seems to be the overriding theme this week when it comes to FOSS news. With this being payday for most of you, try not to spend too much mental currency on some of the developments this week, like:

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OpenSSH logoMS Writes a Check: Well, this was probably inevitable. With a generous donation, Microsoft has become a gold contributor to the OpenBSD project — the first gold contributor — in an effort to get OpenBSD’s help in porting OpenSSH to Windows. This comes from a report on ZDNet, where Steven Vaughan-Nichols tells the tale of checkbook participation in open source as “the best option…for our team to adopt an industry proven solution,” says Microsoft’s Angel Calvo. A gold contributor writes a check for anywhere between $25,000 to $50,000, so even at the minimum, the OpenBSD Foundation scores big. In exchange, Microsoft gets to port OpenSSH, which arguably is the gold standard for remote administration. Of course, it isn’t revealed how much, in code, Microsoft is going to contribute going forward, but as long as the money is there…I guess the money is there.

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

Ubuntu on a Stick, Cascadia’s Best & More…

FOSS Week in Review

antiX logoIt inspires awe how quickly Friday comes along — one minute I’m talking stories for publication with my colleagues Ken Starks and Christine Hall, and the next thing I know, deadlines are poking me in the shoulder and saying, “Well…?”

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So while I am reminded by my astute daughter that pirates, too, would also prefer to program in C because, well, that’s where they sail (thank you, Mimi), let’s take a look at the week in FOSS.

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

Red Hat, Samsung Team Up; TXLF Names Keynoter, and More

FOSS Week in Review

It’s been a busy week for those in the FOSS realm — from sea-to-shining-sea, and even down South — with the Red Hat Summit going on in Boston, with Open Source Bridge in Portland, Oregon, and with preparations being finalized for the upcoming Texas Linux Fest in two months, among other things.

Let’s take these one at a time, shall we?

**If you’re finding this article useful, please consider helping us reach our absolute minimum daily goal of $86 today so our FOSS Force Independence 2026 fundraiser stays on track for May. Any amount helps.**

Red Hat logoRed Hat, Samsung Team Up: While there has been a lot of oooh-ing and ahhh-ing over what’s been coming out of the Red Hat Summit in Boston this week, probably the most intriguing news to come out of the proceedings is that Red Hat and Samsung Electronics America “announced a strategic alliance to deliver the next generation of mobile solutions for the enterprise,” according to Red Hat’s PR department.

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