May 23rd, 2013

Fedora Project Announces Pidora Remix for Raspberry Pi

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The Fedora Project has been supporting Raspberry Pi, the diminutive $35 computer, for some time. Today they’re making the Pidora “remix” of the core Fedora distribution available. Like the Raspbian distribution of Debian, Pidora is compiled specifically to take advantage of the hardware already built into the Raspberry Pi. → Read More

April 12th, 2013

Where In The World Are The 1.2M Raspberry Pi Microcomputers? Mostly In The West — But Pi Founders Want More Spread This Year

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One to 1.2 million Raspberry Pi microcomputers have shipped since the device’s launch just over a year ago but where in the world are they located? While it’s impossible to say exactly where each Pi has ended up, the vast majority sold to-date have shipped to developed nations — including the U.S. and the U.K. But the Pi Foundation wants to get more developing nations buying into Pi. → Read More

April 3rd, 2013

Continuing Native App Rollout, Group Communication Tool HipChat Launches Beta Client For Linux

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Atlassian’s HipChat is stepping up to its commitment to roll out native clients for its real-time group chat and private messaging tool, with a beta release of the Linux client. The Linux client couldn’t come fast enough: Adobe AIR no longer supports the open-source operating system, which means the new native app adds to the web-based client as another option for Linux-based users. → Read More

April 2nd, 2013

A Precision Guided Firearm Powered by Linux

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I’ve written a number of times about how ubiquitous Linux has become. It powers supercomputers and cell phones. It’s in automotive infotainment systems. It’s in medical equipment. It’s also now in firearms, thanks to the folks at Tracking Point. → Read More

March 27th, 2013

Crowdfunding, Micro-Patronage, And The Future Of Free Software

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The “free” in Free Software refers to “freedom”, rather than cost. It is largely a happy coincidence that Free Software is available gratis. Copyleft licensing certainly helps, but there’s no overarching reason that Free-as-in-Freedom software need not cost anything. As Free Software has evolved and matured over the years, several major developmental archetypes have emerged. → Read More

February 6th, 2013

Microsoft Considering A Linux Version Of Office In 2014

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Now this is a watershed moment — Microsoft is looking at offering a Linux version of Office in 2014.

You know what I say? Stuff it all you bastards who say Linux does not have commercial viability. Microsoft is looking at open sourcing its crown jewel. → Read More

February 3rd, 2013

StormFly Wants To Childproof Your Computer With Its Ubuntu-Booting USB Bracelet

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When I was but a wee lad, I hosed my share of family computers simply because I wanted to help out — once I tried to free up space on a 6GB hard drive by deleting anything larger than 1MB. You can imagine how well that played out.

I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the founders of Barcelona-based Now Computing went through something similar, because they’ve just recently launched a Kickstarter→ Read More

October 10th, 2012

Ubuntu Users: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

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The Ubuntu Linux distribution has always been free. It’s also always welcomed donations from users. Historically, though, the donation page hasn’t been featured prominently on the Ubuntu website. As of yesterday, users who download Ubuntu are now invited to donate to Ubuntu.

It’s important to note two things. First, donations are completely voluntary. Ubuntu is still free to download and use. → Read More

September 19th, 2012

Coming To A Car Near You: Linux Goes Automotive, Signs Up Harman, Intel, Toyota, Samsung’s Tizen, More

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If, one day, we really are all going to be carted around in driverless cars from the likes of Google and others, then we may as well have some apps on board to keep us occupied. Today, the Linux Foundation announced that it was throwing its hat into the car-apps ring, with the creation of the Automotive Grade Linux Workgroup. → Read More

September 13th, 2012

Canonical Releases Updated Enterprise Management Solution for Ubuntu Linux

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Ubuntu Linux, which started with the tagline “Linux for human beings,” was originally an easy-to-use Linux distribution for desktop users. Canonical picked what they considered to be the best of breed applications from the many thousands available in the Debian Linux distribution, put on a healthy dose of polish, and released their own version. They then repeated this release process every six… → Read More

August 30th, 2012

How To Get Your Ph.D. Project Included In The Linux Kernel

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The Linux kernel is the world’s largest collaborative development project. Almost 3,000 individual contributors work together to create and maintain an operating system kernel that works on everything from wristwatches and mobile phones to mainframes, along with all the peripherals imaginable for each platform. Linux creator Linus Torvalds sits at the top of a loose hierarchy of kernel maintainers… → Read More

August 29th, 2012

The State Of Linux — How Even Apple Is Going Open Source

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Big business is calling – and they want to talk about Linux.

Linux is evolving now that the cloud is here and much of it is built on open source. Big business gets that and they want to get on the train. Even Apple is adapting.

Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation opened with the keynote in San Diego for the first CloudOpen, making the point that everything is becoming a… → Read More

August 13th, 2012

People Get Pissed Off About OpenStack And That’s Why It Will Survive

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The ranters are out in force this afternoon about Red Hat announcing the preview of its OpenStack distribution. It’s like OpenStack inserted a lightning rod into my TweeetDeck stream.

OpenStack really pisses people off.  You either despise it or love it. And that’s why the open cloud effort will survive. Anything that polarizing is bound to make it in the end. → Read More

July 18th, 2012

Oracle Spreads FUD About CentOS But Misses The Mark

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Oracle is on a bit of a marketing attack against CentOS, the free Linux distribution that derives from Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

To see Oracle promote its own Linux distribution and attack a rival is pretty much a joke. It can only be viewed as the hubris we have come to expect from Oracle. → Read More

July 18th, 2012

Dell Gives Linux Laptops Another Chance

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Today Dell announced its official re-entry into the Linux laptop market. Project Sputnik, first announced in May, is graduating from Dell’s internal incubator program into a real product. According to project lead Barton Geroge, Dell will sell a special “developer edition” of its XPS13 Ultrabook starting this fall. → Read More

June 25th, 2012

Jon maddog Hall Comes Out In Honor Of Alan Turing’s Birthday

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A dozen years ago, when I went from techno-dilettante to technophile, one of my living heroes was Jon “maddog” Hall, the 61-year-old writer for Linux Magazine and an early proponent for free and open source software. Today Jon came out as homosexual in honor of Alan Turing’s 100th birthday. His post on the Linux Magazine website is a stirring piece of writing by a man who has finally decided to… → Read More

June 11th, 2012

Ubuntu Fans: Humble Bundle Games Are Now Available In The Software Center

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If you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of years, you might be excused for not knowing about this Humble Bundle thing. As a long-time Linux user, the Humble Bundles have always been of interest to me, and I’ve always tried to support them financially. It’s also always been interesting to me that Linux users typically pay more for the Bundles than their Windows or Mac counterparts. → Read More

June 10th, 2012

Linux on Microsoft Azure Platform-as-a-Service: Big Whoop

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As much fun as it is to view the world in a “Linux versus Microsoft” way, the reality is that a technology monoculture is less useful than a heterogenous one. Even Microsoft knows this: they’ve made a variety of tepid attempts to support integration with other operating systems for decades, because they know their customers are relying on those other systems. More recently Microsoft has even… → Read More

June 7th, 2012

Samsung Joins The Linux Foundation

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Samsung, the world’s leading producer of mobile phones, on Tuesday became a Platinum member of the Linux Foundation. Just the seventh company to join at the Platinum level, Samsung will now have a seat on the Linux Foundation Board of Directors. Samsung has long been a participant with the global Linux community, and as the largest manufacturer of Android handsets they’ve been extremely successful… → Read More

May 10th, 2012

Mark Shuttleworth is Passionate About Canonical, Patents, and Space

Mark Shuttleworth

Mark Shuttleworth is the founder and former CEO of Canonical, the commercial company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Today he holds the position “Lead Product Design”, a role in which he shapes desktop and cloud product strategy. I spoke with him recently by phone about the increasing role of Linux in the enterprise, and the shift from traditional enterprise computing to cloud… → Read More

April 27th, 2012

The Open Source CEO: Jim Whitehurst

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If you read the Red Hat website, you’ll find pages describing their attitude toward open source, collaboration, and more. It reads pretty much like every other marketing spiel from every company online today. There’s something different about Red Hat, though: they actually believe this stuff. Not only do they believe it, they live it every day.

I spoke to Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst recently… → Read More

April 25th, 2012

Linux Foundation To Host Open Source Cloud Conference “CloudOpen”

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It wasn’t that long ago that I complained about cloud fragmentation issues. There were some interesting observations in the comments on that post. Now word comes that the Linux Foundation is hosting CloudOpen, a “new conference to advance openness in the cloud.”

Most of the major players are already committed to participating at CloudOpen: Canonical, Citrix, Dell, Eucalyptus, HP, IBM, Intel… → Read More

April 19th, 2012

An Interview With Linus Torvalds

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The Millenium Technology Prize is a Finnish award designed “to improve the quality of life and to promote sustainable development-oriented research, development and innovation.” It’s awarded every two years. Sir Tim Berners-Lee won the prize in 2004. The 2012 Grand Prize winner will be announced on June 13 in Helsinki, Finland. The finalists this year are Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, who has been… → Read More

April 13th, 2012

Readers: What’s Your Cloud Strategy?

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I get press releases every week about some new (or old!) company and their so-called cloud solution. Some folks are clearly abusing the popularity of the “cloud” buzzword, and others are actually doing interesting things with distributed computing, infrastructure- and platform-as-a-service, orchestration, and related technologies. Amazon is the prime mover on IaaS, but OpenStack, CloudStack and… → Read More

April 4th, 2012

Let Your Nerd Flag Fly With This Linux Distro Sim Game

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It’s OK. We’re all dorks here. We know you get into forum arguments over Gnome vs. KDE (I’m a KDE man, myself, because Gnome sucks) and we know that you’ve always wanted to fork your own Ubuntu distro but you just didn’t have the time and a sufficient amount of Club Mate.

Never fear: now you can pretend to build your own Linux distro from the comfort of your computer by playing Linux Tycoon→ Read More

April 3rd, 2012

State Of The Linux Kernel 2011

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The Linux Foundation provides a vendor neutral home for long-term collaboration on the Linux kernel. They provide Linux creator Linus Torvalds and Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linus’ right-hand man, the opportunity to work full-time on Linux. And they prepare a semi-annual report on the state of the Linux kernel, which is a fascinating examination of the most successful collaborative software development… → Read More

March 26th, 2012

The Peek Email Device Goes Open Source

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If at first you don’t succeed, open source the sucker. Peek has released an open source version of their Peek Mobile operating system, allowing hackers to use the all-but-obsolete little email device as a hacker platform. The Linux release is available the PeekLinux wiki and hackers are already adding new apps and functionality to the tiny device.

Peek itself has pivoted out of the hardware… → Read More

March 19th, 2012

Linux For The Real World

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The recent Linux Foundation report about the Linux jobs market highlighted a need for experienced professionals, but the traditional Linux training and certification programs don’t always impart the kind of skills actually required by employers. In an attempt to bridge this gap, veteran Linux trainer and Linux Journal associate editor Shawn Powers has teamed up with CBT Nuggets to develop a series… → Read More

February 23rd, 2012

With Many Eyeballs, All Bugs Are Shallow

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In his seminal work The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric Raymond put forward the claim that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” He dubbed this Linus’ Law, in honor of Linux creator Linus Torvalds. It sounds like a fairly self-evident statement, but as the Wikipedia page points out the notion has its detractors. Michael Howard and David LeBlanc claim in their 2003 book Writing Secure Code… → Read More

February 14th, 2012

Need a Job? Learn Linux

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The Linux Foundation today posted their first ever Linux Jobs Report, created in conjunction with tech job site Dice.com. The report examines the current demand for Linux talent, and identifies a few interesting trends.

Of the 2,300 survey respondents, eight in ten said that hiring Linux talent is a priority in 2012, and more than half of firms surveyed said that they’re increasing Linux hires… → Read More