Scott Merrill

The Latest from Scott Merrill

Fedora Project Announces Pidora Remix for Raspberry Pi

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 di

SpiderOak Unveils Hive, Streamlines Zero-Knowledge Privacy Storage

An old saying states that "security is inversely proportional to convenience." This explains the slow adoption of many important security technologies. HTTPS, the secure version of the HTTP protocol u

Xen Moving To The Linux Foundation

The Xen project celebrates its 10th anniversary this week. It's also moving to a new home at The Linux Foundation as a Collaborative Project. Just like the Linux kernel, Xen enjoys contributions from

Hosting Undergoes Massive Changes As Providers Move Towards Platform As A Service

The explosion of infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service offerings has greatly expanded the ways in which hobbyists and professionals deploy web sites and web services. For about the sam

Red Hat Announces RDO And OpenStack Partner Program

At the OpenStack Summit today, Red Hat announced RDO, "a freely available, community-supported distribution of OpenStack that runs on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora and their derivatives." In essenc

A Precision Guided Firearm Powered by Linux

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 fir

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

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 overarch

QloudSync: A Dropbox Competitor Running On 100% Renewable Energy

There is no shortage of cloud-based file storage and synchronization solutions: Dropbox, Box.net, Ubuntu One, and on and on and on. Most offer pretty much the same things. A few niche players offer so

Rackspace Extends Private Cloud Offering With OpenCenter

Rackspace, one of the original participants in the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.openstack.org/">OpenStack</a> project, has spent the last couple of years building a successful cloud business. A

A Look At Karma, A Tiny Wi-Fi Hotspot On A Mission

We wander the streets with tiny computers in our pockets and in our hands. We talk casually to these computers, just like Captains Kirk and Picard talked to the computers on their Enterprises. With th

Meet ownCloud 5, The Open Source Dropbox

<a target="_blank" href="https://techcrunch.com/tag/owncloud/">ownCloud</a> is a free software suite, written in PHP, that provides file storage, synchronization, and sharing. It provides the same bas

Canonical Unveils Ubuntu For Tablets, Developer Preview Available For Nexus Devices On Thursday

Hot on the heels of the announcement of <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2013/01/02/canonical-brings-ubuntu-os-to-phones-official/">Ubuntu on phones</a> comes Canonical's latest announcement: Ubuntu on

LibreOffice 4.0 Released Just In Time For Office 365 Refugees

Microsoft Office has long been the dominant office suite. Through the years there have been many contenders rise and fall: WordPerfect, Corel, StarOffice, and too many more to count. Sun Microsystem

Ceph-Powered DreamObjects Now Ready For Production Use

<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2012/09/05/dreamhost-enters-cloud-storage-fray-with-ceph-powered-dreamobjects/">DreamObjects</a>, DreamHost's scalable cloud storage solution built atop <a href="https:

After Teasing Its Touch-Friendly Future, Canonical Officially Reveals The Ubuntu Phone OS

Ubuntu isn’t exactly a stranger to the mobile space — it started showing off its <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2012/02/21/canonical-announces-ubuntu-for-android/">Ubuntu for Android</a> project

OpenShift, Red Hat’s Platform-as-a-Service, Headed to the Enterprise

Red Hat's OpenShift platform-as-a-service started as a hosted solution for developers. It was, ostensibly, Red Hat dipping its toe into the platform-as-a-service waters. It proved successful enough to

Ubuntu Users: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

The <a target="_blank" href="https://techcrunch.com/tag/ubuntu">Ubuntu</a> Linux distribution has always been free. It's also always welcomed donations from users. Historically, though, the donation p

Perforce Aims to Bring Git to the Enterprise

It's no surprise that the pace of technological innovation in the startup and web development world greatly eclipses the pace of technology adoption at most enterprise organizations. Enterprises are g

Canonical Releases Updated Enterprise Management Solution for Ubuntu Linux

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

Badgeville Brings Gamification to Drupal Communities

It's a classic quandary -- getting people to participate in online communities can be hard, but getting people to participate <em>well</em> in online communities is even harder. To that end, behav
Load More