Community

Updates from LinuxCon and ContainerCon, Toronto, August 2016

The Future of Linux: Continuing to Inspire Innovation and Openness The first 25 years of Linux has transformed the world, not just computing, and the next 25 years will continue to see more growth in the Open Source movement, The Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin said during the opening keynote of LinuxCon/ContainerCon in Toronto on Monday, August 22, 2016.

LinuxQuestions.org: Not Your Average Linux Forum

For many of us, our introduction to computing is being placed in front of a machine where the only challenge is figuring out the Windows user experience paradigm. Getting started with Linux, on the other hand, requires a bit more effort, a fair amount of trial and error, and perhaps some colorful language along the way.

Puerto Rico Python User Group Celebrates First Anniversary

One year ago the Puerto Rico Python Interest Group (prPIG) was founded on one purpose; to create a sustainable user community based on software development in Puerto Rico. On February 20, 2014 we will celebrate our first anniversary with an open format meeting with lightning talks from the community.

Girls and Software

December 2013's EOF, titled "Mars Needs Women", visited an interesting fact: that the male/female ratio among Linux Journal readers, and Linux kernel developers, is so lopsided (male high, female low) that graphing it would produce a near-vertical line.

Call for Authors

We're preparing for the "Community" issue of Linux Journal, which comes out this summer, and since the topic is community, we figured we should reach out to our community for articles and ideas!

Angela Byron on Drupal 7

Angela Byron is the co-maintainer of the Drupal open source content management system and framework.  She talked to us a bit about her role with the Drupal project, and Drupal 7, the recently released, latest version of Drupal.

IRC, Still the Best Support Around

If you haven't gotten our subtle hints during the past year or so, IRC certainly is not dead. It really is the best way to get knowledgeable support from the folks who know best. There are a few caveats, however, that may not be obvious to people new to this old-school chat protocol. Get a Good Client

How To Kick Your Friends in the Face: GMA500

Over the past few years, any Linux developer you ask would quickly recommend buying computer hardware with an Intel chipset. When it comes to Linux support, especially in the mobile realm, Intel had the best support hands down. In fact, even my first generation Asus EeePC with the tiny 7” screen supported Compiz acceleration out of the box!

Hard Plastic Books That Talk

Last year at LinuxWorld Expo, I had the opportunity to speak with Cliff Schmidt, the Executive Director at Literacy Bridge. At that point, Cliff was showing off an audio recording device with the eventual plan of being able to distribute sub-$10 gadgets that would allow for education and collaboration in struggling third-world countries.

Free to a Good Home: Junk

I was pricing a low-end desktop computer the other day. When configuring it, I noticed that if I added a four-year warranty, it would cost more than the entire system! We've really come to the point where computer hardware is like a plastic fork. If a tine breaks off, it gets thrown away. Sadly, although throwing away plastic forks is rough on the environment, used computers are so much more so.

Shopping on Penguins

I was pointed recently to Zappos as a near-perfect example of a company that brings the principles of open source to business. Its site is inventive and fancy (as you'd expect a clothing retailer to be), but not a triumph of design over utility. What's more, it's fast.

EUCALYPTUS: a Tree Growing in the Cloud

From the Linux (and Linux Journal) perspective, there's an issue with clouds—those back-end Web services that compose Utility Computing. They're proprietary. Amazon owns AWS (Amazon Web Services: S3, EC2 and a growing number of others). Google, Microsoft and other companies own theirs as well.