May 6, 2020
by sjvn01
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What’s really the most popular operating system? That depends on how you look at them and who’s doing the looking. For example, Net Applications shows Windows on top of the desktop operating system mountain with 88.14% of the market. That’s not surprising, but Linux — yes Linux — seems to have jumped from 1.36% share in March to 2.87% share in April. Has the Linux desktop seen a sudden surge in popularity?
Most popular operating systems of 2020: The more things change… More>
May 6, 2020
by sjvn01
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p>Almost all smartphones lock you into expensive, pretty prisons. They look great, but you can’t repair them, and they watch your every move. But now there’s the Fairphone 3, which lets you fix the hardware yourself, paired up with the privacy-first Android /e/OS operating system.
Besides being repairable by any handy person, the Fairphone uses ethically sourced materials and is built by well-paid workers, Many smartphones, such as the Apple iPhone, are built by poorly paid temporary workers.
The Android-based /e/ operating system and smartphones put privacy first. It’s based on LineageOS. This is an Android-based operating system, which is descended from the failed CyanogenMod Android fork. This version also blends in features from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) 7, 8, and 9 source-code trees.
In the /e/OS, all Google services have been removed and replaced with MicroG services. MicroG replaces Google’s libraries with purely open-source implementations without hooks to Google’s services. This includes libraries and apps that provide Google Play, Maps, Geolocation, and Messaging services for Android applications when they need them.
Put them together, and you get the first privacy-conscious, sustainable smartphone. This pairing springs from the Fairview community. They were asked what their preferred alternative OS was for the Fairphone 3, and they voted for /e/OS.
May 5, 2020
by sjvn01
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Who knew a few months ago that we’d be working from home? Or, dealing with sluggish unemployment systems written in 60-year old COBOL? Or, spending all day watching streaming TV because you’re literally stuck at home pretty much 24×7? Welcome to life with the coronavirus pandemic.
Someday soon, but not as soon as you hope, we can start returning to life as normal. Or, well, the new normal anyway. In the meantime, we’ve been finding out the hard way what technologies work well when subjected to a real-world disaster and which, well, aren’t up to snuff.
May 1, 2020
by sjvn01
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Sharing isn’t easy. It’s difficult to move photos from one social network to another or storage. Now, Facebook and Google have made it simple to copy your Facebook photos to Google Photos. This is the first fruit of an open-source project, the Data Transfer Project, to make it much easier to trade photos and other data among the Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Twitter platforms.
How to easily move your photos from Facebook to Google Photos More>
April 30, 2020
by sjvn01
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After more than a decade as the head of the popular open-source, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud Cloud Foundry, Abby Kearns is now the CTO of top DevOps program Puppet.
Kearns recently left Cloud Foundry in the capable hands of Chip Childers. At Puppet, Kearns will oversee Puppet’s product growth and help its product portfolio evolve. Part of that involves getting Puppet to deliver on the promise of helping enterprises modernize and manage their infrastructure — and, based on earlier comments by Puppet CEO Yvonne Wassenaar, making Puppet more cloud and open-source friendly. Kearns is ideally suited for this job.
April 29, 2020
by sjvn01
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Fedora isn’t a Linux for everyone. But, for developers who want the most from their Linux desktop, you can’t beat it. This latest edition, like its predecessors, brings together the best and latest open-source programs for programmers. As Fedora Project Leader Matthew Miller said: “No matter what variant of Fedora you use, you’re getting the latest the open-source world has to offer.”