September’s Top Ten

These are the ten most read articles on FOSS Force for the month of September, 2016.

1. Discord at Libreboot Over GNU Withdrawal by Christine Hall. Published September 18, 2016. A member of the Libreboot development team has painted a picture of a lead developer who is out-of-control.

2. Surprise! Microsoft Isn’t Blocking Linux on Lenovo Laptops by Christine Hall. Published September 21, 2016. It was easy to place the blame on Microsoft in a knee-jerk reaction — and it didn’t help that a Lenovo representative placed blame firmly in Redmond’s lap. It appears, however, that Microsoft’s not involved, and Lenovo’s not to blame either.

3. FSF Says Firing Wasn’t Discrimatory by Christine Hall. Published September 17, 2016. Both Richard Stallman and John Sullivan have issued statements concerning the allegations made against the FSF by Libreboot’s lead developer.

4. HP Retrofits Ink Cartridge DRM on Printers by Christine Hall. Published September 22, 2016. You’ve owned your printer for a year or more, and have happily used off-brand ink cartridges during that time. Suddenly the manufacturer says you can’t do that anymore, and suddenly orders the printer you own to not accept the ink cartridges of your choosing.

5. Redesigning Tor, Goodbye OpenOffice & More… by Christine Hall. Published September 3, 2016. Week in Review also includs: Remembering Vernon Adams, Red Hat vs. VMware, a new distro release, openSUSE Leap and ransomware that deletes files.

6. Endless OS 3: Linux for the Net Less by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols. Published September 29, 2016. This Ubuntu-based Linux distribution provides the Internet for those who don’t have 24×7 access to the net.

7. Carla Schroder: On Farming and Linux by Robin “Roblimo” Miller. Published September 15, 2016. One of the many things we like about Ms. Schroder is that she makes difficult technology easy to understand. She’s also fun to read. And as you’ll discover in this interview, she’s also a quick wit who won’t be backed into a corner.

8. Blender: An Introduction for Final Cut Pro Users by Phil Shapiro. Published September 23, 2016. Have you often considered quitting your day job to begin an exciting career as a filmmaker? You don’t need the resources of a Hollywood studio anymore. In fact, you can do it all with free and open source software.

9. Libreboot Leaves GNU Claiming Gender Identity Discrimination by FSF by Christine Hall. Published September 16, 2016. The first chapter of what became the story of the week.

10. Nextcloud’s $79 Box, Vim Gets an Update & More… by Christine Hall. Published September 18, 2016. Week in Review also includes: Libreboot leaves GNU, municipal broadband law proposed, Linux’s second 25th birthday, a new distro release, Vim and Emacs both get upgrades, Google’s hack challenge and Oracle can’t catch a break.

The post September’s Top Ten appeared first on FOSS Force.

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ownCloud Desktop Client 2.2.4 Released with Updated Dolphin Plugin, Bug Fixes

ownCloud is still alive and kicking, and they've recently released a new maintenance update of the ownCloud Desktop Client, version 2.2.4, bringing some much-needed improvements and patching various annoying issues.

ownCloud Desktop Client 2.2.4 is now the most advanced stable release of the open-source, free, and cross-platform software that acts as a graphical user interface for users to interact with an ownCloud server. The application is now available for all supported platforms, including GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows.

It's not a major update or anything, but it's important enough for you to install it on your computer and update any of the existing versions, because it improves the Dolphin plugin for GNU/Linux users running the KDE Plasma desktop environment to use the Application name for a socket path.

The SyncEngine got some improvements as well, now allowing users to rename folders when f... (read more)

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[How To] See Which Terminal Commands You Use The Most

A lot of us use the command line on a regular basis, be it to do some simple package management with apt or monitor system resources with top. Have you ever wondered which commands you use most often? There’s an easy way to find out. Run the following command in a new terminal window to see a list of […]

This post, [How To] See Which Terminal Commands You Use The Most, was written by Joey-Elijah Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.

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Raspberry Pi Adds Beautiful “Pixel” Desktop Environment To Raspbian Linux Distro

Short Bytes: A new desktop environment has been released for the Raspbian Linux distribution. It is called Pixel and it...

The post Raspberry Pi Adds Beautiful “Pixel” Desktop Environment To Raspbian Linux Distro appeared first on fossBytes.

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How to fix slow Windows 7 updates - Tutorial

Salvation: Here's a short tutorial offering an official Microsoft fix to slow Windows Update search and install functionality in the form of two recommended patches. Enjoy.

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SUSECON 2016: Where Technology Reigns Supreme

Article Sponsor: 

SUSE

I love fall—the colors, the refreshing change in the air, the fall vegetable harvest. The best thing about this time of year, however, is SUSECON. It's happening this year November 7–11 in Washington, DC. more>>

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Cinnamon 3.2 in Linux Mint 18.1 Supports Vertical Panels, Better Accelerometers

After informing the community a few days ago about the Mintbox Mini Pro PC and the upcoming improvements and new features shipping with the XApps software projects in Linux Mint 18.1, Clement Lefebvre just published the monthly Linux Mint newsletter.

In the newsletter, the Linux Mint project leader reveals the fact that the upcoming Cinnamon 3.2 desktop environment, which will ship by default with the Linux Mint 18.1 operating system, the next major release of the popular Ubuntu-based distribution, will feature support for vertical panels, a functionality that hss been requested f... (read more)

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Linux Kernel 4.4.23 LTS Has ARM and MIPS Improvements, Updated Filesystems, More

Immediately after announcing the release of Linux kernel 4.7.6, Greg Kroah-Hartman proudly informed the community about the general availability of the Linux 4.4.23 LTS kernel.

The Linux 4.4 kernel is a long-term supported branch, the latest and most advanced one, used in many stable and reliable GNU/Linux operating systems, including Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) and Alpine Linux 3.4. Therefore, it is imperative for it to receive regular updates that bring fixes to the most important issues, as well as other general improvements.

"I'm announcing the release of the 4.4.23 kernel. All users of the 4.4 kernel series must upgrade," says Greg Kroah-Hartman. "The updated 4.4.y git tree can be found at: git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git linux-4.4.y and can be browsed at the normal kernel.org git web bro... (read more)

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Calibre 2.69 eBook Manager and Reader Supports Kobo Driver 4.1, Overdrive Books

Today, September 30, 2016, Calibre developer Kovid Goyal announced the release and immediate availability for download of yet another maintenance update to the popular, free, and open source ebook library management software.

Calibre 2.69 is now the latest and most advanced version of the application, and it comes two weeks after the release of Calibre 2.68, bringing support for firmware version 4.1 to the driver for Kobo e-book readers, along with support for Overdrive books on the device.

We've spotted to other interesting new features in Calibre 2.69, namely the ability to highlight class names inside HTML tags, which has been implemented in the Edit Book component of the applications, and the ability to search and replace rating columns in the Bulk Metadata Edit ... (read more)

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Blender 2.7.8 Released With Plenty of Improvements.

The Blender Foundation has announced the release of Blender 2.78. This release is pitched as being “very stable” and ships with a number of key improvements and new features. The majority of these features won’t sound particularly exciting to those not versed in the open-source application’s prowess. But be assured: all these new features add up to make the modelling and animation tool […]

This post, Blender 2.7.8 Released With Plenty of Improvements., was written by Joey-Elijah Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.

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Angry Guy Destroys iPhones And Macs In An Apple Store With Steel Ball

Short Bytes: A French man decided to vent his bad customer service experience by smashing iPhone and Macs with a...

The post Angry Guy Destroys iPhones And Macs In An Apple Store With Steel Ball appeared first on fossBytes.

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2016 Women in Open Source Award Winners

We hope you enjoy and are inspired by this short video celebrating Preeti Murthy and Jessica McKellar, the winners of this year’s Red Hat Women in Open Source Awards.

The Video Screening Room

This short video packs a lot of punch. Inspiring and hopeful.

“Learning how to program does this really important, weird thing in your brain and you realize you have this power now. This mindset that if you see something that could be better, you have the power to change it, is a mindset that I want as many people as possible to have on this planet. It can start with open source, but the really exciting part for me is when you can apply that mindset to other domains.” – Jessica McKellar, Director of Engineering at Dropbox

For more information visit The 2016 Women in Open Source Award.

The post 2016 Women in Open Source Award Winners appeared first on FOSS Force.

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Blender 2.78 Open-Source 3D Graphics Software Released with Spherical Stereo VR

Today, September 30, 2016, the Blender Foundation is proud to release Blender 2.78, the latest stable and most advanced version of the popular, open-source, free, and cross-platform Blender 3D modelling software.

Blender 2.78 comes six months after the release of Blender 2.77, and it's a major update that adds numerous new features and improvements, among which we can mention rendering of spherical stereo images for VR (Virtual Reality), viewport rendering improvements, as well as brand new freehand curves drawing over surfaces.

Moreover, the Grease Pencil received awesome improvements and it now doubles as both an animation and drawing tool, powerful new options have been added for B-Bones, it's now possible to import and export basic operators in the Alembic support, and the Cloth Physics feature received new Simulation Speed option and Dynamic Base Mesh support.

"The draw thickness was moved to stroke, and color to a new palette color instead of saving this inf... (read more)

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Top Microsoft Open Source Projects You Must Know

Short Bytes: Microsoft is a leading tech giant with a history of bad blood with open source, but recently they’ve been...

The post Top Microsoft Open Source Projects You Must Know appeared first on fossBytes.

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Linux Kernel 4.7.6 Is Out with MIPS and OCFS2 Improvements, Updated Drivers

Today, September 30, 2016, renowned Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the release of the sixth maintenance update to the latest stable Linux 4.7 kernel series.

Linux kernel 4.7.6 comes only five days after the release of the previous maintenance version, Linux kernel 4.7.5, and, according to the appended shortlog and the diff from the last update, it changes a total of 76 files, with 539 insertions and 455 deletions. In summary, it updates multiple drivers, adds improvements to various filesystems and hardware architectures, and improves the networking stack.

"I'm announcing the release of the 4.7.6 kernel. All user... (read more)

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iPhone 7 Explodes — Apple Copies Samsung’s “Turn-Into-A-Bomb” Feature

Short Bytes: Apple has copied a feature from Samsung that nobody asked for. Following the footsteps of Samsung Galaxy Note...

The post iPhone 7 Explodes — Apple Copies Samsung’s “Turn-Into-A-Bomb” Feature appeared first on fossBytes.

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A Neat #YouTube Subscriber Count Tracker for the #Linux Terminal

I’ve spent the past 15 minutes trying — and failing — to write an introduction to Subscriber War, a neat python-based Terminal app that helps you monitor YouTube channel subscriber counts.  I’m aware that most of you don’t need to, want to, or care to track the engorged subscriber counts of popular YouTube channels. And when curiosity does bite, and you find yourself […]

This post, A Neat #YouTube Subscriber Count Tracker for the #Linux Terminal, was written by Joey-Elijah Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.

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ORWL — First Open Source And Physically Secure PC, Runs Linux And Windows

Short Bytes: ORWL is the first open source, physically secure computer. Using a secure microcontroller (MCU) and an ‘active clamshell mesh’, the device...

The post ORWL — First Open Source And Physically Secure PC, Runs Linux And Windows appeared first on fossBytes.

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Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, DeepMind Announce The Biggest Partnership On AI

Short Bytes: Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Facebook, and DeepMind have joined hands to create a non-profit organization which would focus on streamlining...

The post Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, DeepMind Announce The Biggest Partnership On AI appeared first on fossBytes.

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Endless OS 3: Linux for the Net Less

This Ubuntu-based Linux distribution provides the Internet for those who don’t have 24×7 access to the net.

In the West, we take the Internet for granted. Oh, we may grumble about a slow connection, but that’s a first-world problem. For many, however, the Internet is a “maybe” thing. For those users, Endless’s Endless OS 3, may be just what they need.

Endless OS uses a heavily modified GNOME Shell desktop.

This Ubuntu Linux-based operating system is designed for use with the “Asynchronous Internet.”

What does that mean?

In a statement, Matt Dalio, Endless’s founder, CEO and chief of product, explained, “There remain significant headwinds to providing persistent connectivity in the developing world, and it’s about time we recognize that, for most of the globe, Internet access shows no sign of big improvement. That’s because as an industry we’ve been almost exclusively focused on the top of the income ladder. Endless OS 3 makes the Internet relevant to an under-served population desperate for a solution that has permanence and reliability. Its asynchronous model of pre-loading invaluable reference content, thus saving scarce or costly Internet access, is indispensable to solving this problem.”

This operating system strives to deliver a persistent computing experience to society’s digital have-nots by providing both online and off-line access to hundreds of pre-installed, open-source health, education, business and entertainment apps.

To cut download times to a minimum Endless OS uses the Flatpack packaging system. This makes installing programs from the net when ever megabit counts much quicker.

Flatpack also enables Endless OS to run applications in sandboxes. This, in turn, makes them safer. It also uses a read-only root file system managed by OSTree, with application bundles overlaid on top. For its interface, Endless uses a heavily modified GNOME Shell desktop.

In short, this operating system is also designed to be idiot-proof. If you’re a hacker, this is not the Linux for you. As the company states,” We have a different target user. Most desktop Linux distributions are oriented towards tech-savvy users and developers. Simplicity is the key, so we carefully pick and choose the best applications available for our users.”

As part of its intent to make it as foolproof as possible, Endless OS also has some quirks. You can’t, for example, install packages from other Linux distributions. Instead you can only install programs from the Endless App Center.

Want to give Endless OS a try? The new version comes with an Endless Installer for Windows. With it you can “dual boot” it with Windows. You can, of course, just download and install it as you would any other Linux distribution.

If you really like it, you can also buy inexpensive–$79 to $99—computers that come with Endless OS pre-installed.

The post Endless OS 3: Linux for the Net Less appeared first on FOSS Force.

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GNOME Calendar App to Feature a New Sidebar, Week View & Attendees in GNOME 3.24

GNOME developer Georges Stavracas wrote an in-depth blog post the other day to inform the GNOME, Linux, and Open Source communities about the upcoming improvements and new features coming to the GNOME Calendar apps.

Now that some of us are already enjoying the recently released GNOME 3.22 desktop environment, the GNOME developers are hard at work to improve the GNOME apps and core components by either adding new exciting features and technologies or improving existing ones.

GNOME Calendar is a very important piece of software, it's the default calendar app for the GNOME Stack, but it can be used independently on any other GTK-based desktop environment. For the GNOME 3.22 cycle, it already received some much-needed enhancements, but more goodies will be coming later in the year.

A first technology preview of the GNO... (read more)

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Nmap 7.30 Security Scanner Adds 12 New IPv6 OS Fingerprints, 7 NSE Scripts

Today, September 29, 2016, the Nmap developers proudly announced the release of Nmap 7.30, the latest stable version of the free, open source and cross-platform security scanner and network mapper software.

As expected, Nmap 7.30 is a major release that adds numerous new features and improvements, among which we can mention twelve new IPv6 OS fingerprints and seven NSE (Nmap Scripting Engine) scripts that have been submitted by various developers. There are now a total of 541 NSE scripts included in Nmap.

Moreover, the new Npcap Windows packet capturing driver and library has been updated to version 0.10r2, a release that includes numerous bug fixes, new match lines and service probes were implemented for Tridium Fox, MQTT, DTLS, ProConOS, IPMI-RMCP, and PCWorx, and the output filtering has been improved.

The new NSE scripts are coap-resources and mqtt-subscribe by Mak Kolybabi, pcworx-info and fox-info by Stephen... (read more)

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Fedora For Beginners: Chapeau Linux 24 Released

Chapeau is a beginner focused Fedora based Linux distribution. Chapeau Linux has released its new version 24 recently.

As the name suggests, Chapeau 24 is based on Fedora 24. So you can expect most, if not all, Fedora 24 features in Chapeau 24 as well.

I’ll add a trivia here. You might already know that Fedora is kind of hat. I think since Fedora is a community project from Red Hat, they just named it after another kind of hat. Interestingly, Chapeau is also a kind of hat, a French one. Now these names make sense, don’t they? If you like such trivial fact check out the logic behind other Linux distributions naming conventions.

Suggested Read

[Review] Fedora 24: Beauty And The Beast

Chapeau 24 features

Pretty much what Fedora 24 has to offer. It still runs GNOME 20 which is understandable as it was only recently that GNOME 3.22 was released. Some of the main new highlights of Chapeau 24 release are:

• Gnome 3.20 desktop environment
• LibreOffice 5
• PlayOnLinux & Wine
• Steam
• VLC
• Mozilla Firefox with Adobe Flash.
• Hardware Helper Tool (hht) (introduced in Chapeau 23, this tool helps to find drivers for your hardware)
• RPMFusion software sources preconfigured
• Media codecs and DVD playback support
• Gnome Boxes
• KVM virtualisation
• Dropbox integration
• UI improvements
• Broadcom wireless chipset firmware
• CUPS backend for Canon printers
• Linux kernel 4.7

Should you be using Chapeau 24?

That’s a difficult question to answer. See, in the world of Linux, we have over 300 active Linux distributions. Plenty of them are for desktop users.

It is up to individuals what they prefer. You can totally install Fedora 24 and install various tool along with it and then you don’t need to look elsewhere. But you might also know that Fedora is quite tightfisted when it comes to proprietary hardware support.

Altogether, Chapeau is a nice to have Linux distribution that gives you Fedora minus the headaches. If GNOME is what you like, Chapeau Linux could be your game.

You can download Chapeau 24 from SourceForge:

Download Chapeau 24

Have you already given it a try? How is your experience with it?

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