Posted on 04 May 2015
In my continuing effort to increase Linux adoption, I’ve created: “Compute Freely”.
A website that I intend to be a friendly jumping in point for people completely new to the concept of Free and Open Source operating systems and Linux distributions but otherwise have some curiousity about them.
Friendly & No Jargon
Unlike some sites, Compute Freely does away with a lot of the technical jargon and pageranking to determine “popularity”. Instead it presents some basic info about using Linux and provides a curated list of distributions that may strike a variety of interests or skill levels.
Plus each distribution gets a simple page with the “essentials”—we’re not keeping the most accurate records or anything—and people can jump around and explore via tags., people that for everyday use, a Linux distro is comparable to other offerings.
A goal is to supplant the many “top 10 linux distro” and “which of these linux distros are right for you” and other results in searches and actually be useful for introducing people to Linux or convincing them to switch to a free & open source operating system.
So do please share. :)
Compute Freely
Posted on 11 Apr 2015
Today is the day to get the latest version of elementary OS and it’s a release I’m proud to say I was a part of. So, congrats on all the good, hard work, everyone. 😄
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Posted on 04 Apr 2015
I’ve recently started paying for a VPN (Virtual Private Network) service because I wanted to secure my Internet activity and enjoy a degree of privacy online. Even though I am probably technically proficient enough to spin up my own OpenVPN server, I’m too lazy for that, so I’m perfectly happy paying someone to do it for me, specifically: a local (Canadian) company called TunnelBear.
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Posted on 18 Feb 2015
Something that I take rather seriously is the copying and redistibution without credit (intentionally or otherwise) of free software, i.e. plagiarism.
There’s a huge difference between something being in the public domain and being free and open source. The latter has a license, for one, and the purpose of it being under license is to preserve the rights of the author(s) to their work(s) but some people either misunderstand or ignore that distinction.
There’s a huge difference between something being in the public domain and being free and open source.
Now it must be said that most people generally abide by the licensing of free software projects but I’ve come across and been personally affected by instances when folks simply copy some works and remove or replace the original license during redistribution and modification (usually unbeknownst to the original author) and thereby take credit and this is unconscionable in my view. People put free software licenses on their works in good faith and there is a general expectation that the larger community also acts in good faith when modifying works but the onus is still on us to exert our rights otherwise the license loses its effectiveness and free software is lesser for it.
All that said, in my experience this kind of plagiarism occurs on a pretty small scale on projects with one or a few authors—no one’s out there copying the entire Linux kernel and passing it off as their own work—but if we are to be good advocates of free software we also have to be guardians of it regardless. We need to hold plagiarists accountable for their actions or at least call them out on it.
Posted on 22 Nov 2014
The phrase “The Year of the Linux Desktop” is one we see being used by hopefuls, to describe a future in which desktop Linux has reached the masses.
But I’m more pragmatic, and would like to describe the past and tweak this phrase to (I believe) accurately surmise 2011 as “The Year of the Linux Desktop Schism”.
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