Newsstand – Richard Stallman Enters Internet Hall of Fame

Congratulations are in order loyal subjects of the Open Source world.  Richard Stallman has bee inducted into the 2013 Internet Hall of Fame!  I do give a round of applause for Stallman to always sticking to his principles, despite any negativity or opposition.  It takes a ton of guts and gusto to be able to do that, especially today.

Richard Stallman, if you do not know him, is the founder of the Free Software Foundation, whose primary principle is promotion of free (as in free to use/change/modify) software.  This is slightly akin to freedom of speech, but in the software world.  He also wrote the most widely user free software licence GNU GPL, and created the GNU Project.

After he received this great award, Stallman punctuated the occasion by noting “Now that we have made the Internet work, the next task is to stop it from being a platform for massive surveillance, and makes it work in a way that respects human rights, including privacy.”

Congratulations Mr. Stallman.

-Professor

30 Days of GNU/Linux: Day 2

Things on the desktop with Linux Mint have been PERFECT.  However, to address my more technical thirst, I will most likely end up with Arch Linux on the desktop.  The Macbook Pro, hasn’t fared so well.  I ended up dual booting Mac OS X with Linux Mint (Mint has the updated Grub2, Fedora 18 did not).  I really* wanted to have Fedora on at least the laptop to reacquaint myself with a bit of the enterprise side.

Turns out Fedora 18 is a NIGHTMARE with UEFI systems, especially the Macbook, defaulting after live DVD load to Fedora’s CLI Dracut system.  I tried and tried and tried many things in Dracut to get the Fedora Grub chainloader to find the .is file, to no avail.  After working on that for a long while, I decided to give Fedora 19 Beta a good, which worked out well.  I was finally able to boot into at least the installer, which is now loading the OS.  Fingers crossed!

Till tomorrow!

30 Days of GNU/Linux: Day 1

I wanted to revisit my Linux days from Highschool onward into College (~2004 to 2009)and really come back to what made using a computer so exciting to me: flexibility customization, a “build your own world” sorta idea. I wanted to see what had changed in the 4 or so years that I had left it, even from a so-so usability standpoint (I wasn’t using it full time, sans other OS’s). I am now quite satisfied on where it has went.

Back in 2004, I had known of some of the usual giants, Debian, Slackware, Gentoo,Fedora, and the like. I had been running Debian for quite some time, as well as dabbling in Fedora and OpenSuse among others. I then learnt of Ubuntu, and boy was that an exciting time in learning Linux. When Ubuntu came out, many were floored. It was new, much more usable from an everyday standpoint than most, and required less knowledge to get get going. I was instantly hooked. The software side was not quite so mature, with display drivers still heavily relying on open drivers for much of the grunt work, with support for propriertary video drivers (i.e. Nvidia/Ati) sometime flaky on many distributions. It was great when you got them to work, then again the lack of many games was a downside. That is when I discovered the emulation package Wine, as well as its paid cousin, Crossover. This provided some much needed support in transitioning over some of my Windows-heavy applications, and an outlet for Office 2003 formats I still had to dabble in for school. When the Steam games platform was emulated (can’t remember when), I was happy being able to at least play Team Fortress in college under Linux. Software alternatives existed, but some always had me wishing I was in Windows. Gasp!

I left college, the LAN Parties, and the group of cool people to talk with all the time, into the real world. Getting a real* job, and income, I left behind Linux. Now in 2013, I am revisting much of Linux, and after testing a few distros, landed on Linux Mint for home use, due to it’s wide package selection (Debian based), usability, and driver support. Problem was, one* of those devices was a Macbook pro, and as many know, that can be an iffy scene with Linux. After busting on Arch Linux on the Macbook (a distro I do very much love), and Fedora 18, I got the most upfront support from Linux Mint. It did take a few intalls, and tweaking of drivers to get all of the keyboard function keys working, but its up and running, albeit with occasional shutdown/startup hicups.

The desktop was an easy affair, much more so than the macbook of course. Tonight will come the HTPC. Software side this time on my devices, most things work great, and I have found alternatives to most things, aside from my usual go-to packages (VLC etc.). Blu Ray support is one thing I have found a few solutions on (MakeMVC + script + VLC), but of course I still have some fine tuning to do.

Onward!

-ProfessorKaos

The Wire: Richard Stallman to visit local Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pa

This monday, 3/23/09, Richard Stallman will be speaking at Lycoming College in Williamsport Pa!  This is a great chance to meet the founder of the GNU project, where the Free and Open Source movement was started!  Starting the Free Software movement in 1985, Stallman has since been an active and iconic figure in the Linux world.  He is most known for his support of the GNU General Public Liscense, which many developers in the Linux community use to liscense their software.  Also noted, is his creation of Emacs, the GNU Compiler Collection, and the GNU Debugger.  In his current days , Stallman spends his time advocating Free Software, and speaking on its behalf.

Details for the even are as follows

• Lycoming Website
• Event Location: Williamsport, PA
• Event Time: 7 p.m. EST
• Event Room: AC Room D-001
• Event Cost: FREE

See you all There!

Cheers!

_Nano

Note: For more information on Richard Stallman please see :  Rirchard Stallman (Credit goes to Wikipedia.org)