You may have seen that the Debian project (my particular GNU/Linux distribution of choice) has decided to schedule fixed time-based releases in future. This has come as a surprise to many -- including ...
The submission by Microsoft of twenty thousand lines of code to the Kernel has, predictably, caused many an eyebrow to arch. The phrase "beware Greeks bearing gifts" comes swiftly to mind. I checked t ...
If you want to do more serious, integrated screenshot stuff then Shutter's the kiddie A few months ago I stumbled across a screenshot utility called Shutter. I liked it. A lot. So I decided to give it ...
Social networking, micro-blogging and other such buzzwords abound across web development these days, and the "public" is a fickle as ever. The darling of the media-driven, web-based section of the pub ...
_Note: this is a post from one of our readers. I obviously have different views om the topic, but I think it's important to share maruadventurer's views. -- Tony Mobily_ #1: The Operating system is no ...
_This article was originally published on "2008-06-15 13:09:55 +0000". I re-read it, and decided that it deserved to be re-published in Free Software Magazine as a tribute to those individual who made ...
A small revolution in the IT world is about to happen, and we are about to witness it. Microsoft Windows' domination has been challenged many times: first by OS/2 (failed), then Apple (failed), then J ...
A few weeks ago, Microsoft announced that Windows 7 would not ship with Internet Explorer 8 within the European Union. This is to comply with EU demands following the anti-trust case some time back. O ...
GNU/Linux is slowly invading everybody's everyday life. I won't say "The year of the GNU/Linux desktop is here". Been there, done that. But, GNU/Linux is definitely imposing its presence -- think abou ...
This is a story of hubris, nemesis and very bad language. Mine. We all like to have our egos flattered and I'm no exception, so when two old acquaintances told me their Windows laptops were infected w ...
If you haven't heard yet, Google have released a developer preview of their new social networking and collaboration tool - Wave. What impact might this have on free software users and developers?
I have been talking about the convergence of telephony and desktop computing for years. Nowadays, more and more companies are announcing small devices ("netbooks") that will run Android -- and we are ...
This article is necessarily going to be short: I am busy restoring our server from a backup from the 2nd of June. Why? Because 3FN was shut down by the FTC; and yes, 3fn is the hosting company we used ...
When it comes to programming a lot of people look to C/C++ for answers. They're pretty straightforward languages that are general-purpose(they aren't really good at anything in particular, but can be ...
Fashion is fickle. One day thin clients and clusters are the fashion _de jour_, the next it's Web 2.0, Virtualisation or distributed computing and Grids. They who live by the sword of fashion will sur ...
Recently, I had to fact-check some older articles I wrote about One Laptop Per Child in order to bring them up to date. This meant digging through the controversy in 2008, and what I found was some pr ...
It is not often that you fail to find half a dozen free software programs to fill a particular niche -browsers, e-mail clients or file managers to name a few; so it was with both surprise and disappoi ...
One of the first rules that entrepreneurs learn is that investors don't like revolutionary new ideas. Even when they work, the reasoning goes, they won't make you any money. Instead, investors want to ...
Inkscape is my vector graphics application of choice. It can do a wide variety of vector drawing tasks with relatively little effort. It uses the now-standard SVG vector format as its native format, a ...
There is no "magic" to commons-based peer production. Most of the techniques that have brought free culture products ranging from software to art to electronic hardware have been in play for hundreds ...