News reaches the lab (hat tip: Lugbikaner) that Nigeria now has its own open source advocacy group called the Open Source Foundation for Nigeria (OSFON). According to OSFON’S website, its mission is The mission of Open Source Foundation for Nigeria (OSFON) is to promote and educate decision makers in government, educators, NGOs, businesses and citizens […]
OSOR reports that the Greek non-profit organisation ‘Free Software / Open Source Software’ (aka Ellak, in Greek) granted the northern Greek Municipality of Kozani four wireless access points and a Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) line of 24Mb down/1Mb up in the town’s Lassanis square. Furthermore, Ellak undertook the installation, configuration, operation and technical support of […]
Arriving at the lab on Tuesday this week, your correspondent was pleasantly surprised to see that an additional batch of LTSP thin clients had been set up in the lab. He was even more surprised to observe that all 4 new machines were in use and a full-blown lesson on use of the Linux command […]
Today the BBC reports that Race Online 2012, the organisation that aims to reach out to the 9.2 million adults in the UK who are currently offline, will be offering low-cost computers as part of a government scheme to encourage people in the UK to get online for the first time. Prices will start at […]
For a couple of hours earlier today, Bristol’s Victoria Rooms, a part of the University of Bristol, today became the Wikitoria Rooms, courtesy of the presence of Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, who was in Bristol as part of Wikipedia’s 10th anniversary celebrations (Wikipedia was actually launched on 15th January 2001. How the world has […]
In 2011 meetings of the CiviCRM user group will be be held every 2 months and the first of these will be held in Bristol on Wednesday 11th February from 4.00 pm to 6.00 pm at The Create Centre, B Bond Warehouse, Smeaton Road, Bristol, BS1 6XN (map). The event’s theme will be “Growing The […]
News reaches the lab that Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, the Linux operating system which we install on our refurbished machines, is organising a Developer Day on 27th January 2011 in Bangalore, India. The event will be held at Bangalore’s Leela Palace Kempinski Hotel. Ubuntu is different from other commercial Linux offerings that preceded it, […]
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is gathering information about the use of Free Software by the public sector in Europe. The information will help them to evaluate the current situation and will also be used to decide who will be the European Free Software Champion in 2012. The FSFE is asking public sector bodies […]
Regular readers will be aware that on 13th January, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, will be giving at talk in at the Victoria Rooms in Bristol (news passim). In the meantime news has been received from Ask Bristol that there will be a live webcast of the event. As Ask Bristol stated recently on […]
Just before Christmas, PCWorld.com ran an article speculating on the differences if the world ran its IT on secure Linux-based systems rather than insecure closed source proprietary operating systems. One reason for such speculation is that, for as long as we advocates can remember, it’s always been the next year that’s going to be the […]
The wonderful xkcd, a favourite read in the Lab, has the cartoon below as its current front page. Luckily, it’s available for re-use under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial licence. And one final thing: season’s greetings to you all from Bristol Wireless.
Our resident purveyor of bah-humbug writes: It’s that time of year again; even the normally secular Bristol Wireless lab has started to acquire greetings cards. However, there’s another reason to celebrate 25th December: Sir Isaac Newton, a man of gravitas, was born on that day in 1642 (under the old calendar reckoning. Ed). Visiting the […]
OSOR informs us that open source moves are afoot in Portugal. Two of Portugal’s left-wing political parties want to make the use of open standards mandatory for the country’s public sector. On Friday, 10th December the Portuguese parliament will discuss two motions, filed by the Left Bloc, with sixteen of the 230 seats in the […]
A pleasant surprise awaited your scribe on his arrival at the Lab yesterday: one of the happy smiling faces lurking there was Mark, who had to bring a halt to his volunteering activities last year to find a job to pay the bills. Anyway, Mark now has some spare time on his hands again and […]
A couple of days ago, we received a donation of a rather smart machine; this will be refurbished and offered for sale as part of our refurbishment project, for which we currently have a selection of machines complete with a full set of software (internet, office, entertainment and multimedia applications) available starting from £30. The […]
Public administrations in Norway are increasingly turning to open source, says Martin Bekkelund, business developer at Friprog, the country’s open source competence centre. This year, all 19 county administrations are using some form of open source, compared to 76 per cent in 2005. Uses vary from server operating systems and content management systems to OpenOffice. […]
An email’s arrived from Steve Virgin of Wikimedia UK to say that Jimmy Wales, the man behind Wikipedia, is coming to Bristol on 13th January 2011. He’ll be appearing at the Victoria Rooms (map) on that day between 12.00 and 13.00. This is a special event to mark 10 years of Wikipedia, featuring the man […]
From today’s inbox. The Debian Women project is pleased to announce the forthcoming start of a series of training sessions which will be held on IRC by experienced community members. The main goal of this initiative is to encourage more people, and specifically women, to contribute to Debian while introducing them to different aspects of […]
…for a quick commercial from the Linux Foundation.
Bristol Wireless volunteer Acesabe is doing some testing in the lab at present. Over the last couple of days, he’s taken a WRAP board (like the one shown below) and installed Voyage One on it. Voyage itself has been described by Carla Schroder, author of Linux Networking Cookbook as: “Voyage is a very stripped-down Debian […]