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Category Archives: Open Source News

French universities and elite schools adopt open source messenging system

Steve Woods International Events, Open Source News Comments Off on French universities and elite schools adopt open source messenging system

Blue-Mind, the French open source collaborative messaging solution, has been adopted for French universities and other associated establishments, including scientific and technical public institutions, Le Monde Informatique reports today. The Ministry for Higher Education and Research has signed a four-year framework agreement with French software supplier Blue-Mind. Its collaborative open source messenging solution is therefore […]

Dutch town of Ede spends 92% less than others on licence fees

Steve Woods International IT News, Open Source News Comments Off on Dutch town of Ede spends 92% less than others on licence fees

The Dutch town of Ede spends 92% less on licence fees than other Dutch local authorities. How? By using free and open source software wherever possible according to the Dutch edition of Computerworld. Where NOiV initiative failed, the municipality of Ede wants to be a shining example as regards the use of open source software. […]

Coming soon: Manchester’s first Free Software festival

Steve Woods Local Events, National Events, National IT News, Open Source News Comments Off on Coming soon: Manchester’s first Free Software festival

Coming soon: the fair city of Manchester is holding its first Free Software festival between Monday 3rd February and Saturday, 8th February 2014. To quote from the FSFE Manchester website: We are delighted to announce that FSFE-mcr and friends will be running a whole week of Free Software fun in Manchester’s very first Free Software […]

Britain’s CESG finds Ubuntu most secure OS

Steve Woods National IT News, Open Source News Comments Off on Britain’s CESG finds Ubuntu most secure OS

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS proved to be the most secure product in a client operating system investigation by British security body Communications Electronics Security Group (CESG), which is part of GCHQ and provides assistance to government departments on their own communications security, according to a report today in Germany’s Linux-Magazin. The test field consisted of 11 […]

Use free software first, Italian public sector told

Steve Woods International IT News, Open Source News Comments Off on Use free software first, Italian public sector told

The Italian government has made free software the default choice for public sector organisations, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) reports. In a document (PDF, Italian) published last Wednesday, the Italian Digital Agency (Agenzia per l’Italia Digitale) issued rules saying that all the country’s government organisations must consider using free software before buying licences for […]

An open source online game for learning how to programme

Steve Woods International IT News, Open Source News, Training Comments Off on An open source online game for learning how to programme

The initiatives for encouraging young people to get into programming are multiplying, writes French news site Le Monde Informatique. With CodeCombat the work is both study and play. Now released as open source, CodeCombat is a video game devoted to teaching programming. The platform is multi-player and uses CoffeeScript, a programming language that transcompiles to […]

Date for your diaries, CiviCRM users

Steve Woods Bristol Wireless News, Local Events, National Events, Open Source News Comments Off on Date for your diaries, CiviCRM users

The January newsletter for CiviCRM, the free and open source CRM package used by Bristol Wireless, has just arrived in our inbox and it contains 3 items of interest for UK-based users. Dealing with them in strict chronological order, the first date for your diaries is a Free CiviCRM Showcase Day in Leeds on 16th […]

0 A.D. Alpha 15 “Osiris” released

Steve Woods International IT News, Open Source News Comments Off on 0 A.D. Alpha 15 “Osiris” released

Just before the end of last month Wildfire Games announced the release of 0 A.D. Alpha 15 “Osiris”. 0 A.D. is a real time strategy game and the new release comes with additional functions. It’s available free of charge for Linux, Mac and Windows and is licensed under Version 2 of the GPL. The Alpha […]

New university supercomputer puts Bristol at forefront of research

Steve Woods Local IT News, Open Source News, Training Comments Off on New university supercomputer puts Bristol at forefront of research

The University of Bristol has announced that its research is being revolutionsied by one of the fastest and most advanced supercomputing facilities in the UK, capable of over 200 trillion calculations per second. A £2 million investment has increased the capability and power of the University’s state-of-the-art BlueCrystal High Performance Computer (HPC) facility, which allows […]

Canonical forks Gnome Control Centre*

Steve Woods Bristol Wireless News, International IT News, Open Source News Comments Off on Canonical forks Gnome Control Centre*

Robert Ancell of Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution (which Bristol Wireless recommends for use by newcomers to Linux. Ed. ), has announced on the Ubuntu desktop mailing list that Canonical is forking the Gnome Control Centre. Robert’s email is reproduced in full below. Hi all, Ubuntu makes use of a heavily […]

Bristol PhD student: ‘Turkey deliberately ignoring open source’

Steve Woods International IT News, Local IT News, Open Source News Comments Off on Bristol PhD student: ‘Turkey deliberately ignoring open source’

Hüseyin Tolu, a PHD student at the University of Bristol, says that public sector organisations in Turkey are neglecting free and open source ICT solutions and its causes include institutional inertia, vendor lock-in and corruption according to a report today in Joinup, the EU’s public sector all things open source website. Part of his thesis […]

Training in the lab

Steve Woods Bristol Wireless Events, Bristol Wireless News, Local Events, Local IT News, Open Source News, Training, Volunteering Comments Off on Training in the lab

Last week Bristol Wireless indulged in some internal training – something we haven’t done for a couple of years. Ably led by Ben Green and Julien Weston, Bristol Wireless volunteers are now more familiar with the ins and outs of Linux system administration, MySQL, the Puppet configuration management tool, vserver environments and web services, to […]

Supercomputer app store being developed

Steve Woods International IT News, Open Source News Comments Off on Supercomputer app store being developed

Today’s Le Monde Informatique asks how the world of high-powered computing (HPC) can be reconciled with the needs of companies as regards simulation and modelling. An American research centre is working of the creation of an app store to provide dedicated applications. The major problem for supercomputers is that companies are not benefiting from this […]

OpenEyes – an eye-opener for hospitals

Steve Woods International IT News, National IT News, Open Source News Comments Off on OpenEyes – an eye-opener for hospitals

So great is the grip of proprietary operating systems and software on the UK that open source success stories are hard to find. However, the UK isn’t a complete desert for open source. Last week Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news site, reported that hospitals in the UK and beyond are showing interest […]

Open Knowledge Foundation: open data still not open enough

Steve Woods International Events, International IT News, Open Source News Comments Off on Open Knowledge Foundation: open data still not open enough

In the week a major international summit on government transparency is held in London, the Open Knowledge Foundation has published its 2013 Open Data Index, showing that governments are still not providing enough information in an accessible form to their citizens and businesses. The UK and USA top the 2013 Index, which was compiled from […]

Careful when updating Ubuntu!

Steve Woods International IT News, Open Source News Comments Off on Careful when updating Ubuntu!

According to German technology news website Heise, news is emerging on discussion and support forums of graphics problems when updating from Ubuntu 13.04 to the latest version – Ubuntu 13.10. Users are reporting graphics problems in the form of a black screen. The problem most affects systems with AMD graphics cards if the proprietary AMD […]

Distro Astro – Linux for Astronomers

Steve Woods Open Source News Comments Off on Distro Astro – Linux for Astronomers

Distro Astro is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu/Linux Mint which aims to cover the requirements of astronomers and astronomy enthusiasts. The project has announced the release of version 1.0.2 of its distribution, codenamed Ceres. Distro Astro has features for almost all astronomy uses — from observatories, planetariums – and for all users from professional […]

Details of our courses in November 2013

beng Bristol Wireless Events, Bristol Wireless News, Local Events, Local IT News, National Events, National IT News, Open Source News, Training Comments Off on Details of our courses in November 2013

After our last post, about our training course coming up in November, and with the scent of knowledge ringing in their nostrils, fiery fervorous  enquiries have begun streaming in. ‘What are these courses?’ ‘What the actual contents?’ they ask. To sate this need for knowledge, we’ve decided to put out some basic details of the […]

Bristol Wireless Trains Tech in late November 2013

beng Bristol Wireless Events, Bristol Wireless News, International Events, Local Events, Local IT News, National Events, National IT News, Open Source News, Training 1 Comment »

This November Bristol Wireless is offering a week of training days in its lab at Windmill Hill City Farm, Bedminster, Bristol. One topic will be covered each day of the week of the 25-29 November and there are four places available for each topic. The course topic for each day is: Monday 25th November: Hosting […]

Swiss government open data portal launched

Steve Woods International IT News, Open Source News Comments Off on Swiss government open data portal launched

The Swiss Federal Government launched its open data portal opendata.admin.ch comprising over 1,600 public data sets, including election results, key figures for cantons and local authorities, as well as demographic information and data at the start of the Open Knowledge Conference 2013 in Geneva, the German technology news site Heise reports. The portal will provide […]