Despite our best efforts over the last 10 years (and those of others all over the world. Ed.), Linux still accounts for a small percentage of desktop users – a couple of per cent at most. However, there’s one area where Linux is dominant – and that’s supercomputers. The latest list of the world’s top […]
Yes, you did read that correctly. It’s not very often the freetards of the Bristol Wireless lab recommend you spend any money. After all, we like our software to be free in both the beer and speech senses! 🙂 However, for once we’re changing our usual philosophy and encouraging you to go and grab some […]
Erik Josefsson is the winner of the Nordic Free Software Award 2011. With the award, the Swedish Foundation for Free Culture and Free Software (FFKP) honours Josefsson for his achievements as a campaigner for freedom in the information society. “We are proud to honour Erik for the tremendously important work he has done over the […]
On 8th November the Berlin Regional Court issued its decision in the case AVM Computersysteme Vertriebs GmbH (AVM) v. Cybits AG (Cybits) (news passim). In this case, AVM was essentially trying to stop Cybits from modifying GNU GPL licensed free software inside of their AVM Fritz!Box products. Yesterday, the court dismissed this principal claim. Thus, […]
Your correspondent arrived at the lab last Friday to find there was – initially at least – nowhere to sit down. We had a full complement of volunteers present – both old and new – and a couple of customers too. Looking at our volunteers, I’d like to draw your attention to 2 of them. […]
Today Linux.com reminds us that there’s another anniversary to celebrate this year. In addition to the 20th birthday of Linux (news passim), the venerable Vim text editor has also reached the same age. Vim is, of course, a contraction of Vi Improved. In other words, Vim is actually a take on the even-older vi, the […]
Last weekend an historic change (for free and open source aficionados anyway. Ed.) occurred when Freshmeat, one of the oldest free software directories on the internet, changed its name to Freecode. The change is accounted for in part by the unusual name causing problems for many years when trying to sell advertising space for the […]
The Linux Foundation, the non-profit organisation dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, announced today (26th October) it is hosting a new project created by its Consumer Electronics (CE) workgroup. The new project, the Long Term Support Initiative (LTSI), provides for both an annual release of a Linux kernel suitable for supporting the lifespan of […]
In an effort to get more women involved in Free Software, the GNOME project is sponsoring several internships for women from 12th December 2011 to 12th March 2012. These dates are aimed at women students from the Southern Hemisphere who will have a summer break during this time, but any woman available for a full […]
Flossie, the network of women who are interested in, use, advocate and/or develop Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS), has just announced its unconference for next spring. Queen Mary at University of London (QMUL) has offered to host the Flossie unconference which will be on 25/26 May 2011 at QMUL’s Mile End Campus. Flossie will […]
Waldemar Pawlak, Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy, saluted Free and Open Source Software (FLOSS) as the “greatest success of the 20th century” in a conference talk on 27 September 2011, according to OSOR. He added that FLOSS is based on very sound principles and can provide solutions to some of the problems […]
Our neighbours over the road at BV Studios are holding an open studios event starting on Friday 14th October from 6.00 pm to 9.00 pm and continuing on Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th from 11.00 am to 6.00 pm. Entry is free! BV Studios also houses our friends at Bristol Hackspace, who’ve now written to […]
A couple of years ago, we reported on Mr Treasurer’s eeePC (news passim). Regular readers will be pleased to hear it’s still performing well, as evidenced by the following (slightly edited for greater legibility – although the hashtags have been left in! Ed.) tweets from a conversation between Mr Treasurer and the chief scribe on […]
Linus Torvalds, the creator and maintainer in chief of the Linux kernel, is also well known for his hobby of scuba diving and – as The H-online reports – he’s has just released subsurface, a dive-tracking program he wrote after discovering that no dive log software worked for him. Subsurface runs on Linux and uses […]
Yesterday the lab received a visit from Jon Roberts, a journalist from Future Publishing‘s Linux Format magazine. Linux Format’s strapline is ‘The #1 source for Linux’ and is also known as LXF. According to the latest ABC figures, LXF has a circulation 25,000 copies per issue. After a round of introductions and a cup of […]
Germany’s Linux-Magazin reports that Swiss politicians at both local and national level have been questioned on their attitude to open source by the Zurich Group of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). The individual questions and answers plus a summary, can be found on a FSFE Zurich Group wiki page (in German).
VolvoIT, the IT division of the major car manufacturer, is testing an open source workstation based on Ubuntu amongst its Chinese users, according to ZDnet.fr. The workstations have 80% of the functionality of the proprietary workstations they are replacing but cost only one-fifth (20%) as much. Volvo IT is a standalone organisation within Volvo, employs […]
Yes, that’s right; today lovers of free software all over the world celebrate Software Freedom Day, a global outbreak of gratitude for Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Its goal is to educate the worldwide public about the benefits of using high quality FOSS in education, in government, at home and in business; in short, […]
As of the start of the new school year, all secondary schools in the Languedoc-Rousillon region of France will be equipped with laptops, according to local site Tout Montpellier. What’s more, the machines will be running free software. The 32,000 pupils who’ll be going back to school in September 2011 will receive a laptop linked […]
The Department of Defence has stepped up its push for open source software to reduce its A$100 million annual software licensing bill, IT News reports. Last week, it joined five other Australian government agencies in forming the Open Technology Foundation, which is aimed at facilitating collaboration and interoperable technology in the public sector. In January […]