What happened on 25th August 1991? Well, it wasn’t when Sgt Pepper taught the band to play! 😀 Nope. definitely not. However, something very significant in the world of computing occurred on this very day 20 years ago. A young student in Helsinki named Linus Torvalds sent the following email to the Minix newsgroup: Hello […]
According to the Raspberry Pi blog, the alpha boards for this ARM-chipped Linux device are now in production. This board is intended to be identical to the final device, with the resulting units being used to validate the schematic design and serving as Raspberry Pi’s interim software development platform. Key differences between the alpha and […]
Here at Bristol Wireless we’re keen advocates on green ICT and have many times experienced the delights of providing off-mains event ICT powered by renewables (news passim), so were overjoyed to hear of a recent development in India. India’s Simmtronics Semiconductors recently announced the launch of a solar-powered desktop. What’s more, it’s running Linux, making […]
Earlier this year we reported that Linux is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year (news passim). As part of the celebrations, the Linux Foundation invited video submissions to mark this milestone. A birthday greetings video from Microsoft has now been received by the Foundation. We hope you enjoy this submission from the ‘Beast of Redmond’ […]
Question: when talking about Linux recently, who said the following? “Linux gives us the flexibility and technology maturity we require to evolve… and… to address the expectations of our customers.” The answer: Kenichi Murata, a project general manager with Toyota, upon Toyota’s joining The Linux Foundation. Murata continued: “The Linux Foundation provides us with a […]
The other day we heard about Doudoulinux. Leaving aside the rather scatological name of the distro (in English, anyhow. Ed.), it looks rather good at what it’s trying to achieve. Based on Debian – like lots of other fine general-purpose and specialised distros – Doudoulinux is specifically designed for use by children aged between 2 […]
In the flood of news about open source deployments by the public sector around the world, the UK public sector is beginning to look increasingly isolated with its devotion to closed source, proprietary IT (I believe this is what the experts call vendor lock-in. Ed.). The latest bit of news to reach the lab is […]
On Monday the advance crew – by now known as the tat-down team and consisting mostly of Bristol Wireless volunteers – arrived back tired but satisfied from the rural Barncamp site up the Wye Valley. Our journey began the previous Wednesday afternoon, when the advance crew got to site after a frantic best part of […]
PC World reports that North Korea has started manufacturing computers, according to a report on North Korean state TV. The range of machines available consists of two for educational use and one for office use. The educational computers both run the same custom software and come in two versions: one is a netbook-sized laptop, whilst […]
Bristol Wireless are advocates of green ICT and constantly urge people to refurbish and re-use hardware where possible before recycling or buying new kit. Nevertheless, we were most intrigued to come across the laptop in a pizza box illustrated below – a fine example of recycling both consumer electronics and disposable food packaging. Eagle-eyed Linux […]
Two weeks ago, your correspondent made one of his regular trips to Stoke on Trent to do a routine back-up of his 79 year-old mother’s computer, which happens to be running Windows XP. The back-up went smoothly: I took a copy of her personal files to a spare hard drive of my own in a […]
Yesterday the Gnome Project announced that the GNOME 3.0 release (as used in the latest Ubuntu release, now imminent, codenamed ‘Natty Narwhal’. Ed.) has attracted far more contributions from women than any previous GNOME release. This results largely from the hard work of the first round of the Outreach Programme for Women interns, who took […]
Our friend Emma Harvey (a fine exponent of singing the ‘Free Software Song‘. Ed.) at Trinity Community Arts has sent out an email today to let people know Trinity is looking for volunteers to assist in developing its work. Amongst the types of volunteers wanted, we noticed the following: IT Assistant to help us build […]
News arrives at the Lab that our friends at UWE are organising the 5th annual run of their popular Linux Boot Camp on 20th and 21st June this year. Linux Boot Camp is aimed primarily at people who’ ve done their A levels and might be going on to do something IT-related in further or […]
2011 marks the 20th birthday of Linux (or GNU/Linux if you’re a purist. Ed.) and the Linux Foundation has released the video below to mark the event. Find out more about what’s happening to celebrate 20 years of Linux and penguin-powered computing at the Linux Foundation’s dedicated 20th birthday page.
If someone asked you what you would do with Linux when the cows come home, would your answer be: “Milk them”? If so, you can go to the top of the class; and no, don’t let the proximity of April 1st lull into a sense of incredulity. Agricultural equipment manufacturer DeLaval makes a robotic milking […]
It’s 8.30 on the morning of Saturday 26th March and your ‘umble scribe is standing on a sunny Stapleton Road station waiting for the train. One and a half hours later, he alights at an overcast and chillier Hereford station and goes ambling into town in search of 2 things: firstly, breakfast and secondly, All […]
H-Online reports that the main exchange of the London Stock Exchange (LSE) is now live trading with a Novell SUSE Linux based system, following final step set-up procedures on Saturday 5 February. The system has been trialled for several months and the LSE’s move to Linux continues what appears to be a trend for stock […]
It’s come to the chief scribe’s attention that Herefordshire, another part of the country with a fine cider tradition, is having a bit of a do on Saturday 26th March and there’s a local Bristol angle, if you read down near the foot of the email reproduced below, which was posted to the Ubuntu UK […]
Debian News announces that next weekend, Debian developers and users from all over the world are organizing release parties for the release of Debian squeeze, which is due on the weekend of the 5th-6th February. For those interested in organising a local release party in their respective part of the globe, get cracking with the […]