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Tag Archives: open source

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

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

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

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

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 […]

Linux Live 2014

Microsoft has announced that it will be ending support for Windows XP, now 12 years old, on 8th April 2014. The Bristol & Bath Linux Users’ Group (BBLUG) has seen this as an opportunity to introduce people currently using XP to a reliable free and open source Linux operating system and has planned an event […]

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’

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

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

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

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

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!

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 […]

CiviCRM training in Bristol

We’ve had an email from Sean Kenny of Circle Interactive informing us of some forthcoming training for CiviCRM, the free and open source CRM used by Bristol Wireless. Sean’s email says: Now London CiviCON 2013 is behind us and we’ve recovered from an exhilarating two days we’ve got some up and coming training in Bristol […]

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 […]

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 […]

Introducing Krash Accounts

We have some really talented people volunteering at Bristol Wireless. One of them is Jules, our treasurer. Jules got really frustrated at the lack of a decent accounts package for Linux. There is GNUCash of course, which we’ve reviewed in the past, and KMyMoney. However, neither of these is really up for doing a proper […]

FSFE: storing your data at Microsoft is negligent

In an article published yesterday, The Guardian describes how Microsoft is actively cooperating with the USA’s NSA. According to the article, Microsoft is providing the NSA with broad access to the communications of anyone using the company’s services, as follows: Microsoft gives the NSA access to encrypted mails on Hotmail, Live.com and Outlook.com, as well […]

LibreOffice Conference 2013 call for papers

At the end of last week, The Document Foundation blog announced the call for papers for the 2013 LibreOffice Conference, which will be held from 25th to 27th September at the Department of Computer Science of Milan State University in Italy. The Document Foundation is inviting members and volunteers to submit proposals for papers and […]

OGL version 2.0 released

The British National Archives announced last week that it has released version 2.0 of the Open Government Licence (OGL) following consultation on how the licence could be developed further to reflect new and emerging thinking on the licensing of public sector information. The OGL is an open licence allowing information to be used and re-used […]