Hi all, welcome to Free Software Magazine’s fortnightly newsletter, keeping you up to date with the world of free software. Happy reading!
General announcements
Big news, everybody... Issue 15 has been released! If you haven’t already got it, come and download... it’s packed full of interesting articles!
Furthermore, the winners of the blogging competition have been notified and are now blogging with us. This is fantastic news, and combined with the other new bloggers we have recently aquired, we now have an army of talent writing for us all the time. So keep your eyes out for the new names on the front page, and enjoy what they have to say!
Latest content
Interview with Fred Trotter: the Medsphere saga—Tony Mobily interviews Fred Trotter about the “open source” company who’s suing someone for releasing their code? Read more...
Visualise your disk usage—Jon Peck helps you clean up your virtual desk. Read more...
Graphics creation on GNU/Linux: nice stuff and big hurdles—Mitch Meyran talks the good and the bad with GNU/Linux graphics programs. Read more...
Have I already lost my bet?—Tony Mobily tries to figure out why it was so hard to find a laptop preinstalled with Ubuntu... Read more...
Ubuntu for Non-Profit Newbies—Chris Holt talks about the good that free software can do for non-profit. Read more...
From XMMS to audacious: the history of a Winamp clone—Patrick McFarland talks free software music programs. Read more...
MP3: nothing to do with piracy—Marco Marongiu’s MP3 quandry has nothing to do with piracy. Read more...
Sometimes I just want to be stupid—Ken Leyba sometimes wishes for blissful ignorance. Read more...
Viral advertising via free software—Terry Hancock looks at how viral advertising could work for free software. Read more...
Kerberos, final bits—Wouter Verhelst gives us more on Kerberos. Read more...
Change is maddeningly inevitable—To broaden or not broaden the GNU/Linux user base; Chris Mostek asks the philosophical questions. Read more...
Penguinz in da hood—Jabari Zakiya talks about marketing penguins... in his hood. Read more...
Latest content continued
Reclaiming ICT education: why free software is a necessity in schools—Tim Cowlishaw talks about education and free software—and why IT education shouldn’t be a how-to for using the Microsoft suite. Read more...
Welcome ippimail.com!—Tony Mobily investigates a free software project success story. Read more...
Child’s play—Rachel Probert theorizes about how to convert young and old to free software... with a little healthy competition. Read more...
Fork off Mr Ballmer!—Oh Steve. Gary Richmond sums up where we’re at with the Microsoft debacle. Read more...
Why hack your game console?—Jon Peck talks gaming—seriously. Read more...
Firefox extensions: fun and games—Anthony Taylor examines the classic gaming options on firefox. Read more...
GPLv3 embedded in devices—Ciaran O’Riordan has a detailed look at GPLv3. Read more...
Free software for non-profits—Chris Holt looks at some of the concerns non-profit groups have with free software—when they really need it most. Read more...
Converting your techno-resistant loved ones—Chris Mostek gives step-by-step instructions on how to convert the non-believers. Read more...
How dumb can GNU/Linux users be?—Scott Carpenter tries to figure out if you have to be super-smart to use GNU/Linux... or not. Read more...
Dump Linux now!—But why, Anthony Taylor? Why are we over Linux? Read more...
File formats: approaching the freedom crossroad—Dale O’Gorman philosophizes about freedom. Read more...
Latest book reviews released
Moving to Ubuntu Linux by Marcel Gagne Thinking about Ubuntu? Jeremy Turner looks at a good starting place. Read more...
Core Python Programming by Wesley J Chun Want to learn/brush up on Python? Jeremy Turner looks into it... Read more...
Book competition announcement for this fortnight
This week we are giving away a copy ofManaging and Customizing OpenCMS 6 Websites by Matt Butcher AND a copy of OpenVPN: Building and Integrating Virtual Private Networks by Markus Feilner.
All you need to do to enter is check out the latest book competition announcement on our blogs page.
GOOD LUCK!
Thanks go to Packt for providing these fantastic prizes.
Winner of the book competition from last fortnight
To be announced.
Please comment wherever possible and don’t forget to log in so that you’ll be in the running to win the latest book competition
Poll Results—What’s your distro of choice?
This was a VERY popular poll; lots of comments, lots of votes... the winning distro was Ubuntu, which flew into the lead with 46% of the vote. Then came Debian with 13%, Fedora with 10%, OpenSUSE with 9%, and Gentoo with 6%, then the “other” option with 5%. A lot of people talked about why they liked certain distros, and it helps us too—so we know the kind of things our readers are interested in with regards to their distros. Read more here and stay tuned for...