Bryan Lunduke

Author Archives: Bryan Lunduke

Debian Stable 8.5: Like Ubuntu’s early days

I spend a significant portion of my life installing and testing distributions of Linux-based systems. It’s really rather ridiculous.Even obscure ones—ones that never stand a chance of being listed on the likes of DistroWatch—find their way onto my drives. I can’t help it. It’s an addiction.But you know which one I haven’t installed in a long, long while? Debian. Not some Debian-derived system, like the ones that get a lion’s share of the media attention, but pure Debian. I haven’t loaded it in eons. I know, weird, right?So, I installed it. Debian Stable. Code-name “Jessie.” Originally released as version 8.0 in April 2015—then given the ole’ “point-5” update to 8.5 in June 2016.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

I have all the code—now I want to hug a free software developer

I have all the source code.That’s not some sort of metaphorical declaration of the glory of free and open source software; I’m not talking about simply having the rights to go download some source code. I mean it quite literally: I have the source code necessary to build all of the software powering my PC.Right now. Like, on my hard drive.+ Also on Network World: 30 days in a terminal +I did this simply because I could. Because the source code is there. Source code repositories galore. And as I sit here typing this, I have all of it—at least for everything I use every day. And I’ve backed it up.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why does Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation get so much hate?

Over on the Linux section of Reddit, someone asked the following question: “Within the community, there seems to be many people that dislike the Free Software Foundation, the GNU Project, and Richard Stallman, being the leader of them both. Why is this? I am unable to understand this; I value free software and the aforementioned people that have made it possible, and I do not understand why they get as much hate as they do.” It’s a good question.Within the open source and free software worlds, Stallman (and the Free Software Foundation—the FSF) hold an almost deity-like position in the hearts of many. For other people, well, they have the exact opposite feeling towards the man.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Why are GitHub and WordPress.com censoring content?

The Great Equalizer. The Great Democratizer. Many such phrases have been used to describe the internet over the years—mostly focusing on the rapid dissemination of uncensored information.Even social media sites (such as Twitter) have played critical roles in real-world revolutions. The ability for the average person to spread ideas, news and information—without corporate or government censorship—has brought about massive power and freedom to the people of the world.But what happens when the key websites and services—the ones we rely upon to spread those messages—censor that content? That’s a bad thing, right? Well, this seems to be happening a lot recently, especially in relation to leaked content (regardless of the type of content or the source from which it originated).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The U.S. government now has an open source policy—but it doesn’t go far enough

This week, the U.S. government unveiled its official Federal Source Code policy.Here is, in my opinion, the key excerpt from the announcement: “The policy, which incorporates feedback received during the public comment period, requires new custom-developed source code developed specifically by or for the Federal Government to be made available for sharing and re-use across all Federal agencies. It also includes a pilot program that will require Federal agencies to release at least a portion of new custom-developed Federal source code to the public and support agencies in going beyond that minimum requirement.”To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The CIA, NSA and Pokémon Go

With Pokémon Go currently enjoying, what I would call, a wee-bit-o-success, now seems like a good time to talk about a few things people may not know about the world's favorite new smartphone game.This is not an opinion piece. I am not going to tell you Pokémon Go is bad or that it invades your privacy. I’m merely presenting verifiable facts about the biggest, most talked about game out there.+ Also on Network World: The Pokémon Go effect on the network +Let’s start with a little history.Way back in 2001, Keyhole, Inc. was founded by John Hanke (who previously worked in a “foreign affairs” position within the U.S. government). The company was named after the old “eye-in-the-sky” military satellites. One of the key, early backers of Keyhole was a firm called In-Q-Tel.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The Ubuntu-powered BQ Aquaris M10 tablet: Almost amazing

Some reviews are easy to write. A new laptop gets released? Check out the specs, see how sturdy it is, test out the battery life—that sort of thing. Pretty simple, really. This is not that kind of review. What we’re looking at here is, on the face of it, simply a tablet. And I could do an in-depth review of the hardware itself, but that would tell you next to nothing about it. In front of me sits the BQ Aquaris M10: Ubuntu Edition, 10.1-in. screen, quad-core, 1.5GHz CPU, 2GB of RAM, 8MP camera. Pretty average specs. It feels like the cutting-edge Android-powered tablets—from about three years back. These can be picked up starting at around $250 USD.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Who needs a GUI? How to live in a Linux terminal.

The best Linux shell apps for handling common functionsEver consider the idea of living entirely in a Linux terminal? No graphical desktop. No modern GUI software. Just text—and nothing but text—inside a Linux shell. It may not be easy, but it’s absolutely doable. I recently tried living completely in a Linux shell for 30 days. What follows are my favorite shell applications for handling some of the most common bits of computer functionality (web browsing, word processing, etc.). With a few obvious holes. Because being text-only is hard.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

30 days in a terminal: Day 10 — The experiment is over

When I set out to spend 30 days living entirely in a Linux terminal, I knew there was a distinct possibility I would fail utterly. I mean, 30 days? No GUI software? No Xorg? Just describing it sounds like torture.And torture it was. Mostly. Some moments, though, were pretty damned amazing. Not amazing enough to help me reach my 30-day goal, mind you. I fell short—only making it to day 10.The Lesson of the Shell What did my “10 Days in sHell” teach me? First and foremost, it reminded me that being left out is no fun. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Canonical, Snappy and the marketing value of collaboration

Collaboration is an important thing in the free and open source software world. Individual contributors (often employed by or involved with competing companies or organizations) working together for the benefit of all.It’s a core principle. Without collaboration, none of the free software world works.And it’s not just essential from the practical point of view—of people working together to get concrete things accomplished. It’s also become a bit of a marketing buzz word. And something happened two weeks ago that I found rather annoying.Wait. Before I go any further, I should make something clear. I am a huge fan of the collaborative efforts of many companies in the Linux and greater open source world. Even competitors such as SUSE and Red Hat come together on a regular basis to work hand in hand to find ways to benefit their own companies, while at the same time helping their rival and the broader community. And they do so happily. Heck, I’ve even seen SUSE and Red Hat employees give presentations together at Linux conferences.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

30 days in a terminal: Day 8 — The slow descent into madness

On June 16, just a hair over one week, I started using the Linux terminal. Exclusively. Up until that point, I'd been a lover of all things command line—my fondness for text based interfaces, and unreasonably old technology, bordering on the legendary. Despite that, I've relied on graphical interfaces for the better part of the last three decades. I've always told myself that I could, if I wanted to, do all of my computing entirely within a text-based shell—and never leave. With the number of times I've suggested this to myself, you'd almost think I was trying to goad myself into it. Throwing down some serious nerd peer pressure—on myself.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

30 days in a terminal: Days 2-5 — Social media in shell

My adventures, for the first day or so, in using nothing but a Linux terminal proved to be mostly successful. I ended up needing to jump through a few hoops to get my work done, but everything was doable.After having spent the full weekend within the confines of the shell, my results are much more of a mixed bag.In this article, I focus on social media: Twitter, Reddit, that sort of thing. For some of them, I have totally awesome solutions. Some I’m still struggling to find a solution for—with very little hope in sight.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

30 days in a terminal: Day 1 — The essentials

Day 1 of my "I'm a ridiculous person who is going to use nothing but a Linux terminal for 30 days" experiment is complete. And it was not an easy day. Not bad. Just... challenging.The day started as I expected it to. I fired up a terminal window and made it full screen and launched tmux—a terminal multiplexer. (I'm keeping a traditional desktop environment running in the background for a few days as a safety net while I get things working just right.)For those new to the concept of a terminal multiplexer, think of it like a tiled window manager (multiple windows arranged in a non-overlapping fashion)—only just for terminals. That way you can have multiple shell sessions (and multiple applications) running at the same time within the same terminal.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

30 days in a terminal: Day 0 — The adventure begins

Last summer, I wrote an article series called "Kicking Google out of my life." It was an attempt to remove all Google services entirely from my daily usage for 30 days—a surprisingly daunting challenge for someone who had become deeply dependent on Google. I was mostly successful. I chronicled my experience—detailing how I approached replacing Google services with non-Google variants—and in the end, my life was better for it.Did I return to Google for a few things (such as YouTube and G+)? You bet I did. But my heavy reliance on a single company finally came to an end, and I learned a great deal (both about available alternatives and my own personal preferences) in the process.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

App stores and Linux repositories: Maybe the worst ideas ever

Eight years ago, Nokia released a Linux-powered tablet dubbed the N810. It’s a very cool little device, with a rather pleasant-to-use slide-out keyboard, running a Debian-based distribution known as Maemo.That little tablet went everywhere with me. At one point I—no joke— owned two of them. I could do some pretty remarkable things with that little beauty—from making Skype calls (back when I still used Skype) to running a full-blown version of Gimp. It was a complete, powerful desktop computer in my pocket.Recently, I decide to dust off my trusty old N810 to use it again. It’s a Linux-based computer, so why not. Right?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Review: LiveCode 8 is freaking incredible

For those unfamiliar with LiveCode, it is a visual software development environment (and corresponding language). Think Hypercard—the the Hypermedia authoring tool/development environment that shipped with every old Macintosh. Then make the language more powerful. Make the interface usable for experienced developers. And allow it to build Linux, Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS and HTML5 applications—while running on Linux, Windows or MacOS.That is, in a nutshell, LiveCode. Oh, and it's open source under the GPLv3 and available right up on GitHub—a fact I rather like.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Review: The Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition laptop is nearly perfect

I'm a portable man—I like laptops and tablets. It's been years since I've owned a desktop PC. Between frequent travel to tech conferences and my predilection for doing my work done from the comforts of donut and coffee shops, I just can't be tethered to a desk.That means I ask a lot of my mobile gear. I need them to perform with desktop power. Compile code, edit video, play games—they need to do it all. And do it well.Enter the newly updated Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition.The model I got for review comes with a 6th Generation Intel Core i7 processor, 16 gigs of DDR3 RAM, a half a terabyte solid state drive and Intel's Iris 540 GPU. Port wise, it has two USB 3 slots, an SD card reader and a Thunderbolt port (which I will only ever use with an HDMI adapter because, seriously, does anyone actually use Thunderbolt ports?). The machine is pretty doggone beefy by anyone's standards.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Open source is in our DNA

Open Source is a key part of who we are. Not as members of any given group, company, or country, but as human beings. Dating back to our very early days, the free exchange of ideas and knowledge—from written language to the designs for tools—is central to how we have advanced as a species.What follows is technically an infographic—as in, it is a graphic, and there is some information on it.While it was put together by people working at a company (in this case, SUSE), you won't find any product statistics here. No details on how Product X is N times faster than Product Y, no demographic breakdown of who uses this platform or that.What you will find is a list of moments in human history brought about, in part, through humanity's burning desire to make information—free. From the earliest cave drawings to the UNIVAC A-2 (and beyond), the very same thing that compels us to make Linux (and many other projects) free and open source is present in so many of humanity's greatest achievements.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

10 more pointless (but awesome) Linux terminal tricks

10 more pointless (but awesome) Linux terminal tricksOne year ago, I put together a list of my favorite “pointless but awesome” Linux terminal tricks—filled with such classics as making a cow talk with “cowsay” and rainbow-coloring your terminal with “lolcat.”  As was correctly pointed out to me at the time, there are a lot of ridiculous (but cool) things you can do in the terminal that didn’t make that list. So, here’s round two. You’re welcome. (Note: Some of these you will need to install using apt-get, zypper or whatever package manager your Linux distribution uses.)To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Where have all the MacBooks gone at Linux conferences?

Back in 2007, I went to O’Reilly Open Source Conference (OSCON). That particular year Canonical had a mini-summit, which happened in the two days before OSCON, called Ubuntu Live.I honestly don't remember much about any of the sessions I attended all those years ago. But one memory stands out like a spotlight pointed straight at my face: almost every single laptop I saw in use at Ubuntu Live was a MacBook.Nearly every single one. Row after row of little glowing Apple logos filling every conference room. And this was at Ubuntu's first big conference—a conference filled to the brim with Linux (and Ubuntu) developers and power users.We're not talking Apple hardware running Linux, either. I made a point of asking people what they were running (or just glancing at the screens as I walked by). Were a few running Linux? Yes. A few. But the majority were running Mac OS X. The vast majority. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

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