Feb 28, 2011 10:22pm GMT
For as long as I've owned a computer, I've been looking for Mahjong game. Not a decent Mahjong game, but any at all. Years ago, I found a monochrome shareware game for DOS, and later I found a Windows game, but both were soon rendered unusable by developments in hardware and software. Nor did I ever find a Mahjong game that ran natively in GNU/Linux -- not, that is, until KDE released Kajongg a... more »
FansFeb 17, 2011 11:04pm GMT
"The first thing is, we're not fanboys," senior editor Robin Miller told me when I first started writing for Linux.com in 2004. He meant that, although that incarnation of the site was obviously about free and open source software (FOSS), its purpose was not to uncritically support it. He wanted the site to have some journalistic standards -- a difficult and frequently unpopular goal,... more »
Is Debian Dying?Feb 11, 2011 9:57pm GMT
Steven J. Vaughan-Nicholls created a stir this week when he marked the release of Debian 6.0 by wondering if the distribution was still relevant. He was refuted by Joe Brockmeier, and the discussion spilled over on to Facebook, where a number of journalists (including me) speculated freely. But the noticeable lack of hard facts disturbed me, so I decided to see if I could find any indicators of... more »
LibreOffice and support for Microsoft file formatsFeb 04, 2011 10:00pm GMT
One of the intriguing aspects of LibreOffice, the OpenOffice.org fork, is that everything is open to debate. However, this atmosphere also means that the old debate about supporting proprietary Microsoft formats -- specifically the newer OOXML format -- is being revived. The trouble with this debate is that it is endless, since it is a specific example of the longstanding conflict of convenienc... more »
User RevoltsJan 31, 2011 1:34am GMT
Why are newer versions of free software being rejected by significant numbers of users? Three years after the KDE 4 series began, some users continue to reject it, either preferring KDE 3 or looking for alternatives. GNOME 3.0 and Ubuntu's Unity seem likely to face a similar reaction -- and they are not even in general release yet. Similarly, enough people reject the Amarok 2 releases that Clem... more »
My first look at DIASPORA*Jan 21, 2011 10:51pm GMT
I've always been ambiguous about Facebook. The centralized control and lack of privacy bother me, and, like many people involved with free software, I'm there mainly because so many of my colleagues are. Consequently, when I finally got around to getting to getting an account for the DIASPORA* alpha, what I mainly noticed was the difference in the privacy policy and interfaceDIASPORA*, in case... more »
The limits of evangelismJan 10, 2011 2:18am GMT
I should know better, but every now and then I make the mistake of trying to explain why people should use free and open source software (FOSS). Often, the effort occurs at end of the year gatherings when someone asks me what I do for a living, and almost always the ensuring conversation is torturous.For one thing, I'm not a natural seller. I can make a case, but if it doesn't convince, I respe... more »
