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But... what is Free Software?

Submitted by Webmaster on January 6, 2011 - 01:02

Free Software Foundation logo"Free Software" is software that respects the freedom of the users and developers. It is also the name of the movement that keeps these freedoms safe. The founder of the Free Software movement, Richard Stallman, is also involved with the creation of GPL (General Public Licence) and the GNU operating system. All of these iniciatives follow a philosophy that fights to preserve four essential freedoms that allows the creation of communities that cooperate in order to build better technology.

8+ essential Drupal 7 modules you must have

Submitted by Webmaster on January 9, 2013 - 19:48

Drupal core is great and keeps getting better all the time. Each new release integrates new code, often from contributed modules. As an example, Drupal 7 integrated functionalities from more than 50 contributed modules of Drupal 6 (http://drupal.org/node/895314). This is just to tell how important the contributed modules are to Drupal. On the first part I'll talk about the essential modules that could as well be part of core in the future. The second part will be about really nice modules that shall be installed depending on your site needs.

The story of keyboard layouts

Submitted by William on May 15, 2012 - 21:25

The story of keyboard layouts is often used as an example to illustrate the predominance of historical events over reasonable judgement. It involves a lot of factors like the importance of being the first, the usual resistance to change, network effects and the relationship between initial investment and long term return. We will see in the next paragraphs that it's rather easy to understand why we use today the standard “QWERTY” layout and how the same mechanisms apply to all sorts of things in our lives.

Surprisingly cool GNU/Linux distros

Submitted by William on March 2, 2012 - 22:36

There are distributions of GNU/Linux that are really cool although not as popular as Debian or Fedora. The best thing about Free Software is that, with so much freedom and choice, it seems everything is possible... and it is! Here goes a selection of some of these distributions that surprised me in a very pleasant way.

[VIDEO] Mark Shuttleworth talks about Free Software, Open Source, Debian and Canonical

Submitted by William on January 24, 2012 - 00:58

Mark Shuttleworth

In this interview by Gabriella Coleman at the Debian annual conference of 2006, Mark Shuttleworth, project leader of Ubuntu and founder of Canonical Ltd., talks about many topics surrounding GNU/Linux operating systems. Among them he talks about Free Software vs. Open Source, the commitment of Canonical to Free and Open Source Software, the origins of Ubuntu and it's relationship with Debian and also gives some insights about Free Software vs. proprietary software.

Understanding GNU/Linux distributions (and choosing the right distro for you)

Submitted by William on January 3, 2012 - 19:58

The concept of “distros” and the incredible number of different distributions available might be overwhelming to the new user. The first thing one has to do even before using GNU/Linux is to choose which distribution to use. To help you understand, chose and explore the vast landscape of distributions I will write here some short explanations and an overview of such distributions.

Do we have privacy in a super-connected world and should we care?

Submitted by William on December 7, 2011 - 20:26

There was a time when most people lived in small villages and everybody knew about everybody else. It was not a question of choice, you just happened to be known by all your peers and there was always someone to watch what you were up to. Then came big cities, individualism, privacy and other considerations that our ancestors didn't really have.

The world is changing and we are all adapting to it. I'm not going to make a value judgements about how good or how bad the new rules established by the Internet are. What really matters is how well prepared we are to live in a super-connected world and the first thing to do is to know what is this privacy debate about.

The story of the Hurd kernel

Submitted by William on November 1, 2011 - 01:44

I find the story of the Hurd really interesting because it goes much beyond the discussions about the kernel, GNU, Free Software, Linux and computers in general. It involves people, relationships, strategies, decisions, work, commitment, random events and many other things that make life so exciting. It is important to see the mistakes of this project to try to avoid them and it's much easier to spot them now that we know the outcome. I believe that the GNU people did the best they could under the circumstances but, of course, they couldn't predict the future.

What is a kernel, what is an operating system?

Submitted by William on October 25, 2011 - 01:07

Can you tell the difference between a kernel and an operating system? Aren't they both standing between the humans and the machines? Although the term "kernel" is well defined, an "operating system" is not and most of the time there is no reason to differentiate an OS from its kernel. It is interesting to do that though in order to know the difference between Linux and GNU/Linux.

The gnu and the lion, a high tech tale

Submitted by William on October 17, 2011 - 19:33

This is a story that does not start with “once upon a time” and does not end with “and they lived happily ever after”. This story is about the concrete jungle, it's about the wild world we live in. This is a story about the ugly things that happen behind the scenes while the show must go on... this is the story of the fight for survival of two operating systems.

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