A Tour of Linux Gaming

November 16, 2012 Reviews

“Too slow. Restart needed all the time. Poor graphics. Slow to select pull-downs. Lost instrument panel. Not on list of “view” pull-down. Nothing was right. Worst sim ever!” This review was rated the “most helpful” for FlightGear, which is, we’re assured, a “free and highly sophisticated flight simulator”. That didn’t fill me with confidence on [...]

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TLWIR 48: Revealing the Hidden Biases Against Free Software

November 3, 2012 TLWIR
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Rex Djere is a Free Software advocate who preferentially supports Free Software-based solutions such as GNU/Linux, Android, and LibreOffice. Summary: Let’s face it: we all have biases. I readily admit that I have a very clear bias in favor of Free Software. There is no human being that is truly objective and neutral. However, in [...]

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Presidential Election TLWIR Special – Which Man Would Be Better for Free Software: President Barack Obama or Governor Mitt Romney?

November 1, 2012 TLWIR
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Summary: Most geeks that I have met tend to not hold a great deal of interest in politics. We generally would prefer to spend our time solving technical problems than debating presidential politics. However, if we compare the two men fighting to be the commander-in-chief of the United States for the next four years, one [...]

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TLWIR 46: Limerick Loves LibreOffice

October 10, 2012 TLWIR
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Summary: Limerick, Ireland has embraced Free Software in a move that demonstrates a continued global shift away from vendor lock-in. Writing a lot has forced me to learn how to write efficiently. Again, Free Software came to the rescue in the form of Gedit and Notepad++ tabs. Limerick Loves LibreOffice Limerick is the fourth largest [...]

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TLWIR 45: The European Union Has Great Intentions, But They Are Solving the Wrong Problem

September 20, 2012 TLWIR
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Summary: I applaud the European Union for trying to persuade Microsoft Corporation to allow more competition in Windows 8. However, they are trying to solve the wrong problem. In The Linux Week in Review 45, I will give my opinion as to what problem we should REALLY be trying to solve. The European Union Encourages [...]

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Book Review: Ubuntu Made Easy

September 10, 2012 Book Reviews
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Ubuntu Made Easy (No Starch Press, by Rickford Grant wtih Paul Bull) The task this book sets out to do is impossible and many who purchase the book will expect a great deal more. Everyone wants a one volume answer guide to the Ubuntu Desktop, it simply is not possible. The goal of the current [...]

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TLWIR 44: Waze Isn’t Free Software, But It’s Open Source In Spirit

September 4, 2012 TLWIR
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I’ve seen a very interesting trend recently: even people that do not embrace open source and free software are beginning to embrace a lot of the concepts. For example, Kickstarter has brought free software and collaborative concepts to the art of raising capital to fund great ideas. There are now several great ideas that have [...]

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TLWIR 43: You Know That the GNU/LInux Shift is Coming When the Eggheads Start Conspiring

August 5, 2012 TLWIR
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Summary: Wikipedia defines a cabal as a type of conspiracy where like-minded officials form an association to further the group’s shared cause. This is exactly what is happening: a group of software and hardware engineers have decided that GNU/Linux may be the road forward as Windows 8’s arrival looms. What is happening is inevitable: NOTHING [...]

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TLWIR Special: The Amazing Philosophy of Red Hat

August 2, 2012 TLWIR
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Summary: Close your eyes and imagine this scenario: Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer wakes up one day and says: “God, I love LibreOffice! It is a great alternative to Microsoft Office, and it makes people more enthusiastic about office suites in general!” Would this ever happen in a BILLION years? Probably not. Yet Red Hat’s CEO, [...]

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TLWIR Special: Three Signs That GNU/Linux Has Arrived

July 25, 2012 TLWIR
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Summary: Three recent news items provided evidence that the age of GNU/Linux on the desktop is arriving. The years of GNU/Linux languishing on the pc desktop are finally drawing to a close. Here are the three news items: Three new Dell laptops will come preloaded with GNU/Linux distributions starting in the Fall of 2013. Valve [...]

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TLWIR 42: GasBuddy Crowdsources to Lower Gas Prices

July 22, 2012 TLWIR
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Summary: The success of GNU/Linux, free software, and open source have inspired a whole new generation of collaborative projects. Wikipedia, the online user-editable encyclopedia, is now the 6th most trafficked website in the world, according to Alexa. I have been extremely frustrated by high gas prices, so much so that I seeked out a powerful [...]

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TLWIR 41: HTML5 – The Tewodros II of the Internet Age

July 5, 2012 TLWIR
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Summary: Emperor Tewodros II of Ethiopia created a modern Ethiopia during the 19th century using the sheer force of his considerable will. He set out to modernize and unify Ethiopia, as Google, Red Hat, Mozilla, Microsoft, and other companies seek to unify the Web today. Tewodros had no idea back in 1860 that his vision [...]

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TLWIR 40: Creating Androids Apps in Fedora 17

June 18, 2012 TLWIR
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Summary: Android is a Linux-based platform, and it is clearly a phenomenon. The popular mobile operating system recently reached an amazing threshold of 900,000 user activations per day! In 2010, Mashable reported that there were 10,199 Android developers in a developer database, and that number has certainly grown since then. Unlike Apple’s IOS and Microsoft’s [...]

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TLWIR 39: GNU/Linux is Officially Too Big to Fail

June 11, 2012 TLWIR
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Summary: The GNU/Linux operating system recently received a huge boost, courtesy of the United States Navy. One momentous decision has officially made GNU/Linux too big to fail. What gave the U.S. Navy so much confidence in GNU/Linux that it was willing sign a 28 million dollar contract to power its next generation of autonomous drones [...]

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