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"Open is a means to an end—and that end is trust." So writes Steve Song, a social entrepreneur, Shuttleworth alum, and blogger who writes extensively about openness and access to affordable communication infrastructure in Africa. Steve's posts exploring the paradoxes, moral philosophy, and future of open are a fascinating read. I recently caught up with him to learn more. This is an edited transcript of our conversation. read more

Generally speaking, Emmabuntus 3 felt quite solid and responsive as an operating system. There were no crashes or unexplainable delays. I would give Emmabuntus 3 a good mark, though I would not use it myself.

Welcome folks, to my latest Six Degrees column! Now, I wanted to mix it up a little bit for this one. In previous columns, I have written pieces about trends and patterns in communities and open source. This one is instead designed to provide some practical recommendations of tools you can use today as you build strong and empowered communities. read more

Google's Kubernetes joins a host of vendors and projects as part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, a new Linux Foundation-backed effort.

Isaac emailed me a few weeks ago, and introduced himself as someone who was extremely interested in the work we do at Reglue. He told me that he had already rebuilt a Lenovo laptop and placed it in the home of a local kid who needed it. Isaac lives and works in the Washington, DC area, by way of Virginia. We developed a friendship as we passed emails back and forth.

The Graphics and Visualization (GVIS) lab at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio specializes in creating scientific visualizations and virtual reality programs for scientists at Glenn and beyond. I am thrilled to be a member of the small army of interns in the GVIS lab. So are Carolyn Holthouse, Joe Porter, and Jason Boccuti, interns from the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and Wright Brothers Institute's Discovery Lab who are working remotely at NASA Glenn. Their project involves robots, open source software, and virtual reality. I caught up with Carolyn, Jason, and Joe to talk about their project. read more

A couple of months ago, a friend of mine introduced me to OpenTTD, an open source (GPLv2) transportation planning simulator game. Available for Android, I briefly opened the game on my phone and found the interface to be a little too difficult to use for me on a five inch screen. My friend suggested that it worked better on a tablet, and I thought I'd try again later when I had some time to kill and a larger Android device in hand. read more

In today's open source roundup: Is it time to remove Adobe Flash from your Linux computer? Plus: Adobe recently updated Flash to version 18.0.0.209. And how to remove Flash from your Linux computer.

The developers of the MKVToolnix open-source and cross-platform application used for manipulating MKV (Matroska) files announced recently that MKVToolnix 8.2.0 is available for download and that all users must upgrade.

Facebook is adding query packs to the open-source osquery security framework that group together common sets of use cases for data analysis.

Stefan Gronewold has announced the launch of Pisi Linux 1.2. Pisi Linux is a modern distribution which originally forked from Pardus Linux, but which is now maintained independently. Pisi Linux uses the PiSi package manager and ships with the KDE desktop. The new release is the second update (and final release) of the 1.x series. Version 1.2 ships with a number of significant package upgrades, including a new Linux kernel, a copy of Qt 5, MATE 1.8.0 and version 4.14 of the KDE desktop environment. Currently, Pisi Linux 1.2 is available in one, desktop-oriented edition with the KDE desktop acting as the default user interface. The Linux kernel is at version 3.19.

NetComm unveiled a Linux-based 4G wireless router for M2M and IoT, equipped with a Sequans LTE chipset, a NAMUR sensor input, and remote management software. The term Machine-to-Machine (M2M) has been around for a lot longer than Internet of Things, but both often describe similar equipment, which communicate with other devices without the necessity of […]

Whistleblower addresses Prague meeting of 'net engineers NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has urged the world's leading group of internet engineers to design a future 'net that puts the user in the center, and so protects people's privacy.…

Ubuntu fans can now freely purchase the Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition directly from the Meizu website. The Origami puzzle game is no longer dishing out invites. Meizu and Canonical chose to bring the MX4 Ubuntu Edition in Europe in a different way. They weren't interested in record sales or sales numbers; they just wanted for dedicated Ubuntu fans to buy the phone.

Jide Tech won Kickstarter funding for a $30 mini-PC running its productivity oriented, Android 5.0 based “Remix OS” on Allwinner’s 64-bit quad-core H64 SoC.

The target vehicle for this project is a vintage intercity transport bus (think Greyhound) whose instrument panel was sparse and mostly nonfunctional. The speedometer cable was twisted off some place back in 40 feet of cable, and the fuel sensor had sunk long ago. What I wanted was an instrument panel more in line with modern practice.

We reported a few days ago a very interesting and awesome fact about the creator of the Linux kernel, Mr. Linus Torvalds, who, apparently, loves to go Zero-G in a T-33 fighter jet aircraft to relax in between kernel pulls.

Canonical has just released the OTA-5 updated for Ubuntu Touch, and the new version has also landed for the users of the Meizu MX4 Ubuntu Edition. The launch of the latest OTA update for Ubuntu Touch coincides with Meizu's decision to get rid of the Origami wall and to make the phone available to anyone willing to buy it. This is important because the new update brings a few significant improvements to this platform alone.

The OpenWrt developers announced the third release candidate of OpenWrt, codename Chaos Calmer. OpenWrt 15.05 Release Candidate 3 Uses Linux Kernel 3.18.18 LTS. OpenWrt is a Linux distribution for embedded devices, like routers.

Overall, I can't find much fault with this distribution.