OSS
Best Free and Open Source Software – February 2021 Updates
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Saturday 27th of February 2021 07:06:30 PM Filed under
The table above shows articles updated in February 2021.
For our entire collection, check out the categories below. This is the largest compilation of recommended software. The collection includes hundreds of articles, with comprehensive sections on internet, graphics, games, programming, science, office, utilities, and more. Almost all of the software is free and open source.
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Best Linux distros 2021: The finest open source operating systems around
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Friday 26th of February 2021 06:05:06 PM Filed under

Although the most common operating systems are Windows and macOS, these platforms don’t offer an awful lot of potential for customisation and fine-tuning. Linux, meanwhile, has forged a reputation for being a fully customisable operating system that lets you configure your own software as you wish.
Operating Linux systems isn’t as easy a concept as it might sound, however. This term is an umbrella under which a wide variety of flexible installations fall. These are known as distros, and it can be tricky to know where to get started with them - even for experienced professionals.
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GNOME Foundation and Linux Foundation Leftovers
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Thursday 25th of February 2021 11:54:16 PM Filed under

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GNOME 40 Beta has been Released
Anyone looking to test the beta for the upcoming GNOME 40 release can now do so.
On the heels of the alpha release of GNOME 40, the developers have announced the availability of the beta, which includes a number of improvements and bug fixes.
Of course, the biggest change to GNOME is the new horizontal Activities Overview, which makes for a much-improved workflow on the desktop. With the desktops residing at the top of the Overview, it is now easier to drag and drop an application to the specific desktop you want. It’s far more intuitive and efficient. This new layout also improves usage with touch screen navigation and faster overall performance.
Another hotly anticipated change comes by way of how multi-monitor support will work with the new horizontal Activities Overview. GNOME 40 will default to only showing workspaces on the primary display, with the top bar and the Activities Overview on both displays.
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State of FinOps 2021 Report Shows Massive Growth in Cloud Financial Management
Teams working with FinOps, the field of cloud financial management, are expected to grow 40% in 2021 according to a new report from the FinOps Foundation, a Linux Foundation non-profit trade association focused on codifying and promoting cloud financial management best practices and standards. The survey of over 800 FinOps practitioners – with a collective $30+ billion in annual cloud spend – underscores the need for more education around how to manage cloud finances.
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Here Is How To Create A Clean, Resilient Electrical Grid
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Linux Foundation, LF Networking, and LF Edge Announce Speaker Line-up for Open Networking & Edge Executive Forum, March 10-12
The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, along with co-hosts LF Networking, the umbrella organization fostering collaboration and innovation across the entire open networking stack, and LF Edge, the umbrella organization building an open source framework for the edge, announced today the speaker line-up for Open Networking & Edge Executive Forum. The schedule can be viewed here and the speaker details can be viewed here.
Open Networking & Edge Executive Forum (ONEEF) is a special edition of Open Networking & Edge Summit, the industry’s premier open networking & edge event, gathering senior technologists and executive leaders from enterprises, telecoms and cloud providers for timely discussions on the state of the industry, imminent priorities and insights into Service Provider, Cloud, Enterprise Networking, and Edge/IOT requirements.
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Linux Foundation, LF Networking, and LF Edge Announce Speaker Line-up for Open Networking & Edge Executive Forum, March 10-12
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Extending no-cost Red Hat Enterprise Linux to open source organizations
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Thursday 25th of February 2021 04:41:14 PM Filed under


Today, we’re announcing a new, no-cost program tailored for the needs and requirements of projects, foundations and more: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) for Open Source Infrastructure. Joining a growing set of no-cost and low-cost programs, RHEL for Open Source Infrastructure provides a simpler, clearer and documented process for projects, communities, standards bodies and other not-for-profit software groups engaged with open source to gain access to RHEL subscriptions. While we plan to continue to refine this latest program, we wanted to outline what is available now for interested parties.
Also: Red Hat Announces Free "RHEL For Open-Source Infrastructure"
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4 new open source licenses
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Thursday 25th of February 2021 09:20:47 AM Filed under
As the steward of the Open Source Defintion, the Open Source Initiative has been designating licenses as "open source" for over 20 years. These licenses are the foundation of the open source software ecosystem, ensuring that everyone can use, improve, and share software. When a license is approved, it is because the OSI believes that the license fosters collaboration and sharing for the benefit of everyone who participates in the ecosystem.
The world has changed over the past 20 years, with software now used in new and even unimaginable ways. The OSI has seen that the familiar open source licenses are not always well-suited for these new situations. But license stewards have stepped up, submitting several new licenses for more expansive uses. The OSI was challenged to evaluate whether these new concepts in licensing would continue to advance sharing and collaboration and merit being referred to as "open source" licenses, ultimately approving some new special purpose licenses.
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WordPress Bloat and Moving Off ikiwiki
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Thursday 25th of February 2021 12:38:54 AM Filed under

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Did You Know About Reusable Blocks?
The WordPress block editor (a.k.a. Gutenberg) comes with a feature called “reusable blocks.” They are blocks, saved for later, edited in one place.
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Alternatives to ikiwiki?
Connected to the fact that I only can have static sites (no CGI, no forms, nothing else), I am, at this time, using Disqus to host the comments of my blog. I am also thinking of alternatives to this, like sending people to Twitter (or mastodon or email) or some site similar to Disqus, but with more of a Free Software inclination.
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Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Gmail
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Wednesday 24th of February 2021 09:28:43 AM Filed under
Google has a firm grip on the desktop. Their products and services are ubiquitous. Don’t get us wrong, we’re long-standing admirers of many of Google’s products and services. They are often high quality, easy to use, and ‘free’, but there can be downsides of over-reliance on a specific company. For example, there are concerns about their privacy policies, business practices, and an almost insatiable desire to control all of our data, all of the time.
What if you are looking to move away from Google and embark on a new world of online freedom, where you are not constantly tracked, monetised and attached to Google’s ecosystem.
In this series, we explore how you can migrate from Google without missing out on anything. We’ll recommend open source solutions.
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3 Best Free and Open Source Web-Based XMPP Clients
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Tuesday 23rd of February 2021 10:30:10 AM Filed under

XMPP (also known as Jabber) is an open and free alternative to commercial messaging and chat providers. It is a secure battle-tested protocol developed by an independent standards organization.
XMPP was designed for real-time communication, which powers a wide range of applications including instant messaging, presence, media negotiation, whiteboarding, collaboration, lightweight middleware, content syndication, EDI, RPC and more.
The “X” in XMPP stands for “Extensible”, which means the core protocol is updated and extended with more features through a transparent process at the non-profit XMPP Standards Foundation every now and then. This results in some clients not implementing every feature of XMPP; for example, a typical instant messaging client won’t implement Internet-of-Things functionality.
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Could Your Business Switch To Open Source Software?
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Monday 22nd of February 2021 02:19:50 PM Filed under

Open-source software has been around since the very first days of computing and relies on the source code, the building blocks of software, to be available for public viewing. This software uses the GNU General Public License approach to licensing.
In most cases, open-source software is actually free to use and free to download, but there may be some licensing requirements if the software is used by companies for profit.
Using open-source software in a business is not as far-fetched as it sounds, in fact many companies run servers based on the Linux Red Hat system, which is open-source at its core, and many more are looking at ways to swap out their expensive licensed software for even cheaper alternatives.
Open Source software can be installed on practically any system and any machine. Whether you use Apple desktops or lenovo laptops, there is a good chance you are already using software that is open source and falls under the GNU license.
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4 Open Source Log Monitoring and Management Tools for Linux
Submitted by Rianne Schestowitz on Monday 22nd of February 2021 08:16:29 AM Filed under

When an operating system such as Linux is running, there are many events happening and processes that run in the background to enable efficient and reliable use of system resources. These events may happen in system software for example the init or systemd process or user applications such as Apache, MySQL, FTP, and many more.
In order to understand the state of the system and different applications and how they are working, System Administrators have to keep reviewing log files on a daily basis in production environments.
You can imagine having to review logfiles from several system areas and applications, that is where logging systems come in handy. They help to monitor, review, analyze and even generate reports from different logfiles as configured by a System Administrator.
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Open Hardware: Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and RISC-V/ESP32-C3
| Documentation Improvements in KDE
Doxyqml, our documentation bridge between QML and doxygen, got various improvements, thanks to Olaf Mandel and Lasse Lopperi. Now QML enums are supported and the lexer/parser got various bug fixes.
Speaking of QML documentation, the Kirigami API documentation was improved and now uses more correctly @inherit tags and @property tags. There is still room for improvements, but the current state is already a lot better. Most Components are now showing all their properties correctly and the type of the property is correct. (kirigami!239)
Another improvement is that the generated Kirigami documentation now shows more accurate names: e.g. Kirigami.Page instead of org::kde::kirigami::Page. This makes it easier to read and navigate the documentation.
There was also a bit of background work inside KApiDox, Jannet added support for QDoc, allowing to use QDoc as an alternative to Doxygen. This might be a better solution for generating documentation for projects with a lot of QML.
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today's howtos
| What is GNU/Linux Copypasta?
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called Linux, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called Linux distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux!
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