opensource.com

There are few Linux users who don't remember the first time they discovered you could boot a computer and run Linux on it without ever actually installing it. Sure, many users are aware that you can boot a computer to an operating system installer, but with Linux it's different: there doesn't need to be an install at all! Your computer doesn't even need to have a hard drive in it. You can run Linux for months or even years off of a USB drive.

As interaction designers on Red Hat's User Experience (UX) Design and Ansible product teams, we worked for about six months to build a logo family with the Ansible community. This journey started even earlier when a project manager asked us for a "quick and easy" logo for a slide deck. After gathering a few requirements, we presented a logo to the stakeholders within a few days and without much need for iteration. A few months later, another stakeholder decided they would also benefit from having imagery for their materials, so we repeated the process.

Playing adventure games has always been a big part of my experience with computers. From the earliest text-based adventure games to 2D pixel art, full-motion video, and 3D games, the adventure game genre has provided me with a lot of fond memories.

Sometimes I want to revisit those old games, but many were released before Linux was even a thing, so how do I go about replaying those games? I use ScummVM, which is honestly one of my favorite open source projects.

There are many reasons to choose Linux for your desktop operating system. In Why everyone should choose Linux, Opensource.com's Seth Kenlon highlighted many of the best reasons to select Linux and provided lots of ways for people to get started with the operating system.

I manage a YouTube channel for the FreeDOS Project, where I record "how-to" videos with FreeDOS running inside the QEMU PC emulator software. When I started the channel in August 2019, I didn't know anything about recording videos. But with Open Broadcaster Software, also called OBS Studio, I've found recording these videos to be pretty straightforward. Here's how you can do it, too.

To be successful, open organizations must have specific purposes, address achievable goals, perform clear tasks, effectively evaluate the results of their work, and introduce countermeasures or revisions to their operations. Open organization principles serve vital functions throughout this process.

Last year, I wrote about how you can give new life to an old MacBook with Linux, specifically Elementary OS in that instance. Recently, I returned to that circa 2015 MacBook Air and discovered I had lost my login password. I downloaded the latest Elementary OS 5.1.7 Hera release and could not get the live boot to recognize my Broadcom 4360 wireless chipset.

What could Earth Day have to do with open source you say? Well, a lot actually. Over the years, people have shared the many different open source projects out there that help us make a positive direct impact on the Earth, but also things that help us reduce, reuse, and recycle, putting less pressure on our planet's sensitive and precious balances.

LF Energy is a Linux Foundation project working to accelerate the energy transition of the world's grids and transportation systems through open source. In December, our project took a major step toward achieving its mission when we and our member organizations Alliander, RTE, and Savoir-faire Linux launched SEAPATH, which stands for Software Enabled Automation Platform and Artifacts.

Cython is a compiler for the Python programming language meant to optimize performance and form an extended Cython programming language. As an extension of Python, Cython is also a superset of the Python language, and it supports calling C functions and declaring C types on variables and class attributes. This makes it easy to wrap external C libraries, embed C into existing applications, or write C extensions for Python in syntax as easy as Python itself.

Open sourcing the code to your software as a service (SaaS) is not sufficient to make it actually be open source. Does that sound contradictory to you? Let me explain.

Most services that espouse "open source" do so by simply throwing the code over the wall. It's better than nothing but really misses the point that powers open source: enabling users to make a change to the software they're using.

Some other popular services powered by Open Source software, do include the tools used to operate/deploy their service. Pause for applause.

Users have every right to be concerned about the safety and security of their data. When you create data on a computer, it's reasonable to want exclusive control over it.

There are many ways to protect your documents. At the filesystem level, you can encrypt your hard drive or just a file. A good office suite affords you many more options, though, and I've gathered five of the methods I use to secure my documents with open source software.

Most people connect to at least two networks every day. After you turn on a computer or mobile device, it connects to a local WiFi network, which in turn provides access to the interconnected network of networks that is "the internet" (a combination of the words interconnected networks).

But how do networks actually work? How does your device know how to find the internet, a shared printer, or a file share? How do these things know how to respond to your device? What tricks do system administrators use to optimize the performance of a network?

SigNoz is an open source application observability platform. Built in React and Go, SigNoz is written from the ground up to allow developers to get started with their observability goals as soon as possible and with minimum effort.

This article looks at the software in detail, including the architecture, Kubernetes-based deployment, and some common SigNoz uses.

When I go on holiday, I often end up at one or more used bookstores. I always find a good book I've been meaning to read, and I always justify the inevitable purchase by saying, "I'm on vacation; I should treat myself to this book." It works well, and I've acquired some of my favorite books this way. Yet, like so many traditions in life, it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. In reality, I don't need an excuse to buy a good book. All things being equal, I can do it any time I want. But having a reason does seem to make the process more enjoyable, somehow.

Do you ever get bored with seeing the same old terminal window on your macOS computer? If so, add some bells and whistles to your view with the open source Oh My Zsh framework and Powerlevel10k theme.

This basic step-by-step walkthrough (including a video tutorial at the end) will get you started customizing your macOS terminal. If you're a Linux user, check out Seth Kenlon's guide to Adding themes and plugins to Zsh for in-depth guidance.

Many of my blog's readers already know lots about open source, but I'm also aware that many know little, if anything, about it. I'm a big, big proponent of open source software (and beyond, such as open hardware), and there are lots of great resources you can find to learn more about it.

Who doesn't love a trip down memory lane? When recounting our career paths, they're often crooked and veer in unexpected directions. Many of us take pride in that. We trusted our intuition or a friend's advice and it led to experiences we'll never forget that shaped who we are today. And where we are today.

I asked our community of writers to share a little bit about what kind of jobs they had before they got into tech. Here are 13 of them you're sure to enjoy. 

(Click on their names to read their articles.)

The restrictions on getting out and about during the pandemic occasionally remind me that time is slipping by—although some days, "slipping" doesn't quite feel like the right word. But it also reminds me there are more than a few tasks around the house that can be great for restoring the sense of accomplishment that so many of us have missed.

Like many people, I've been exploring lots of new TV shows during the pandemic. I recently discovered a British game show called Countdown, where contestants play two types of games: a words game, where they try to make the longest word out of a jumble of letters, and a numbers game, where they calculate a target number from a random selection of numbers. Because I enjoy mathematics, I've found myself drawn to the numbers game.