opensource.com

JavaScript (also known as JS) is the lingua franca of the web, as it is supported by all the major web browsers—the other languages that run in browsers are transpiled (or translated) to JavaScript.

JavaScript (also known as JS) is the lingua franca of the web, as it is supported by all the major web browsers—the other languages that run in browsers are transpiled (or translated) to JavaScript.

If you have a Raspberry Pi running Raspberry Pi OS (previously known as Raspbian) operating system, you know it's an awesome little computer with a great operating system for beginners that includes just about everything you could possibly want. However, once you become familiar with the Pi and want to start using it for other things, you might want an operating system (OS) that doesn't include everything in the default build.

As part of my role as a senior product marketing manager at an enterprise software company with an open source development model, I publish a regular update about open source community, market, and industry trends for product marketers, managers, and other influencers. Here are five of my and their favorite articles from that update.

In this week’s edition of our open source news roundup, GNU Health expands to Raspberry Pis, how Megadeth's guitarist uses open source principles, and more open source news.

The Homebrew project began its life as an unofficial Linux-style package manager for the Mac. Its users quickly fell in love with its friendly interface and helpful prompts, and—in what may seem like a strange twist of fate—it got ported to Linux.

If you've ever written code, whether it's a shell script, a Python script, C++, or even Scratch, then you know that variables are vital. Computers and coders use variables as waystations, where they surreptitiously pass information back and forth. For instance, if you need to process a user's name in a shell script, you might set up a variable, put the username into the variable, and then instruct the computer to do something to the variable (check it against a list of authorized users, for example).

I enjoyed using my terminal's green-on-black color scheme for many years. It is reminiscent of the DEC VT100/220 terminals that I used in college. I began to get bored with it earlier this year when I bought a tenkeyless keyboard from Hyper-X. The keyboard is black, and the keys are backlit in red, so I changed my terminal's colors to match. I think it looks really cool at night.

Productivity is a subjective term, but essentially, it's a measurement of how efficiently a particular task is completed. Everyone has different things that keep them productive—some people need help staying on task, some people need a particular kind of work environment, some people need alerts and reminders to avoid missed deadlines, and some need assistance with repetitive, manual chores.

Visual Studio Code, also known as VS Code, is a code editor for Linux, Windows, and macOS. It's the kind of editor that walks the line between editing text and managing your entire codebase, like an integrated development environment (IDE). It's extensible through plugins and has proven to be a reliable text editor that's easily beaten out formidable non-open rival editors.

As more workloads are migrated to containerized environments, it becomes challenging to manage those larger numbers of containers and the connections between them and other systems. As the scale and complexity of a containerized environment increase past a human's ability to manage, container orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes become increasingly important.

The Opensource.com community is full of people with varied interests; all brought together by their love of open source. The 2020 Opensource.com summer reading list reflects those diverse interests by covering books about a wide range of subjects and for different age groups. Books about mathematics, cryptography, Unix, and "coding" a sandcastle are just a few of the selections that comprise this year's list.

With the recent worldwide pandemic and stay-at-home orders, I have been looking for things to do to replace some of my usual activities. I started to update my home electronics setup and, as part of that, to delve into home automation. Some of my friends use Amazon's Alexa to turn lights on and off in their house, and that is appealing on some level. However, I am a privacy-conscious individual, and I was never really comfortable with devices from Google or Amazon listening to my family all the time (I'll ignore cellphones for the sake of this conversation).

Are you a designer looking to share your talents? Open Source Design may just be the place for you. It is "a community of designers and developers pushing more open design processes and improving the user experience and interface design of open source software."

In 2010-2011, Mike Jumper started the Guacamole project, a multi-protocol gateway that allowed admins to securely serve up desktops remotely. The client interface ran in the browser, so it was a lightweight, easy-to-use replacement for some older remote access solutions. The project immediately started to grow, resulting in a number of incoming requests for support and help.

Project managers go by various names—for example, scrum master, delivery manager, and project coordinator—and have various styles. Yet they all have the same root objectives: to coordinate their team's work as well as that of external and internal teams and to remove any blockers that could hinder a project's implementation. Each project manager has a unique management style, but there are some universal traits that make a great project manager stand out.

My childhood consisted of about 20% Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and 80% Legos, with a pretty strong crossover of the two. I wasn't allowed to actually play D&D for a variety of reasons, but through some mental acrobatics worthy of a level 15 rogue, I determined that building AD&D characters didn't count as playing, and recreating Dragonlance in Lego form was a pretty good approximation of the game.

Python is a wonderful general-purpose programming language, often taught as a first programming language. Twenty years in, multiple books written, and it remains my language of choice. While the language is often said to be straight-forward, configuring Python for development has not been described as such (as documented by xkcd).

Linux, in a way, is a series of static and dynamic libraries that depend on each other. For new users of Linux-based systems, the whole handling of libraries can be a mystery. But with experience, the massive amount of shared code built into the operating system can be an advantage when writing new applications.

Experienced developers, much like skilled artisans, rely on a set of tools to help them get their job done effectively and efficiently. However, trying to select the right tools can be intimidating, especially when you have many options to choose from.