opensource.com

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.

It's been almost two years since I switched from Mac to Linux. I used Apple for about 15 years before my move and was a complete Linux newbie when I installed my first distribution in summer 2018.

Some time ago, I learned an important Kubernetes lesson the hard way. The story begins with Kubernetes Operators, which is a method of packaging, deploying, and managing a Kubernetes application. The thing I tripped up on was garbage collection in the cluster, which cleans up objects that no longer have an owner object (but more on that later).

Growing up in Silicon Valley, Nuritzi Sanchez saw the powerful impact software can make on the world. Yet, unlike many others who were also steeped in the tech industry, her journey has taken her into the world of open source, where she is contributing to that impact.

Bash has a rich history. That is, it's an old shell with an even older ancestor (the Bourne shell), but it also has a great history command that surpasses all other shell history interfaces based on its number of features. The Bash version of history allows for reverse searches, quick recall, rewriting history, and more.

In my quest to "automate all the things," I have been on a journey to manage my Mac laptop as the code it inherently is. Instead of pointing and clicking to manually manage my applications and utilities, I prefer to use package management software to install, update, and remove unneeded software.

The Lumina desktop was originally developed by iXSystems for TrueOS, which later became Project Trident. It's well-known as the BSD desktop environment but has been ported to Linux. It introduces desktop elements like a panel, system tray, and so on, to the Fluxbox window manager, and is highly portable. It's a good desktop, and while it's generally easy to install, there aren't many distributions offering it by default.

Python is full of libraries that can visualize data. One of the more interactive options comes from Pygal, which I consider the library for people who like things to look good. It generates beautiful SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) files that users can interact with. SVG is a standard format for interactive graphics, and it can lead to rich user experiences with only a few lines of Python.

I recently started learning Rust after many years of Java development. The five points that keep coming to mind are:

1. Rust feels familiar
2. References make sense
3. Ownership will make sense
4. Cargo is helpful
5. The compiler is amazing

I absolutely stand by all of these, but I've got a little more to say because I now feel like a Rustacean1 in that:

In my last article, I introduced Mycroft and shared some information about the open source voice assistant project. This article will help you get started with details on key terms, installation, and pairing Mycroft with your devices.

In this week’s edition of our open source news roundup, we take a look at the latest Firefox release, a new CMS, huge leaps in open source audio engineering, and more.

We've all been there. "I'm going to get this Raspberry Pi to try out. They look kinda cool." And then, like tribbles on an Enterprise, suddenly you have Kubernetes clusters and NFS servers and Tor proxies. Maybe even a hotel booking system!

I grew up in rural towns all over Ontario, Canada. We weren't particularly well off, although, as a kid in the middle of nowhere, I wasn't really aware of our socioeconomic status. What I was aware of was this beige box called a computer that sat in my dad's office. Dad worked for the bank, and for his job, it was essential for him to have a computer. So while we never had the latest gaming console, we always had a computer.

MailCleaner is a feature-rich, open source antispam solution. Its virtual appliances (VMs) available for distribution come out-of-the-box with self-signed certificates for both the web interface and the MTA services.

This requires you to supply your own valid, publicly trusted certificate. Using a Let's Encrypt certificate is a great way to accomplish that because it's free, safe, and automated.

When the cloud was still in its formative years, developers discovered that it was convenient to write applications in small, atomic, minimal Linux images that shared resources with the server they ran on. Technically based on kernel namespaces, these small environment definitions came to be called containers. As containers proliferated, sysadmins quickly realized it was becoming essential to develop a tool that could help them manage not only containers but also the virtualized infrastructure underneath.

In his book How to Win, New York Times senior economic correspondent Neil Irwin championed the role of "glue people" in bringing about better alignment, collaboration, and organizational maturity.

The COVID-19 pandemic disturbed the work of event organizers everywhere. To slow the spread of this highly contagious virus, conferences that tend to host thousands in person faced a choice: Move entirely online, or cancel altogether. Many open source event organizers chose the latter, but not all of them.

Python offers a rich set of options for visualizing data. I'll show you the basics of plotting in Matplotlib by creating a bar chart with grouped bars. It shows election results for the UK between 1966 and 2020:

WordPress is best known as a website content management system, but it also a great learning management system (LMS) for delivering online courses. If that is what you are looking for out of WordPress, then H5P should be the top plugin on your list.

One way to get started with an open source community is to write about it. You can contribute to technical documentation, share how you use the software, or write an article for Opensource.com. But getting started writing is easier said than done. The two most common excuses I hear for not writing are: "I have nothing new to say" and "I'm not a good writer." I'm here to dispel both of those myths.

"Hunt for the stories that often get left out."
—Erik Larson