"Linux Voice", a promising new magazine which we mentioned the other day, is managing to raise a lot of funds after some initial coverage in the big media [1], leading to more such coverage in other news sites [2,3] and FOSS-centric news sites [4]. As "Linux Voice" is funded by people -- not advertisers -- it will not need to publish things which are friendly to companies. It can blast the NSA and the CIA, or even accuse certain companies of corruption. That's just what we need. This magazine may also involve some multimedia/audiocasts -- something which is sorely needed these days because FOSS-centric audiocasts are growing fewer (although they exist [5,6]). About 5 years ago there was far more hype driving demand for GNU/Linux on the desktop. Pre-loaded Linux was really needed at the time (GNU/Linux was harder to install/set up and it is still not so trivial [7]) and when Dell finally budged many of us celebrated with caution. Dell is now dominated by Microsoft and we should expect its GNU/Linux-powered machines to have Microsoft 'patent tax' [8,9,10]. If people want to buy a machine that has GNU/Linux preinstalled (no spyware like Ubuntu and no Microsoft tax), then Chromebook, which is also spyware, is one affordable option [11] although it would be best to support the small players -- those to whom GNU/Linux is a matter of strategy and priority. See the Pre-Installed Linux Vendor Database for options near you. Even if those options are relatively expensive, these at least go a long way in supporting those who support GNU/Linux. The cost of free (as as in freedom) press can be high and the same goes for Free software. Freedom is no self-funding; usually the opposite is true. ⬆
A group of staff who walked out a month ago from the computing magazine Linux Format are hoping to launch a rival monthly magazine of their own called Linux Voice.
They have launched a crowdfunding campaign in the hope of raising €£90,000 to get their project off the ground - in print and in a digital format - by February next year.
Recently, I've been looking to purchase a new machine. This all started with the problems I experienced with a new Lenovo desktop machine and PulseAudio (I've been going on about this for a while now). That same machine, which is less than a year old, has now started to display a newer, more frustrating issue of randomly powering off. Sure, there are a litany of possible reasons for this, including: Bad power supply (haven't checked this) Bad CPU fan (not the issue) Bad RAM (all RAM passes Memtest86+) Bad hard drive(s) (both drives passed e2fsck)
Dell has shipped a second update to its Ubuntu-powered Project Sputnik developer laptop, and its engineers have begun testing other Dell portables with an eye to offering an even more powerful Linux workstation.