GNU/Linux News: The Opportunities Amid XP EOL
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-04-15 14:51:01 UTC
- Modified: 2014-04-15 14:51:01 UTC
Few people know just how pervasive Linux has become, and that is causing a big problem for companies that increasingly rely on it. "There is a shortage of software developers in the U.S. The employment rate for these jobs is down to 2.3 percent in the last quarter. The opportunity for jobs is now there for people who come in to get this training," said Dice President Shravan Goli.
A new book on open source education teaches school leaders and parents why kids need to see coding as more than cool. Energizing Education through Open Source: Using Open Source Software to Enhance Learning by Christopher Whittum makes a strong case for deploying the Linux OS and its academic software in schools.
For business, the same kind of trouble started when Linux and the Internet showed up in the mid-1990s. No matter how useful Linux and the Internet prove to be, business still has trouble getting its head around a virtual world composed of end points that are all autonomous, self-empowered and at zero functional distance from each other. The best geometric figure for that world is a giant hollow sphere composed of boundless smarts on its outside—the nodes of its network—and no controlling entity in the middle.
Linux has become the dominant operating system for internet sites, powering Google, Facebook, YouTube and many others. It is also the dominant operating system powering Android phones and tablets, televisions, home routers and many other devices.
Running various Linux distributions on my own computers has been a mixed blessing over the years. While I've experienced many successes, something I don't talk about as often are the areas that frustrate me. In this article, I'll highlight my top list of Linux frustrations that bug me to this very day.
Ubuntu and the suite of GNU tools in any robust Unix system. A good text editor (currently Gedit)—I keep all of my working files at .txts. A robust, highly configurable browser (Firefox/Firefox for Android). A fast RSS reader (presently Google Reader, likely to be Newsblur next). A tetherable mobile connection—I use EasyTether for Android to circumvent tether-blocking as deployed by some of the carriers I use around the world, especially Rogers in Canada. AirDroid for moving files on/off Android devices in my life.
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