Category: open source

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Talking about Linux and open source

Yesterday I collaborated with long time friend and fellow Linux enthusiast Phil Shapiro. Recently we had been exploring open source solutions for video conferencing. There are two platforms with which we had some experience and those are BigBlueButton and Jitsi. They’re both great platforms but for slightly different audiences. I have used Jitsi recently to collaborate with local librarians and to meet with friends. BigBlueButton is a platform that really is designed to support online education. It has a tools like a whiteboard that Jitsi doesn’t have. Although you can share your screen on Jitsi and you can record to the cloud if you would like.

Yesterday we planned to collaborate on BigBlueButton but had technical difficulties and switched to Jitsi. Phil used screen capture software and published our conversation on YouTube. It was a good experience. Today I decided to invest in a portable video background so our next effort will look a bit more professional and I need to be a little less wooden.

Phil and I met about ten years ago on Twitter over a common love of Linux and open source software. In the video we discuss our experiences with the Linux Terminal Server project and the advantages of using Koha supported by ByWater Solutions in public libraries. I hope you enjoy the video and our conversation.

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Linux News

Today was a big day in the Linux community with the release of Ubuntu 20.04. A long time friend of mine reached out to me a couple of days ago asking me to familiarize him again with how to create a bootable USB drive so that he could update his laptop with the latest release of Ubuntu Linux. I sent the directions and today he sent me a text to let me know that the install went great and that he’s very happy with it. You can download your own copy of 20.04 which is called Focal Fossa. My friend Dave said it made his computer faster. What’s under the hood of this latest release. I’ve been a Ubuntu user for fifteen years now. I got my first copy of Ubuntu 5.04 at the Portland Linux User Group (PLUG) while I in Portland on business. I’d been a solid Fedora user up until then. I left the world of RPM for .deb files. At first it all seemed a bit foreign .

$ sudo apt-get install. Now, that’s changed to $ sudo apt install and Fedora is using sudo too. A lot has changed in fifteen years in the Linux community but one thing hasn’t and that is the rock solid reliability of the kernel and the innovation of the communities that support Linux distributions.

Tonight I was working on an installation of WordPress in VM with Virtualbox. I downloaded the .iso from TurnkeyLinux. and built a test WordPress server. I’m writing a “how-to” for H5P which is a great plugin that supports creating, sharing and reusing interactive content in your browser. I was having some problems getting H5P to work properly on this machine. I had to update and upgrade the PHP on the Debian image to get everything working properly. My experience as a Linux Sysadmin came in handy and now H5P is working well.

Are you a Linux user? Do you have any projects your working on? I’d love to hear what you’re doing.

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A need to write

I started this journey thirteen years ago. I started blogging and enjoyed it but in the past half dozen years I have moved away from it and towards social media. I’ve felt something within me calling me to write more and that’s what I’m going to try to do. I write regularly for Opensource.com. I’m a community moderator and regularly write about Linux and all things open source. I enjoy that a great deal. It has helped me to continue to learn and grow.

In the past five years I’ve moved from teaching in a public school to volunteering in a variety of places including a food pantry, a soup kitchen, public libraries, teaching digital literacy, Python, Scratch and other open source software. I love open source and continue to write about it and promote it anywhere that I go. I’ve found that there is a great deal more to open source than merely free software. I’ve become a member of a growing community of writers and developers and that’s been very energizing.

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If you’re interested in a positive view of the developments today in big data, artificial intelligence and robotics

WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to UsWTF?: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us by Tim O’Reilly
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an interesting read. This is the first book I’ve read by Tim O’Reilly though I have benefited from some of the texts his company sells. If you’re interested in a positive view of the developments today in big data, artificial intelligence and robotics and how they could shape our future then this is a must read for you.

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The future is open

I came across a blog post from 8 years ago where I wrote about how I was working with students and talking about computers. In the post I shared that I used Ubuntu Linux as my operating system.  I still work with students and I still recommend Linux over any other operating system because there is something wonderful about software freedom. A lot has changed in 8 years. That was a time before Raspberry Pi and the iOT, Chromebooks, iPads and more. I was using a Blackberry as a mobile device then and an iPhone now. That was before FaceTime and Google Hangouts. In that time Linux has evolved too. It’s found in all the Chromebooks, Androids, and most everything else except iOS devices. Even Microsoft is using Linux these days. There are just so many things you can do with Linux. In addition to the open source operating system the Linux concept has spread to an entire open ecosystem that pervades not only software but philosophy too. Openness and transparency are becoming overarching goals of most forward thinking organizations. I always have enjoyed helping people. Linux and open source software help fuel that passion to assist others.

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Fixing LibreOffice after an upgrade to OSX El Capitan

I read an article this morning which stated that more developers use Macs than Linux and while I can’t disagree with that I am perplexed by my recent upgrade to El Capitan. My four year old MacBook Pro continues to perform well despite its age. I’m happy with that, but after upgrading to El Capitan from Yosemite yesterday, LibreOffice 5 no longer worked. I kept getting an error message about the need to install Java JRE. I’ve downloaded the Java packages from Oracle after reading some “how-tos” after doing some “googling.” I use my Linux laptop more for everyday so it’s not a huge inconvenience, but I’d really like to know how to solve this current problem.

There is a fix I’m happy to report and it involved downloading the appropriate JRE environment from Oracle for OSX 10.11.3. Then I deleted LibreOffice from my system and then downloaded and installed the most recent version of the software. After doing all that I had to open LibreOffice for the first time and then go to LibreOffice  -> Preferences  -> Advanced then select the version of the Java Environment which in my case was version 1.8.0_73. Highlight that selection, press “Add” and then “Okay” and you’re done.

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Once again Linux to the rescue of a Windows 8.1 machine

A former colleague has a Windows 8.1 computer that had been overtaken by trojans, worms and spyware and was not working well at all. Last week his wife called and asked if I could fix it. I agreed to take a look at it. I downloaded an anti-virus rescue disk that ran on Linux. I couldn’t get the proprietary anti-virus to work but I was able to install Clam anti-virus and install the latest definitions. I discovered in the process that the system needed to be rebuilt using it’s recovery partition. However, none of the factory installed backup solutions worked. I decided I would use a Linux USB drive to boot the computer and save the user’s important files. However, upon re-booting with Linux none of the Windows partitions were mountable. Thank God for an internet search and AskUbuntu.com. I was able a way to mount the Windows drive and backup the files. Here is the solution that saved my friend’s files.  Thank you to the person who shared this and here’s hoping this helps someone else.

using the following command , get info about your drives

sudo lsblk -o NAME,FSTYPE,SIZE,MOUNTPOINT,LABEL

Then mount the drives using following command

sudo ntfsfix /dev/sda1

Here sda1 is used as example , replace sda1 with corresponding sda number ,command 1 gives the sda number of your drive

and remember windows drives are of ntfs partition

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If you’re in EdTech You Need to Come to All Things Open Next Year

Today while I was at the All Things Open Conference I thought,  “we need more educational technology people here.” There is a wealth of information shared about open source projects and technologies and most of them should be on the radar of anyone that’s teaching today’s students. This morning I listened to an excellent presentation by Mark Russinovitch who is the CTO of Microsoft Azure. Mark spent about thirty minutes explaining the what and why of Microsoft’s involvement with Linux kernel development and it s presence in other open source software projects including Python.

In 2015 it is irresponsible not to expose students to Linux and open source and most of today’s internet of things and cloud applications run on open source platforms.  In fact in one of the sessions I attended at this year’s conference there was a seventh grade boy from a Raleigh, NC area school district. He was so engaged in the presentation that he asked the presenter a very good question at the end of her presentation.

Throughout the conference I heard great presentations from the National Center for Women in Information Technology, Girl DevelopIT, GitHub 101, and Openstack 101. My personal favorite among all those sessions which were most appropriate to educational technology was Charlie Reisinger’s lightning talk about his one-to-one Linux laptop program at Penn Manor High School in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Charlie said that today’s students who are often called digital natives risk their futures by failing to learn skills that are highlighted in the program at Penn Manor which emphasizes hands on work with assembling and supporting Linux laptops. Many well meaning school districts undercut their students learning by forcing them to use tablets and other closed systems which don’t allow students to learn by tinkering and coding.

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Glad to be a part of Opensource.com

A year ago I came to All Things Open at the invitation of Jason Hibbets who was the community manager of Opensource.com. At the time I was thrilled to be invited and so I came to the conference with some expectations but not really knowing what was in store for me. I met people like Jason, Rikki Endsley, Phil Shapiro and Jeff Mackanic. I remember how Jeff repeatedly thanked me for coming and how good that made me feel at the time. I decided a year ago that I wanted to come back here because I learned so much at the conference and met so many wonderful people who made me feel so good about being here.

In December of last year Phil Shapiro suggested that I tell Jason that I was interested in the Community Moderator program. I felt a bit reticent because I doubted my own credentials and qualifications but I did follow his suggestion. Jason was happy to welcome me on board and in January I officially joined the team. Since that time I’ve met other members of the group including Jen Wike Huger, Bryan Behrenhausen, Alex Sanchez and many more. In the past ten months I written over thirty articles about a variety of topics. Some articles came from my own experience with Linux and open source software. Others like interviews were new to me. In the process I got to meet a number very interesting people and to learn about aspects of open source that I would not otherwise have explored on my own. Today for example I had a chance at this year’s All Things Open Conference to meet Harper Reed who I interviewed a month ago. Also today I got to meet Frank Karlitschek who developed OwnCloud and another of my interviewees. My colleagues have helped me to grow professionally as a writer and as a person too. They’ve both challenged and encouraged me and I’m excited to be involved. I recently told Robin Muilwijk that he and the others in our group had been the wind beneath my wings.

In the past couple of days I’ve gained unique insights into being part of an open organization and today we all shared lunch and an open discussion of “The Open Organization” with it’s author, Jim Whitehurst who is the CEO of Red Hat. What a thrill to be sitting in the Red Hat Board Room with my colleagues other members of the Red Hat team. There’s still one more day of this years conference and I’m looking forward to it. I’m also looking forward to continuing this wonderful journey with Opensource.com.

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Solutions for Printing to an HP 1212mfp from Fedora 21

Setting up and getting started on Fedora 21 has had it’s challenges and earlier today I needed to setup printing to the multi-function laser printer in my home. I discovered that I needed to use Google and internet search to find a solution for printing. If you’re in the same predicment you might appreciate knowing that there are solutions to your printing woes. HPLIP (Hewlett-Packard Linux Imaging & Printing) is an HP-developed solution for printing, scanning, and faxing with HP inkjet and laser based printers in Linux. It’s a great resource and provided exactly what I needed. Better still it gave me specialized drivers that allow me to maximize the abilities of my multi-function device. This is a much better solution than what I had been used to with Ubuntu. I’m including a link to the solution for Fedora 21. Be sure to follow all of the steps and you’ll be up and running in no time. Thank you Fedora and Hewlett-Packard for great documentation.