Articles by Jack M. Germain

Bodhi Linux 4.3.1's implementation of the Enlightenment desktop, released late last month, continues this distro's tradition of providing an awesome desktop computing platform for office or home....

Open source hiring has been hampered by a lack of trained job-takers, according to The Linux Foundation, which released its sixth annual summary of career opportunities in open source last week. The report provides an overview of open source career trends, along with factors that motivate industry professionals, and methods employers use to attract and retain qualified talent...

Window Maker Live (WML) takes an unusual approach to desktop interface management. It has an old-fashioned look with a productive new feel....

As cloud popularity grows, so does the collection of free or low-cost online office tools that services like Microsoft Office Online and Google Docs/G Suite provide.

CoreOS on Thursday announced the general availability of the Kubernetes container management Tectonic platform on Microsoft's Azure cloud. The Tectonic platform enables enterprises to run Kubernetes on a single platform across various cloud and bare metal environments. Prior to this release, the Tectonic platform was available on Amazon Web Servic...

Ubuntu Budgie is one of the few Linux distros to offer integration of a Budgie desktop-only edition, other than Solus OS, whose developers created it Ubuntu Budgie is classy and user-friendly. It does not sacrifice performance for reliance on a simple design. It is maintained by a United Kingdom-based developer community. Previously called "Budgie-...

Automotive Grade Linux on Wednesday released version 4.0 of the AGL infotainment platform and announced new projects to support telematics, instrument cluster, heads-up-display and a virtualization component. The group also announced that seven new companies have joined AGL and The Linux Foundation. The addition of Brison, Karamba Security, Lear C...

When I first reviewed the Game Over edition of SparkyLinux several years ago, I called it one of the best full-service Linux distros catering to game players you could find. That assessment extends to last month's release of the non-gaming edition of this distro.

CoreOS and the Open Container Initiative on Wednesday introduced image and runtime specifications largely based on Docker's image format technology. However, OCI's decision to model the standard on Docker's de facto platform has raised questions. Some critics have argued for other options....

The American Technology Council, which President Donald Trump established this spring by executive order, has four years to rebuild the federal government's information technology structure. A massive reboot of both hardware and software will be necessary to bring government computers up to modern standards. The effort will force many government a...

SharkLinux OS is one of those very rare newcomer distributions that has "Future Big Winner" written all over it....

The Fedora Project this week announced the general availability of Fedora 26, the latest version of the fully open source Fedora operating system. Fedora Linux is the community version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or RHEL. Fedora 26 comprises a set of base packages that form the foundation of three distinct editions targeting different users.

Xinix, pronounced "zen-ics," is an innovative newcomer to the world of Linux distros Now in beta, this distro has been spearheaded by a single developer who is slowly bringing other programmers on board to move things along. Despite its early development status, Xinix has potential for Linux fans who like to experiment with new platform concepts an...

The Online Trust Alliance on Tuesday released its 2017 Online Trust Audit & Honor Roll. Among its findings: Consumer services sites have the best combined security and privacy practices.

The Rosa Desktop Fresh R series gets better with each new edition to its distro lineup....

GitHub this week released the results of its survey on open source software development, practices and worldwide communities. GitHub partnered with researchers from academic institutions, industry organizations and the open source community to collect responses from more than 6,000 participants. The results show the importance of open source docum...

BitKey is a Debian-based live distribution with specialist utilities for performing highly secure air-gapped bitcoin transactions.

MariaDB last week announced the availability of MariaDB TX 2.0, a fully functional open source transactional database solution for modern application development and enterprise use cases. MariaDB TX offers a comprehensive package of technology and services, including feature-rich new releases of MariaDB Server and MariaDB MaxScale, which close th...

Red Hat on Tuesday announced the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 beta RHEL 7.4 includes new security and compliance features and streamlined automation, along with tools for improved systems administration....

Feren OS is a polished and well-stocked Linux distro that comes close to being an ideal replacement for Microsoft Windows and macOS. In fact, this impressive Linux OS is a very attractive replacement for any Linux distro....