This 12 months we discovered lots about our neighborhood as we embraced our new work-from-home lives. We additionally met some wonderful people who’re leveraging Linux and open supply software program of their organizations.
Open supply neighborhood tales
Opensource.com neighborhood supervisor, Jen Wike Huger, posed some participating inquiries to our writers’ checklist all year long. The responses mirror the distinctive views of every of our neighborhood members. Here are a couple of of my favourite tales that got here from these async conversations.
Breakfast
What do open supply technologists eat? Steve Morris wrote, “I’m an oatmeal guy for the most part. Walnuts, brown sugar, cinnamon, and flaxseeds for the win. Something I learned from being a runner is, if you fuel up, you can forget about food for a good long time.” How are you beginning your day? Here are 16 suggestions for methods to start out your day from our contributors.
Work-from-home apparel
How do keep at dwelling nerds gown? The pandemic has invited us all to rethink our norms. Do you’re employed in your PJs? Correspondent Kevin Sonney wrote, “I learned long ago when I started full-time remote work, that I needed to do the whole “rise up, prepare, dress such as you have been going into the workplace” thing, providing some structure to my day and to get my head in “the correct place” for work.” What’s your favourite work from home wear?
Switching to Linux
It’s been thirty years since Linus Torvalds created Linux. There are many the reason why people swap to Linux. While attending school, Lisa Seelye could not afford a Windows license. She labored in a bookstore the place she received a pleasant low cost on Red Hat Linux 5.2. Twenty years later, she is working at Red Hat. The responses have been diversified. Here are 17 true stories from our neighborhood. What is your Linux story?
Programming origin tales
We discovered the origin tales of twenty-four open supply technologists by asking them what their first programming language was. The solutions have been as diversified as you’ll anticipate. They ranged from BASIC, Fortran, Python, Scratch, Logo, and lots of extra. Greg Pittman mentioned, “After switching to Linux, my next language was Perl, which oddly enough seemed like a fairly easy transition from BASIC. After Perl, came Python, a language less stiff with syntax.”
Interviews with open supply technologists
FreeDos founder
Our hottest interview was with Jim Hall, the founding father of FreeDOS. Jim created FreeDOS in response to Microsoft ending help for MS-DOS in 1994. Jim mentioned, “I heard that Microsoft planned to “do away” with MS-DOS. The next version of Windows would eliminate DOS. I didn’t like that, and I still wanted to run DOS. I decided that if folks could come together over the Internet to write something like Linux, surely, we could do the same with DOS. After all, DOS was fairly simple compared to Linux.” Joshua Allen Holm and I collaborated on this interview that celebrated how Jim based a free and open supply working system as a college student.
Open supply CEO
Clayton Dewey interviewed Pablo Ruiz-Múzquiz, the CEO and co-founder of Kaleidos and Taiga shares about that have. You will get pleasure from studying in regards to the growth of Penpot and the power of open supply growth. Pablo Ruiz-Muzquiz says that, “When you narrow that gap between design and code, magic happens. You have more functional conversations—being open source gives you the innovation that comes from the community. Open source gives you a world attain.”
Open supply educator
Twenty years in the past, when Robert Maynord began instructing at a small personal college in Monona, Wisconsin, with solely eight Windows 95 computer systems, his experience and enthusiasm remodeled that college. In the method, it was pandemic-ready utilizing Linux open supply instruments. The pandemic required the college to go digital with on-line video interplay. Robert arrange a BigBlueButton server that built-in properly with Moodle. Robert states that “Far and away, the most important benefit of using open source software is that both teachers and students are learning technological skills in a broad framework, rather than narrowly based on brand names and marketing strategies.”
Linux librarian
The Crawford County Federated Library System close to Erie, PA, has been utilizing Linux and open source software since 1999. Shortly after being employed by the library system in 1998, Cindy Murdock Ames was launched to Linux and noticed its potential for innovation and price financial savings. Cindy acknowledged, “One of the major strengths from our use of open source is versatility. Once you start using free and open source software (FOSS) for one project, you find you can apply it to many others—from desktops, library circulation systems, patron login management systems.”
Open supply world communicator
Communication is essential, and the world {of professional} communication is nuanced. Rachel Naegele is a graduate scholar on the University of Minnesota enrolled of their scientific {and professional} communications program. She just lately interviewed Jim Hall to study extra about professional communications within the multinational FreeDOS venture. In a day and time when communication has change into extra fractured, Jim recommends, “always assume positive intent. If someone reached out to you in an email, read past any preconceptions about how that person communicated and find the message they wanted to convey.”
