Readers' Choices, Linux Philosophy, and Fedora Numbers
Today in Linux news the Linux Journal's Reader's Choice Award winners for 2014 were posted. David Both discusses "the Linux philosophy" and Marcel Gagne answers "What is Linux?" Matthew Miller says Fedora 21 "on track" and Anne Nicolas posts an interview with Mageia developer David Walser. The Linux Voice asks if Devuan is a good thing and Steven Ovadia talks to Linux developer and writer Akkana Peck.
Linux Journal today posted the results of their 2014 Readers' Choice Awards. The question in which everybody is most interested is answered first. Ubuntu beat out Debian for "Best Distribution" by a mere one-tenth of one percent. Mint came in third followed by Arch then Fedora. Mageia received less than one percent of the vote. In other categories, Lenovo was voted the best laptop vendor for Linux and Firefox is still the best browser beating runner-up Chrome by over twice as much. Audacity gets the best audio editing vote and VLC is the best video player. Civilization 5 won best Linux game and Python got best programming and scripting language. The winner of the "coolest thing" ever done with Linux was "building my procmail pre-spam spam filter back in the mid-late 1990s." See the full post for the rest including the enterprise categories.
David Both today said that all operating system are built using a philosophy. He says the Windows philosophy 'amounts to "shield the users from everything that might get them into trouble."' The MAC OS is similar with an "object-oriented approach." But Both says the Linux philosophy is rooted in Unix and never assumes the user is ignorant or needs to be shielded. In fact, Both says it's this power and freedom that draws users in. He said it changed him and the way he uses a computer. Both concludes it's the Linux philosophy of respecting users that continues to bring folks in.
Marcel Gagne today discussed "what is Linux?" His angle briefly explores the origins of Linux from Torvalds' famous USENET post to probably the most used OS in the world (if you count all the devices too). Gagne said, "These days, Linux is a powerful, reliable (rock-solid, in fact), expandable, flexible, configurable, multiuser, multitasking, and completely free operating system that runs on more platforms that I could hope to mention here." He remembered to mention GNU's place in the equation as well before concluding, "The appearance of Linus Torvalds's Linux kernel has made the GNU dream of a completely free, UNIX-like operating system a reality at last."
In other news:
* Is Devuan a Good Thing?
* The Linux Setup - Akkana Peck, Developer/Writer
* They make Mageia: David Walser
* Fedora 21 release on track; new leadership and counting users