LibrePlanet 2021 – Schedule
March 20th & 21 2021
The Libreplanet schedule has now been released and can be found here
TAGS
#LibrePlanet,#FSF,#FreeSoftware,#Conference,#Virtual, #Talks,#Workshop,#Help,#Advocacy,#Schedule
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LibrePlanet 2021
REFERENCES
There is a poster designed by Garulfo Azules for the event below
LaTeX source code files on Debian Salsa
TAGS
#FreeSoftware,#FSF,#LibrePlanet,#EmpoweringUsers,#LaTeX,#Poster,#Promotion
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20.04.2 LTS
Lubuntu 20.04.2, has been relesed, this is the lastest of the LTS (Long Term Support) updates for the system. You can find more info on the blog page.
Lubuntu is a derivative of the Ubuntu Operating system which in turn is built on Debian. Links in the list below.
Lubuntu is great for both low and high specification systems, and can help bring new life to old hardware, which given the number of people without devices could be a really effective way to help bridge the digital divide.
Organizations such as the good thing foundation help to build digital skills, sadly this does not cover fully free and open source software, let alone decentralized social media networks such as Mastodon.
There is no reason why LibreOffice can't be taught and promoted along side MS Office.
The more people to ASK for support with things like Lubuntu etc they will hopefully eventually provide the choice and associated support for alternatives.
REFERENCES
TAGS
#YearOfTheFediverse,#Lubuntu,#LTS,#release,#FreeSoftware,#Ubuntu,#Debian,#LibreOffice,#Mastodon
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Warmux
Warmux is a clone of the turn based artillery game Worms, which was very popular Team17 game from the 90's. This works really well on my set up and is a fun distraction.
Menuscreen showing various options
Ingame screen
Ingame screen
Ingame screen
REFERENCES
TAGS
#YearOfTheFediverse,#Games,Strategy,#Warmux, #FreeSoftware
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Fosdem 21 Reminder
Fosdem 2021 takes place on the weekend of 6th and 7th Feb 2021.
FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate.
Will take place via Jitsi and Matrix
If you sign up to matrix via the link below the you can get access to all the chatrooms during the conference.
I am on there as zleap@zleap:fosdem.org
Social
#conference,#freesoftware,#freedom,#fosdem
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Remote education
With the current Covd19 crisis in the UK, getting worse (again), Areas entering tier 4, (highest lockdown), Schools are closing and in some cases using remote education.
This brings up the prospect of them using non free tools, that when it comes to privacy may not be as private as first thought.
There is a really good article here on the GNU website, that explains the problem.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation have an event coming up on privacy on campus
It would be great if there could now be a big push to promote free and open source tools, to help level up education, and actually safeguard children, young people and adults from data harvesting etc.
So what, free, open source and privacy / rights respecting remote tools can we use for teaching?
I am now involved in an effort to take the digital skills framework (UK) and look at how we can achieve this using free and open source software. This project can be found on Codeberg
#education,#privacy,#safeguarding,#data,#children, #youngpeople,#adults,#skills,#freesoftware,#dataprotection,#safeguarding,#freedom.
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Contribute to f-droid
This was originally shared on Mastodon, so am sharing here for any one else who may be interested.
The contribution page is also here
Looks like lots of opportunities to get involved. If you are interested you can also get in touch with IzzyOnDroid.
You can join Mastodon here then connect with IssyOnDroid and ask how to get involved.
I am on Mastodon here
#freesoftware,#fdroid,#contribution,#foss,#repository, #android
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FSF fights to secure software freedom for future generations
A message from Geoffrey Knauth, President, Free Software Foundation.
This year-end, we are focusing on growing the community with our year-end goal of gaining 500 new associate members before December 31st. The deadline is only two days away, and we are not there yet. We need your support to continue to grow, and to give strength to the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) mission to protect #UserFreedom. Below is a message from our president Geoffrey Knauth reflecting on the FSF's mission to protect software users everywhere.
The US government recognized that 2020 was a difficult year for people, and for charities like the FSF. Special tax law changes for 2020 now make it possible for deduction of cash donations, including becoming an associate member, of up to $300 made before December 31, 2020.
You can read the rest of the article here
#freesoftware,#fsf,#GeoffKnauth,#freedom,#fundraising, #campaign,#donations,#help,#softwarefreedom,
Emacs Conference 2020 Writeup
This years Emacs Conference [1] took place on the weekend of 28th and 29th November. This is the online conference aimed at users of the stalwart text editor which is described as “An extensible, customizable, free/libre text editor” [2]
Emacsconf this year had users from all different backgrounds, who use Emacs for a range of applications from basic text editing, writing documents in LaTeX, HTML or Markdown. Emacs is also popular with programmers and developers working on their latest project(s), but can also handle reading / writing email, chat, debugging software, and also has a built in calender and organiser to help you keep track of what you are doing. All this from a single interface.
Emacs is free software, and released under the GNU license, so has the usual 4 freedoms of use, study, share and modify. The more accurate name is therefore GNU / Emacs.
Talks this year were presented with Big Blue button [5] and live streamed with gstreamer [4] and other tools. This combination worked really well.
Talks were either longer with time for questions and answers or shorter lightning talks on quick subjects. Attendees could add their questions to a collaborative text pad, that everyone had access to. There was a big social presence using IRC (chat) [3] which was active during the conference.
Topics included development updates, a new users viewpoint, writing novels, Music and quite a few on Org Mode which is used for creating task lists and much more. Emacs, has a steep learning curve, but is very powerful and flexible to use. I am still learning the basics.
All talks are available to view here
#conference,#emacs,#editor,#2020,#review,#writeup,#fsf, #freedom,#FreeSoftware,#irc,#BigBlueButton,#gnu, #FreeDesktop,#gstreamer,#live,#virtual,#freenode
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Contribute to f-droid
This was originally shared on Mastodon, so am sharing here for any of my followers who may be interested.
The contribution page is also here
Looks like lots of opportunities to get involved. If you are interested you can also get in touch with IzzyOnDroid.
You can join Mastodon here then connect with IssyOnDroid and ask how to get involved.
I am on Mastodon here
#freesoftware,#fdroid,#contribution,#foss,#repository, #android,#technology,#programming,#testing,#docs, #development,#software