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Remember when I said I didn’t have access to Michael Larabel’s fine set of Phoronix tools to do diagnostic hardware comparisons? Well, while looking around for something else in BSD’s very cool AppCafe, I found them — Phoronix tools available for BSD users. So while I go sit in the corner with a pointy hat, I will apologize for that error.

During all the Pi Zero hype and showcasing, most of us probably didn’t realize that the Raspbian OS got a much needed update. While this update isn’t a major release, it still contained some amazing features. If you are running Raspbian Jessie, then take a moment to read over this article so you won’t be left out in the cold. I’ll go over the best parts of the update and also provide install instructions on how to get all this on your current Raspbian install.

Ubuntu has experienced an internal error. Not “Chrome has experienced” or “Thunderbird has experienced”…Ubuntu has experienced an error. Well holy frickin’ bovine-like carbon-based unit. If I were a novice Ubuntu user and my computer informed me that my entire operating system was experiencing an internal error, I’d be running around in circles with my hands flailing in the air like my remaining hair was on fire. That’s not too far away from the mental state of some of those contacting me. Important homework files are on their computers, as are family photos and documents. It was pure unmitigated panic.

The extent of the hack is not known, however Twitter indicates in the notification that only “a small group” of accounts were affected. According to Twitter: “We believe that these actors (possibly associated with a government) may have been trying to obtain information such as email addresses, IP addresses, and/or phone numbers.”

Last week when Microsoft and the Linux Foundation separately announced a partnership that would see Redmond issuing a Linux certification called Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate Linux (MCSA), Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols felt the need to add the words “not a typo” to the headline of his coverage on ZDNet. A couple of days later, when the story made the pages of The Register the headline included, “Do not adjust your set. This is not an error.”

I honestly wish this news was better: Please allow a moment of silence for what seems to be the passing of Firefox OS. As a ZTE Open owner and a one-time regular user of that phone (until I needed something more dependable), this hits a sentimental note with me, since I was truly hoping that Mozilla would get the OS for the phone up to speed so it wouldn’t — oh, just to give a personal example — abandon users while performing important, job-dependent communications, for example.

Last week’s article about Mozilla thinking of kicking Thunderbird out of the house to stay with friends started us thinking. For some reason, probably because our thoughts were on other things, such as the difference between the java in our cup (Chock full o’ Nuts, which has no nuts, by the way) and the Java on our machines (which has no Chock full o’ Nuts — go figure), it never occurred to us that the mobile revolution might’ve changed the way folks use email more than we’d realized.

The results of our latest poll have been tallied and FOSS Force readers evidently think that Mozilla should keep Thunderbird instead of helping the project find a new home. Mozilla executive chairperson, Mitchell Baker, announced on November 30 that the foundation intended to eventually separate itself from the popular desktop email client it first released in 2004.

Garry Newman, creator of Garry’s Mod and Rust, has stated he’s leaning towards not supporting Linux in the future. Newman has been critical of Linux on Twitter saying, “Linux is a second class citizen, we don’t run it internally because only 17 people use it.”

A child’s education should start with free and open source software. When we help them build their futures on the rock-solid base of FOSS, we are exposing them not only to the ones and zeros behind our software, but more importantly, to the ideas and the philosophy on which FOSS culture sits. We are teaching them that collaboration and cooperation can outproduce the dog-eat-dog world that rules us now.

The project to recreate Edsac was undertaken to help fill gaps in knowledge about the way that this early British computer was built and worked. Once complete it will become a living exhibit at The National Museum of Computing where it will be used to help teach schoolchildren about programming.

The early months of the reconstruction scheme were taken up studying photographs of the finished computer to try to work out how its 3,000 valves were laid out and how they formed the logic that lent the machine its computational power.

Mozilla is already facing an uncertain financial future, and Friday’s announcement doesn’t make it any brighter. Late last year, the organization lost its profitable long standing deal with Google, which had annually added hundreds of millions of dollars to the coffers. It doesn’t appear that the new deal with Yahoo will come anywhere near matching that, as the web portal’s once dominant search engine isn’t very popular and it’s likely that many users will change their search preference in the browser’s settings.

Except for those using a free version of Android such as Replicant, and who install apps from free and open software sources such as F-Droid or Fossdroid, the protection of privacy on mobile devices, by design, is hopeless. Users have come to accept that most apps from Google’s store demand a whole slew of privileges whether they need them or not, and even when not being used, many apps happily go about the business of collecting and reporting everything they’re permitted to find out about us.

No date? No problem. In case you have nothing planned as 2015 dovetails into 2016 on the final day of this month, Ubuntu has you covered. According to an article in Softpedia, the first alpha for Ubuntu 16.04 — bestowed with the release name handed down by The Mark as “Xenial Xerus,” for those of you keeping score at home — will be released on December 31, just in time for the lighted ball to fall in Times Square before the strains of “Auld Lang Syne” waft through the air. Enjoy the holiday!

“Is that Run GCC, like Run DMC?” He asked about one of the more prevalent stickers on the cover of my ThinkPad T500. We laughed about it, we introduced ourselves — his name is Roger and he’s a Java developer — and we started a conversation about what we were working on.

Every month it seems like the Raspberry Pi Foundation keeps wowing us, and this November was no exception. As a matter-of-fact, this past month was jam packed with headlines, so much so that I’m eagerly waiting to see what the month of December will offer. Since there was so much that happened, here is a recap of the biggest stories that headlined the Raspberry Pi for the month of November.

It’s more likely that the real problem the higher-ups have with Mozilla is they can’t figure out how to monetize it. Sure, they could cut a deal with their friends at Yahoo to display ads in Thunderbird, similar to what Google does with Gmail, but that wouldn’t work. It would only drive away the user base.

Rocks and a stick? That’s a curious way to express Linux, the kernel that is the center of the majority of supercomputers around the world. I’ve heard it expressed or compared a lot of ways, but I don’t think “rocks and a stick” was one of them — up until then at least. But he’s not alone in his way of thinking. I remember a conversation I had with a colleague in 2005 who held the same view and went so far as to stop working with our newly-formed organization. He stated that he would not put his efforts into a losing cause.

The popular website Tux Machines has evidently fallen victim to a DDOS attack that made the site unavailable for part of the day on Friday. The announcement of the attack was initially made in a blog notice posted on the site late Friday morning GMT which opened with the line “Tux Machines has been mostly offline this morning.”

Phoenix based Symple PC, which offered refurbished “web workstations” running Ubuntu for $89, has evidently ridden off into the night of no return. Since at least August 24, the company’s website has said the product is “No Longer Availabe,” although the website remains operational. Numerous attempts to contact the company for clarification have gone unanswered.