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This is the time of year when we look back and go, “Wow. How did this all ever happen?” Or something to that effect. And after about a month of PC-BSD daily use, the verdict so far (subject to appeal) is overwhelmingly positive with a couple of bumps (e.g., someday I will turn off tap-to-click on my touchpad).

The news of Murdock’s death was first made public in a blog post on the Docker website. When the page became unreachable at approximately 4:20 p.m. EST, there was a glimmer of hope that perhaps the report had been an error, as the post made no mention of a cause death, nor did it reference disturbing tweets on Murdock’s Twitter account on Monday. However, the page was back online by a little after 5:00 p.m.

If you did give or receive a Raspberry for Christmas, hopefully it was part of a kit where all the necessary parts are included. If not, you may be asking what you need to get started? First you will need a microSD card with your operating system of choice installed. Next, a USB supported keyboard and mouse, as well as a HDMI cable. If the monitor you intend to use does not support HDMI, then a proper adapter will be necessary. Finally, a micro USB power supply will be needed to power your new device.

A number of Reglue Kids began complaining about homework assignments being rejected. Most times they were scolded and told to re-submit the assignment in the proper format…you know, that well known proprietary one. Sometimes students were given a lower grade for not following the submission instructions.

Practically none of us, outside those who worked for IBM or Honeywell, knew anything about computers in 1967. Public utilities were just in the process of sending out bills that were essentially keypunch cards — a Stone Age computer storage scheme — with the ever present warning to not “bend, staple, mutilate or fold,” so we knew the computer was already our boss. We also knew what computers looked like, or thought we did, from TV shows like “The Man from Uncle”: gigantic room filling devices loaded with flashing lights that didn’t seem to indicate much of anything. A powerful computer that could be carried in your hand was, well, light years away.

What do I think? For one thing, I think if Canonical does have that many users and if they could get each to send them just 25 cents, they’d have a quarter of a billion dollars. I also think that just a little over a year ago, this same company claimed there were 25 million Ubuntu users worldwide spanning 240 countries. That sounded good until tech media pundits pointed out that the United Nations estimated there were only 196 countries in the world at that time.

For this poll we focused on the Raspberry Pi. We’ve been pleasantly surprised by the number of you who read The Raspberry Pi Report, so we thought we’d see just how far into the Raspberry Pi phenomena you dwell. We wondered how many of you already own a Pi, how many are thinking of getting one to tinker with, and how many of you just plain aren’t interested. We were also wondering how many of you might be influenced by the super low $5 price of the recently released Pi Zero.

AMD will soon be embracing open source with a new set of gaming tools. Until now, Nvidia’s proprietary GameWorks tools have had the lead over AMD in PC gaming. To counter this, on December 15, AMD announced GPUOpen. The suite will contain open source tools, graphics effects, libraries and SDKs and promises to be a boon to game developers.

How about a big medallion at the top of the page saying “we recommend Linux” and just include Windows 10 as a secondary option? Heck, if I were Michael Dell, I’d customize Ubuntu, get rid of any major bugs, drop Unity in favor of something more readily understandable to the average Joe or Jane, like maybe Xfce, and proudly proclaim, “we recommend DellOS 11 Premium Edition” or some such nonsense. We already know from experiences at public libraries that have replaced Windows with Linux boxes, that the learning curve doesn’t exist anymore — and probably hasn’t for the last decade or so.

Let's get this put to bed now: At the grade school level, girls are far and away better at most technological challenges than are boys. I've seen it for years; I've lived it for years. Where is the failure? It resides in the adults in a girl's life who tell her she shouldn't be wasting her time with computers and that she should start wearing skirts and dresses instead of jeans and that damned three button pullover shirt. Some will go so far as to point out the lack of female presence in the technology workplace as proof. Well yeah...there is a smaller female representation. That's because mommy and school career counselors are channeling her into roles "more suited to her gender" and their preconceived ideas of her abilities.

Like it or not, Google’s open source WebP image format is here to stay. At this point, the only thing holding back widespread adoption on the Internet is browser support. At present, the format is supported in Chrome, Opera, Opera Mini, Android Browser and Chrome for Android. However, with the folks at Mozilla working fast and furious to improve the Firefox experience in hopes of giving Chrome some competition, you can bet that Firefox support for WebP will be coming soon. When that happens, the two other major holdouts, Internet Explorer (now Microsoft Edge) and Safari, will be sure to follow suit.

Okay, artists, get those colored pencils sharpened, those brushes cleaned and ready, because you have an assignment — that logo isn’t going to design itself. FreeNAS — “founded in 2005 on the guiding principle that network storage software should be available to the public at no cost and free of license restrictions” according to its site — has initiated a logo contest, urging the community to contribute artwork to become a part of FreeNAS history.

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.