Linux is my primary operating system. I used it on the servers, desktops, laptops, netbooks, and even mobile phones since approximately 1997. I’ve tried a number of distributions over the years, and even created a couple myself. I still look around sometimes to see what others are up to. But most of my machines are running some sort of Red Hat – either a quick and easy Fedora Linux, or a stable and secure Red Hat Enterprise Server, or a cheaper CentOS alternative.
And while by now I am very comfortable in the Linux environment (both graphical and command line), I still discover a lot of new and interesting things about it. When I come across something worthy, I usually share it with the rest of the Open Software world, using this category.
Fedora Magazine covers “6 great monospaced fonts for code and terminal in Fedora“. Their choices are:
It’s been a while since I considered a change to the monospaced fonts that I’m using. The top three fonts in my list from a while back are Fixedsys Excelsior, Monaco, and Microsoft Consolas. I used Fixedsys Excelsior almost exclusively in all my terminal windows.
Linux Weekly News reports that Red Hat acquires Ansible. There are quite a few configuration management tools around, and it was only the matter of time until Red Hat, with all its corporate client base, would buy one. Or pledge allegiance. My personal preference would be in Puppet, but Puppet comes from the Ruby world, where’s Red Hat is more of a Python shop.
Ansible’s simple and agentless approach, unlike competing solutions, does not require any special coding skills, removing some of the most significant barriers to automation across IT. From deployment and configuration to rolling upgrades, by adding Ansible to its hybrid management portfolio, Red Hat will help customers to:
- Deploy and manage applications across private and public clouds.
- Speed service delivery through DevOps initiatives.
- Streamline OpenStack installations and upgrades.
- Accelerate container adoption by simplifying orchestration and configuration.
The upstream Ansible project is one of the most popular open source automation projects on GitHub with an active and highly engaged community, encompassing nearly 1,200 contributors. Ansible automation is being used by a growing number of Fortune 100 companies, powering large and complex private cloud environments, and the company has received several notable accolades, including a 2015 InfoWorld Bossie Award, recognizing the best open source datacenter and cloud software.
Regardless, though, of my personal preferences, these are good news for configuration management and automation.
Riley Brandt, the photographer, goes over his photography workflow, involving only Free and Open Source software. Here are his picks:
The rumor of Microsoft working on its own Linux distribution has been going around for a while. Now it’s confirmed by Microsoft themselves:
The Azure Cloud Switch (ACS) is our foray into building our own software for running network devices like switches. It is a cross-platform modular operating system for data center networking built on Linux. ACS allows us to debug, fix, and test software bugs much faster. It also allows us the flexibility to scale down the software and develop features that are required for our datacenter and our networking needs.
The distribution is not for sale or download, but purely for use in their Azure cloud infrastructure. The Register looks at this in detail.
I guess, Mahatma Gandhi was right:
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
There is going to be a Free Software / Open Source conference “Freedom and Technology” this Saturday, October 3rd (18:00-21:00) in Cyprus University of Technology, in Limassol, Cyprus. Organizers are the same people you know from the Ubuntu CY community. I’m going to do a talk titled “The practical guide to Open Source participation”. Slides will be linked here after the talk.
See you there.