I first wrote about Solus Linux and the Budgie Desktop exactly four years ago. I haven't done much with it since then, it was always installed and occasionally updated on at least one of my computers, but because of the other activities I had going on I didn't spend much more time on it. Now that I have time, and they have just announced the release of Solus 4.2, this seems like a good time to take a fresh look.

Why Solus?

With so many other good Linux distributions available, what make Solus different or special? In my opinion it is two things - first, Solus is an independent distribution, built from scratch it is not derived from Debian, Ubuntu or one of the other major distributions. Second, Solus is developed and maintained by a small, dedicated group of people. As the Solus web page says:

Solus is empowered by the shared vision of a strong community working for a common goal. All developments and improvements to Solus are by people who want to use their computers just like you do.

This means that, compared to Linux distributions from large companies or organizations, such as Ubuntu (Canonical), Fedora (Red Hat) and openSUSE, the development cycle is likely to be faster and more responsive, and the release cycle is not determined by some fixed, pre-determined interval or the needs and timing of some related commercial distribution.

Where do you get Solus?

ISO installation images are available on the Solus Downloads page. There are four different desktop versions available:

Solus only supports 64-bit CPUs, there are no 32-bit or PAE versions. The download page includes SHA256 checksums for each download, so be sure to verify the downloaded file before installing it. Once that has been done it can be copied to a USB drive, and then boot from that drive to run the Solus Live system.

Solus Linux 4.2 Live.

As with many (most) Linux distributions, the Live image is a complete Solus Linux system, so you can poke around, and try this out to make sure that it supports all of your hardware, and whether you like it enough to go ahead and install it on your disk drive.

Installing Solus

When you are ready to install Solus, simply click on the InstallOS icon on the Live desktop. This starts a custom installer program, which walks you through a series of screens to get the necessary information, and then actually performs the installation.

Over the years, Linux installation programs have evolved and improved to the point where they tend to be very similar in "look and feel" (well, except for Debian and Fedora), and while the Solus installer is pretty much like the others, it does have a few particularly good points.

If your Live system has an internet connection, you can tell it to determine your location on its own, using IP Geolocation data. This is a lot easier than trying to click on your exact location on a world map (Switzerland is really small, for example), or trying to guess what the installer calls your location.

Once it knows your location, the installer will make an "educated guess" about your keyboard layout, and offer you a choice of the layouts it comes up with. This is really convenient, if you don't have a standard US Ascii keyboard, it probably saves you from having to scroll through a list of all supported layouts to find the one you have.

The installer also makes an educated guess at your Timezone. If that guess is wrong, you can type the correct location into the input bar. You may need to experiment a bit to find out if your timezone is identified by city, country, timezone name or something else.

Once the location has been set, the installer starts the disk/partition process. It begins with four options:

If you choose manual partitioning, you will be taken to the Advanced Disk Configuration screen. The most important thing I want to say here is that to select a partition you have to click on the Mount Point column entry for the partition.

Unfortunately you do not get to choose the ESP (UEFI boot) partition in this screen. The Solus installer will use the first partition which has the boot and esp flags set. If you have multiple ESP partitions, the only way to get Solis to use another partition is to clear the boot and esp flags on any partitions preceding the one that you want Solus to use. Yeah, I know, that's not great. This is only an issue for the installer; once the installation is complete you can go back and set those flags on the other partitions again.

Configuration of the bootloader requires that you give a network hostname for the computer, and it only accepts lower case letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores. Bootloader installation is mandatory on UEFI systems, but optional on MBR systems.

One other important note about the ESP partition, it must have sufficient free space or you will not be able to continue past this screen. I think that "sufficient" as far as the installer is concerned must be something like 64MB (it refused to go on with 48MB free), but I can say from practical experience even that is not really enough. Solus (systemd-boot) keeps the initrd and kernel images on the ESP partition rather than in the root filesystem, and the kernel images are about 54MB each. So 64MB is probably enough free space to get through the installation, but the first time the installed system is booted it will inform you that there are updates to install, and one of those is a new kernel (the installation image contains 5.10.12, and the update is to 5.10.14), so that's another 54MB.

My freshly installed and updated system is currently using about 128MB in an ESP partition that I created only for Solus. The Solus installation guide suggests a 512MB partition, and I would say that is a pretty good idea, if you have the possibility to create and use a new one. I can also telly you from experience that if the Solus ESP partition runs out of space, things can get pretty ugly.

The final step is specifying user accounts. In my opinion this is one of the nicest parts of the Solus installer, because it is one of the very few installers that allows you to define multiple accounts during installation, and specify individually if each one is to be an administrator account.

After the first account has been given, you are taken to the account overview screen, where you can add as many more accounts as you want.

The Summary screen shows a brief recap of the information you have entered. Check this information carefully, because once you click Install, you will be asked one last time to confirm that you want to install, then the actual installation process kicks off and it starts modifying your disk there's no going back after this.

If you are planning to have a cup of coffee while the installation runs, you had better make it an espresso because the installation is amazingly fast; on my desktop system, installing from a USB3 stick, it took less than 5 minutes from clicking OK to getting the Installation Complete! screen.

Assuming that everything went smoothly, you just need to click Restart Now and your computer should reboot and come up running Solus from its own disk drive. If you are dual-booting, and Solus doesn't come up, please read the following information about the bootloader.

Solus Linux 4.2 - Budgie Desktop.

Bootloader

There are a couple of points that I think are worth mentioning related to the bootloader in Solus.

I made the initial installation of Solus on my Acer All-in-One desktop computer, which is a UEFI boot system. On UEFI systems, Solus uses the systemd-boot package for the bootloader, rather than Grub. If you are used to working with Grub (as I am) this can be rather confusing. If you are going to have Solus as the only operating system on your computer, this works just fine: if you want to dual-boot (or multi-boot) with Windows and/or other Linux distributions, things get a bit messy. For one thing, Solus recommends (assumes) that you will use the UEFI boot selector (accessed by pressing F12, or F10, or Esc, or something, depending on your computer) to choose which OS to boot, rather than a bootloader selection list.

SEE:Hiring Kit: Python developer(TechRepublic Premium)

Beyond that, trying to find the bootloader configuration files, or modifying/customizing anything that the bootloader does, feels like 40 miles of bad road to me. That's just my opinion, of course, but I have spent an awful lot of time learning about Grub configuration on both MBR and UEFI systems, and setting up multi-boot configurations on both types of systems.

I have all of my systems set up to multi-boot a variety of Linux distributions, and occasionally Windows as well. It is fairly easy to configure a grub-uefi system to boot a Solus systemd-boot installation, but it is extremely tedious, at best, to try to do it the other way around.

The second Solus installation that I did was on my (very old) Samsung N150 Plus netbook. This is an MBR boot, and Solus uses Grub2 on MBR systems, so that is all completely normal.

Solus Linux 4.2 Budgie on Samsung N150 Plus.

What's it like to use?

Here are my first impressions of working with this version of Solus, specifically with the Budgie desktop.

So far I find the desktop to be just what it claims clean, easy and lightweight. If you are used to the desktop/icon/bottom-panel menu and taskbar paradigm, you should have no trouble with Budgie at all. Modifying and customizing the desktop is simple, just right-click on the wallpaper and choose Budgie Desktop Settings. As a hint to one of the more commonly used but less obviously found options, if you want to auto-hide the bottom panel, go to Bottom Panel at the left of the window, and then change to Settings at the top of the window.

It is reasonably complete, without being overloaded with packages that are not widely used. The base installation includes things like Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice and audio/video media players (exactly which media players depends on the desktop you choose). Things like Gimp, other web browsers and such are available through the Software Center utility.

SEE: Hands-On: Adventures with Ubuntu Linux on the Raspberry Pi 4

I use two displays on my desktop system. Like most current Linux systems, Solus found and configured both displays as an extended desktop. If you want something other than that, go to Settings / Display for options on mode (extended, mirror or single), relative location and orientation, resolution and scale.

On the Samsung N150 Plus, with an Intel Atom N450 CPU, 2GB of memory and a 1024x600 display, Solus still works quite well. It is slower, obviously, but it goes along at least as well as any of the other Linux distributions I have installed. The really good news (at least for me) on this system is that the i3 desktop packages are included in the Software Center. I have installed those, and so far it seems to work very well, and of course performs better than Budgie on this limited system.

Summary

I found Solus to be easy and fast to install, and very pleasant to use. It is clear that a lot of hard work has gone into this distribution choosing to build and maintain an independent distribution rather than a derivative of one of the well-known major distributions is a brave decision. I think the result is very impressive. The operating system and major applications are all right up to date, and everything has worked very well for me. I am likely to pay a lot more attention to Solus on my computers in the future.

See more here:
Hands-On with Solus Linux 4.2: Fast to install, and very pleasant to use - ZDNet

SPOTcon 2021 is the latest digital conference for developers from around the world to meet, engage with, and learn about solutions that drive leading-edge transformation in application development. As Scout APMs first conference, we are focused on creating the best community event for developers by offering informative sessions presented by industry-leading experts. To keep our promise to this mission, we are excited to announce the speakers for SPOTcon 2021.

Yukihiro Matz Matsumoto, Creator of the Ruby Programming Language - Keynote Speaker

Matz is a Japanese computer scientist and software programmer best known as the chief designer of the Ruby programming language. Matz released the first version of the Ruby programming language in 1995 and still leads the development of the language's reference implementation, MRI (for Matz's Ruby Interpreter). He has also worked on several open-source products, including cmail, the emacs-based mail user agent, written in emacs lisp.

Kerri Miller, GitLab - Headline Speaker

Kerri Miller is a Senior Software Engineer at GitLab with over 20 years of development experience. Kerri is an experienced developer and has led a variety of projects on scales ranging from corner store websites to large national brands at "Internet scale". With years of programming, design, and small team management experience, Kerris contributions bridge the gap between the hard demands of technology and the soft desires of business and art.

Ken Mugrage, ThoughtWorks - Headline Speaker

Ken is the Principal Technologist for the Office of the CTO at ThoughtWorks. Ken has nearly 3 decades in the industry and has contributed to the success of multiple conferences. In his current role with ThoughtWorks, Ken is working on helping define and communicate global technical strategy, primarily in emerging technology. Ken has a passion for new tech, especially in the areas of platform and ecosystem enabling technologies such as 5g, IOT, edge computing, and similar.

Gabi Ferrara, Google Cloud - Headline Speaker

Gabi is a Developer Advocate for Google Cloud, solving data problems across a diverse range of storage engines and technologies. Gabis mission is to make database development not only a task achievable for DBAs but for the everyday developer. Having 10 years of software development experience, she is an expert in simplifying complex systems and believes abstractions are best when they can be understood in a real-life example.

Deepthi Goguri, Intone Networks Inc. - Headline Speaker

Deepthi a SQL Server Database Administrator with 7 years of experience in Administering SQL Servers. She is a Microsoft certified trainer and Microsoft certified professional with an Associate and Expert level Certification on Data Management and Analytics. She is also a Blogger for DBANuggets.com

Evan Smith, Solvemate - Headline Speaker

Evan Smith is a Site Reliability Engineer with the remote German company Solvemate and is responsible for managing the infrastructure, CI/CD, incident response and monitoring, as well as promoting a culture of kindness and learning. He's previously spoken for college societies, private company functions and at SRECon on topics such as web security, SRE in general and capacity planning/monitoring.

Tim Davis, env0 - Headline Speaker

Tim Davis is the DevOps Advocate for env0. Prior to env0, Tim helped build the Cloud and Developer Advocacy team at VMware. His background is in Infrastructure Operations/Architecture, while always focusing on thecritical applications that run the business. While at VMware, his focus area was on DevOps Process/Procedure, andCI/CD Process/Tooling.

SPOTcon 2021 is a one-day event dedicated to performance, observability, and transformative insight, and officially kicks off on March 26, 2021.

This free virtual event is dedicated to the innovation driven by Open Source collaboration, and Scout APM is proud to support the communities that make so many of our own projects possible. In addition to showcasing work from a diverse set of Open Source contributors, Scout APM is committed to donating $5 to an Open Source foundation for every attendee registered by February 28.

Register now to secure your free seat

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Free Early Bird Registration for SPOTcon 2021 Now Open - Laravel News

Swift, the language Apple launched as a dead-simple alternative to Objective-C, has become quite robust. Swift is also core to Apples main objective for its various platforms: unified apps and services.

Today, Apple has five distinct platforms: iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS. If the rumor mill churns out some truth, it may soon be joined by a sixth, dubbed rOS, aimed at augmented (and maybe virtual) reality.

Apples latest efforts with Swift and its developer community have centered on bridging the gap between those various platforms with simpler design, development, and distribution options. The most notable of these efforts, Catalyst, allows developers to write a single iPadOS app and deploy it to the Mac. SwiftUI is Apples stab at a proper framework for designing and developing simple apps and user interfaces.

None of what Apple has done so far encompasses all its platforms. But its easy to see how each step forward and tool introduced could bring that unified vision to life. A simple flip of the switch could bring iOS apps to the Mac via Catalyst, for example. Its clearly Apples long-term goalbut is it possible? Microsoft failed miserably at its Unified Windows Platform, after all.

Rather than speculate, we asked experts for their take on how Swift is (or isnt) helping Apple achieve a more unified platform.

Dawid Karczewski, CTO at Ideamotive, thinks Apples support matters:

Swift is a first-party Apple technology, so itll always have first-class support. Developers can write an app in Swift for every piece of Apple hardware, spanning across not only notebooks and desktops, but also watches, TV boxes, smartphones, and tablets. Theres simply no better technology available for Apple devices. Xcode and Swift support every new Apple device from day 0, including new M1 Macs.

Karczewskis comments underscore Apples first step in its process: making Swift available to all platforms and supporting it directly in Xcode. Though you cant quite port a watchOS app directly to Apple TV yet, Apples support and dedication to Swift as its next-gen language is significant. Because Swift is available for all Apple platforms, creating an app with centrally supported libraries and frameworks for myriad platforms is far easier.

As naming conventions go, Catalyst is a bit on-the-nose, but it fits because it was the catalyst for the death of an old Apple development platform.

With Catalyst, developers are able totake an iPadOS app and click a few items in Xcode to make it available to macOS. (Of course, thats an oversimplification, because some apps will require more tooling, but it really is that easy for many apps.)

As we mentioned in 2019 whenCatalyst launched at WWDC, Catalyst is killing AppKit, the long-standing development platform for macOS. This was step two in Apples process: Knock down significant internal barriers to a future for cross-platform apps.

Adam Fingerman, CEO at ArcTouch, tells Dice: We believe the Catalyst project is a great initiative. Historically speaking, building apps for the Mac has always required very specific knowledge of the design patterns that were specific for that platform. Many iOS developers were not versed in macOS developmentas they were originally attracted to the Apple platforms through their iPhone, and not their Mac.

With Catalyst, Apple opened up a door for iOS engineers throughout the world to build apps following iOS patterns into the Mac with one consolidated codebase developed in Swift. This simplifies the development process and creates more financial opportunities to support the Mac with their products, with minimal investment. We expect many apps that were previously iOS-only to be made available on the Mac.

Karczewski adds: Its not perfect, but it allows running iPadOS apps on macOS desktops and notebooks. It basically means that, by using Swift, you dont even have to write separate apps for each device, you can write one app that covers almost every Apple device made and will run well on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and tvOS. Only watchOS needs a different approach, but its quite understandable due to how small the watch screen is. Furthermore, new M1 Macs allow running native iOS apps that dont use Catalyst.

(We should note Apples support of iOS apps on Mac is, to date, unclear. Some have beensuccessful sideloading iPhone apps toM1 Macs, but Apples official stance is the Mac will only run iPadOS apps. Speculation is that WWDC 2021 will see Catalyst opened up to iOS apps.)

When considering the digital world at-large, Apples slice of the pie is thin. To engage more interest and support, Swift has to venture outside its sandboxeven beyond the confines of Apples famed walled garden.

This is step three in Apples process: let others play with Swift. In 2020,Bear Cahill, Lead Mobile Developer and President at Brainwash,pointed out to Dice:Despite being open-source and cross-platform, Swift doesnt have a well-known presence nor many supported IDEs. Indeed, popular IDEs like VSCode dont officially or directly support Swift. Swift is still very Apple in nature.

But Swift now supports both Linux and Windows, which should help. Fingerman adds: Swift is already being supported on macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS, Linux and Windows, and there is some interest in using Swift now for server side development, as well as scripting. Being available in all platforms directly enables building software in Swift and potentially making it available universally with specific customizations per platform. Windows and Linux support still have long ways to go but we see Swift potentially having a great adoption by developers due to it.

Finally, step four: make it easy to build great apps.

When Karczewski said, only watchOS needs a different approach, but its quite understandable due to how small the watch screen is, he also made the point that developing for each of Apples platforms takes bespoke work. This isnt exactly theunifiedendeavor it should be.

But if we examine the state of Apples various platforms in 2021particularly with macOS Big Sur and iOS widgetswe see many overlapping design elements. Its all contextual andsquircle-y, with calls-to-action. This fits and scales to every screen, from your iMac to your Apple Watch. Squircles, contextual widgets, and calls to action are likely what we can expect with Apples augmented reality platform, as well.

SwiftUI is how Apple envisions well all design and develop the cross-platform apps of the future, and theres good reason to believe itll work. Famed Udemy instructor and founder of the London App BreweryDr. Angela Yutells Dice: With so much fragmentation in the device landscape, mobile developers have been asking for a much simpler and more intuitive way of building apps that can scale across all Apple devices. This is why SwiftUI has entered the scene with features such as drag-and-drop code creation, vertical-horizontal-Z axis stack, reusable UI components, and the ability to build across Apple platforms.

Last year, Yu added, saw the popularity of declarative programming skyrocket, mostly thanks to the rise of React, one of the most popular front-end frameworks used today. With Apple entering SwiftUI into the ring, were moving further into the declarative world for mobile development. Hopefully, with continued investment and development into SwiftUI, it will become a more enjoyable way of creating iOS apps and adopted by the next generation of iOS developers. The simpler syntax and more straightforward state management will likely encourage more people to pick up Swift and iOS development.

In 2019,Dice pointed out,Developers feel Catalyst is best for porting simple apps, and SwiftUI is great for creating new apps. This is still accurate. Well add that, in 2021, SwiftUI is unfinished; developers waffle between praising its ease of use and bemoaning its befuddling roadblocks. But all Apples efforts show promise.

Apples last brilliant trick is that its not actually created a single platform, which is what messed up Microsofts attempts at a universal app ecosystem (too unwieldy and confusing for developers). Rather, its unifying the development process for all its unique platforms behind SwiftUI and Catalyst within Xcode. Other efforts, such as Windows, Linux, and web support, will be add-ons to core app functionality for Apple platforms, while also making Swift more approachable to more developers.

Viewed with a broader lens, its all slow-rising genius on Apples part. Swift is first-class for iOS, AppKit has all but been deprecated in favor of Catalyst, SwiftUI is incredibly easy to use, support outside Apples core platforms is growing, and its design language across platforms is suddenly much more unified. Apple isntaskingdevelopers to create apps that must work on every platform, its simply making it hardnotto want to do so.

Moreover, its reasonable to assume that SwiftUI and Catalyst will one day have components for porting apps to other platforms, making Xcode an IDE of choice. The real coup de grace may be offering the ability to port Mac apps to Windows, or iOS apps to Android, all using Catalyst, SwiftUI, and a Swift-for-Linux backend. Perhaps one day.

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4 Ways Swift is Helping Apple Achieve a Truly Unified Ecosystem - Dice Insights

In every career, some skills will land you a better job than others and developers are no exception. According to IBM, there is one ability that will make a real difference in the interview room: developers who can create the open-source technologies that underpin the cloud are by far the ones most likely to get a call-back.

New research published by the company shows that developers who can boast skills in open-source cloud technologies are likely to have higher wages and more professional opportunities. Instead of focusing on capabilities that are related to a specific vendor's cloud, therefore, IBM recommends that developers start building skills around the open-source software that is used to run those clouds.

SEE: Hiring Kit: Computer Hardware Engineer (TechRepublic Premium)

Big Blue commissioned a survey that was carried out last year by O'Reilly Media among over 3,400 developers, and technology managers across different industries and companies large and small. The findings were clear: over two-thirds of respondents reported preferring skills related to the cloud's underlying open-source technologies, while only 36% preferred skills related to a specific cloud platform.

New research published by the company shows that developers who can boast skills in open-source cloud technologies are likely to have higher wages and more professional opportunities.

In fact, knowledge of proprietary software seems to have taken a backseat compared to open-source technologies. More than nine in ten (94%) of respondents rated open-source software skills as equal or better to proprietary software; and the majority of developers surveyed (54%) reported that learning cloud-computing skills specific to a single cloud provider limits their professional growth.

The past two decades have seen cloud technologies and open-source software grow in tandem, and this is partly because the two technologies complement each other well. Businesses tend to steer away from the risk of vendor lock-in, and have, therefore, increasingly turned to multi-cloud or hybrid cloud services. In many cases, it makes a lot more sense to rely on open-source software that can run everywhere instead of on a single vendor's proprietary tools.

A previous study published by IBM found that a typical enterprise uses nearly eight clouds from multiple vendors, andanticipates that hybrid cloud adoptionwill grow by 47% in the next three years; and most companies will adopt an open cloud approach, based on open-source technologies, to create a flexible IT infrastructure.

In fact, as IBM noted, almost all cloud platforms are now leveraging open-source technologies in one way or the other. For example, Kubernetes, a Google-designed open-source container orchestration system, already underpins most cloud services, including IBM's own OpenShift platform, whichthe company developed alongside Red Hat.

Nearly all of the companies represented in IBM's latest survey reported using open-source software in some aspect of their operations; and 70% of respondents specifically said that they prefer cloud providers based on open source. "These findings all point to one thing," said IBMin a blog post summarizing the report. "Open source skills are in demand. Developing skills in open-source software that supports cloud technologies will do the most to advance your career.

"Whether you're a solo developer, work for a start-up, or a large enterprise, contributing to an open-source community will help you achieve your professional and business goals."

SEE:Developer: Rust programming language is being used for bigger projects

The conclusion falls in line with the findings of a recent study by the Linux Foundation, which found that hiring managersare 70% more likely to hire a professionalwith knowledge of open cloud technologies. At the same time, the same report showed that 93% of respondents were struggling to find sufficient talent with open-source skills.

Mastering open-source tools and programming libraries can add a lot of value to a developers' CV, therefore. Among the most important tools to add to developers' skillset, Linux featured prominently, with an overwhelming 95% of developers saying they considered the technology to be important to their career; but the understanding of containers and databases also ranked high.

IBM's latest research comes in the midst of increasing interest in open-source software, and a desire to tap the technology to create value. Not-for-profit think tank the OpenForum Europe recently found that the open-source ecosystemwas contributing up to 95 billion ($113.7 billion) per year to the EU's GDP; and that even a marginal increase of activity could boost the continent's wealth by hundreds of billions of euros.

The interest in open-source is unlikely to be waning anytime soon, therefore; for developers ready to catch that wave, the technology could open up some bright career prospects.

More here:
Developers: This is the one skill most likely to get you hired, according to IBM - ZDNet

The Ohio State University is making its popular Swift Coding and App Development certificate program available to the public. By expanding access to learners everywhere, participants gain cutting-edge skills for todays modern economy.

Additionally, the university is working with local businesses to provide workforce development opportunities for their employees through Ohios TechCred program.

In just over a year since it launched, more than 3,000 students, faculty, staff and alumni have enrolled in the certificate program, completing self-paced modules on their schedule and building valuable skills. This new, public set of courses expands the opportunity to anyone interested in learning how to code and build apps that are ready for the App Store.

Horizon Two Labs, a Columbus-based venture studio that helps launch, develop and operate technology startups, supported its employees enrollment in the courses. Chief Technology Officer Zak Dziczkowski said the courses help build the knowledge base of the Horizon Two team.

Horizon Two Labs focus is on bringing big new ideas to life. The ability to build and iterate quickly and efficiently on new ideas is a necessity at this early stage. We build a lot of consumer-facing products and the Ohio State Swift Coding coursework helps to build up our teams front-end skills, he said. Our team all strives to be polyglots. This requires constant learning and training on all aspects of the business.

The four-course series is designed to make it easy for participants to learn to code and develop apps with Swift Apples open-source programming language. They also walk away with a series of stackable certificates and real-world skills.

This coding and app development certificate program allows anyone, regardless of their background or prior knowledge with coding, the opportunity to learn a tangible, applicable digital skill that will not only provide them immediate skills to utilize and explore, but also a foundation for future learning, innovation and creativity in the digital world, said Cory Tressler, director of learning programs and Digital Flagship.

The self-paced curriculum enables participants to move through lessons on their schedule, speed through what comes easily and spend more time in areas they want to develop. Courses are fully online so lessons can be accessed and completed from anywhere. The courses are built around Apples coding curriculum and its development tool, Xcode, which is used by students and professional developers alike to create apps for Apple platforms. Xcode is available as a free download for the Mac.

Once participants have completed the courses, they can take their new skills and go on to complete Apples App Development with Swift certification as a complement to their Ohio State credential.

Ohios TechCred Program gives employers the chance to upskill current and future employees in todays tech-infused economy. Employers may submit applications to be reimbursed up to $2,000 when current or prospective employees complete the Ohio State courses.

Course details for the general public are available on the universitys ScarletCanvas platform.

Employers who would like to participate in the courses through Ohios TechCred program can find additional details on the Ohio State Digital Flagship website.

Visit link:
Ohio State offers Apple app development and coding certificate courses to the public - The Ohio State University News

When it comes to what skills developers should be learning, a recent report found organizations and technology managers value open source. According to the report, which was conducted by OReilly Media and commissioned by IBM, the increasing adoption of hybrid cloud is driving the importance of open source skills. IBM predicts hybrid cloud adoption will grow by 47% over the next three years and organizations will be using an average of six hybrid clouds.

Two significant shifts characterize computing in the past two decades: the widespread use of free and open source software (OSS), and migration to the cloud. The relationship between these trends is complex and deserves close attention. Developers need to understand the growing value of OSS in the cloud era. Mastering open source tools and programming libraries will make them valuable, even as this software is increasingly deployed on third-party cloud offerings, the report stated.

According to the report, which surveyed more than 3,400 developers and technology managers, 94% of respondents stated open-source software was equal or better than proprietary software. Seventy percent of respondents choose a cloud provider based on open source, and 65% of respondents prefer skills related to open-source technologies such as Linux, Kubernetes and Istio.

Open source becomes more valuable in a hybrid cloud world because its built on open-source technologies. In fact, almost every major cloud vendors container platform is built on Kubernetesand the containers themselves are being built with other open technologies, IBM developer advocates Willie Tejada, Todd Moore, and Chris Ferris wrote in a blog post. The skills you develop related to these technologies are transferable across the developer community and ecosystem, and of course to any proprietary cloud that you work on.

The report also found that open source contributions impress potential employers, result in better job opportunities, and result in better professional opportunities.

More:
Report finds the value in open source skills - SDTimes.com

One of the hardest lessons we had to learn in 2020 was that we need to take every opportunity available to secure our careers and be the most competitive worker around. One skill that is only going up in demand due to the mass move to online work is coding. With the enormous demand for strong, intuitive web design, coding is more than just an interesting skill, it is a key to jumpstarting your career. If you want to use the challenges of the last 12 months as an opportunity for growth, then look to The Master Learn to Code 2021 Certification Bundle and learn to be an expert coder for $34.99.

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With this bundle, you will have a lifetime to access over 1,000 lessons, giving you the time to work and learn at the pace that best suits your personal and professional growth. Taught by expert programmers like Tony Staunton, a Python development and productivity consultant, these courses will guide you into your next steps as an expert programmer.

After absorbing all the lessons this bundle has to offer, watch your new career take off, or combine it with a masterful knowledge of business analyticsand become a force of your own. The Master Learn to Code 2021 Certification Bundle is on sale now for $34.99, a discount of 98% from its normal price of over $2,000.

Prices subject to change

The rest is here:
Master Python, JavaScript, HTML, and more with this $39 coding bundle - ZDNet

In 2018, during his college days, Subhajeet Mukherjee from Kolkata realised that a lot of students were being taught computer programming through drag and drop tools.

Moreover, at a time when data security is of utmost concern, Subhajeet wanted to keep the users anonymous, anddemocratise computer science education. This was in a bidtofosterpeople at the grassroot level, and create a self-sustaining community of developers worldwide.

Founded in February 2020 in Sunnyvale, California, The Programming Foundation (TPF) focuses on providing computer science education free-of-cost, without compromising data. Theodore Rolle, a Technical Account Manager with Google Cloud Professional Services Organization joined TPF as the Secretary and Technical advisor.

Subhajeet introducing TPF at talk event organized by Write the Docs at Linkedin San Francisco in early 2020

The 24-year-old aims to create a smarter general population through The Programming Foundation, and the operating system that hes developing. He has authored two books on operating systems and given talks at HackerDojo, ACM, SF Python, and LinkedIn.He previously served as the Data Support Engineer at The Pill Club and Community Support Specialist at BetterHelp.

In fact, the non-profit platform does not require the user to log in or create an account. The lessons can easily be accessed from their main portal without giving any details about the users whereabouts.

We have an integrated interface for Operating System, Programming and Logic. Under the Operating System, topics such as Unix, Vim and Kernel are covered. Furthermore, C, Python, and object-oriented programming make up the entire programming. Likewise, Binaries and Gates account for the Logic section, says Subhajeet.

TPF is based on written instructions, interactive examples and processes. It provides volunteers with hands-on experience working together as a team by developing free and open-source tools to improve the platform.

The target audience for TPF at the moment are those who are in or have recently graduated from college/university. The main regions they focus on are Northeast India, some Northern regions of India, regions in South East Asia and Africa, and Midwestern United States.

There are no great pre-requisites to join TPF classes. The general population needs to have a base level understanding of how computers work, Subhajeet says.

The classes are designed in such a way that the domains are laid out on the Learn page itself. The categories are divided into Operating Systems, Programming and Logic. Users can go into the operating system domain, learn the concepts behind it and interact with the interface. Furthermore, were shipping interactive versions of the Programming Languages into production very soon, he says.

TPF's interactive step by step Unix Learning experience

Learners can study these concepts by directly visiting the platform which is the primary method. They dont need to download anything as its all in there in the browser. After the end of each domain, theyre asked to answer a few questions on the domain to ensure impact.

TPF is also open to taking volunteers to work at the foundation, provided they have the basic requirements for the position. Weve over 30 volunteers from the US, India, South America and Europe. Many of them are part of the technology industry while others are new to technology.

As a non-profit, TPF relies primarily on donations and grants. However, Subhajeet shares that they were fortunate enough to receive the Google Ad Grants, along with a lot of other in-kind support from leading industry technology companies in the initial stages and along the way. This helped them scale fast and gain a steady user base.

Incidentally, getting donations and grants remains their biggest challenge as well. When The Programming Foundation was launched during the pandemic, we never thought we would be able to survive till the end of 2020, but we successfully entered 2021, he shares.

While the Foundation is enabling a number of people with free programming courses, there are still a number of areas in the world that dont have internet access. How does it empower them?

TPF wants to provide them with native experiences, and achieve a singular interface as The Programming Foundations Learn section.

A screengrab of The Programming Foundation's operating system that'll run on RISC-V to democratizethe education of operating systems.

TPF is prioritising accessibility so that people who are blind or differently abled can also use the platform and operating system in the future.

Inclusion is important to us. We need more women and people from the LGBTQ community to represent technology. These are long term goals, and we have a road-map for that. Weve started to encourage the usage of Gender Neutral pronouns such as they, and them at TPF. I believe this is the first step, shares Subhajeet.

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The Programming Foundation is on a mission to make technology inclusive - YourStory

Piotr Zakrzewski is a sometime-contributor to open source projects. Hes not a regular on any one project, but more of a dabbler a self-described outsider contributor who sometimes submits pull requests to projects he enjoys using.

In fact, Zakrzewski said, many contributors to open-source projects are outsiders.

We are talking about people who usually use the project, he said. They dont work on the project directly, they just use it for something else. And they found a bug or a missing feature, and because they were passionate about it and they like open source, they decided to give it a chance and make a contribution.

But among the projects open to outside contribution, Zakrzewski found that some were a bit more open than others.

There are some projects that are very eager to accept your contributions, that are more likely to merge it, that do whatever is needed to work with you to get it merged, Zakrzewski said. And there are also some projects that are more likely to ignore them, or they just dont accept them.

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The definition of open source can be confusing. For instance, theres a difference between open-source code and code thats simply visible to the public, like code stored in public repositories on GitHub.

You can inspect all open-source code, but not all code that you can inspect is immediately open source, Zakrzewski said.

The exact definition of open source is squishy, but it generally means a project that is available to anyone to freely use.

What determines that is a license, Zakrzewski said. There are certain types of licenses, like LGPL, GPL, MIT, FreeBSD, Apache and so forth, that, if you see them, means that this project is open source.

These licenses state that projects are available for anyone to download, use and modify. For many open-source projects, theres also an open collaboration aspect where anyone can contribute pull requests into the main branch of the codebase, but thats not always the case.

There are projects that allow you to do anything you want with the code yourself fork it, modify it, redistribute it, sell it but they will not accept an outsider contribution into the main branch.

Just because something is open source, that does not necessarily mean that its open contribution, Zakrzewski said. There are projects that allow you to do anything you want with the code yourself fork it, modify it, redistribute it, sell it but they will not accept an outsider contribution into the main branch.

Open-source projects closed to outside contributions are also easy to spot, because they usually say so explicitly in the projects README file, Zakrzewski said. The real difficulty is figuring out just how open to contributions the remaining open-source, open-contribution projects really are.

The problem is this gray zone in between, Zakrzewski said. They either dont want to invest time anymore in interacting with the community, they simply cannot afford it time-wise, mostly or they just dont want to do it for another reason but they dont make it explicit. In other cases, they actually kind of would like some contributions, but theyre just very picky.

Thats not an inherent problem projects are different, and some may have characteristics that make pull requests difficult to get past review. But working on and submitting a pull request can take significant effort for developers, and Zakrzewski began to wish he knew the likelihood his suggestions would be accepted ahead of time.

I didnt know how to tell those apart for some time, and I found it a bit frustrating, he said. I felt that maybe other people find it [frustrating] too its not easy to figure out how likely the contribution is ignored or not.

At the time Zakrzewski was interested in learning to use the GraphQL programming language, so he combined his interests and built a tool that estimates the likelihood an outsiders pull request on GitHub would be accepted, called Merge Chance.

Using GitHubs documentation, Zakrzewski found APIs that gave him data from GitHub repositories, including those of some open-source projectshe had unsuccessfully tried to contribute to.

Once I fetched this data, I just calculated some very simple statistics, Zakrzewski said. How many pull requests are being merged in total, and what can I say about the people who merged them?

He classified each projects pull requests into two groups: those initiated by insider contributors and those initiated by outsider contributors. Insider contributors were considered to be people who owned repositories or belonged to organizations that owned the repositories. He then calculated the chance that a pull request has of getting approved for each project.

Zakrzewski found that most pull requests to open-source projects are accepted. So open source mostly works, he said.

It is a metric, its not necessarily a score that should be maximized.

Zakrzewski was surprised to find that bigger open-source projects are more likely than smaller ones to accept outsider pull requests. This might be because larger projects have more people who can help review outside contributions.

It is kind of counterintuitive that it is those big projects usually backed by bigger companies that are very dynamic, and they have enough people to really help you with approving your contribution, Zakrzewski said. A lot of small projects are those that are most likely to ignore you, or they just dont have the resources to accept your contributions.

Although Merge Chance calculates a percent likelihood of approval for each project, Zakrzewski said its important not to think of the number as a score.

It is a metric, its not necessarily a score that should be maximized, he said. Whether every project should aspire to have 90 percent-plus merge chance no, they shouldnt. But its still useful to know what is the merge chance, because making a contribution to the project takes a lot of effort from the contributor, and also from those who accept it.

Zakrzewski has tweaked the Merge Chance classifications to reflect feedback from developers. One adjustment affected how insider and outsider contributors are defined to better catch insiders who look like outsiders.

There are a lot of different ways that people work with GitHub, he said. Some projects are very disciplined about adding insiders, and they give them official rights those are very easy to detect. But more informal projects or just projects that are organized differently, or from smaller companies they dont always do that. Contributors or even maintainers of a project, from a GitHub perspective, dont differ at all from outsiders.

In those cases, Merge Chance is likely to give the projects inflated likelihood values, because insider contributors get counted as outsiders. After Zakrzewski set a limit on how many contributions outsiders can have before being classified as insiders, the results gave a more accurate value.

Currently, he is working on something that will filter out spam pull requests, which artificially brings down a projects Merge Chance value.

For instance, Vue.js and React are very popular open-source projects, and they experience significant amounts of daily spam contributions, Zakrzewski said. Some developers its hard to say why they do this they just open frivolous contributions like Hello World, or they change one word in the README, and the maintainers immediately close them. So that inflates the metrics a bit for some repositories.

Owners of open-source repositories who are interested in fostering more outsider contributions have also reached out to Zakrzewski about the project, in order to figure out how they can best help outsiders get involved in the community.

They are interested in how the project they contribute to looks like, he said. Lets say the product I work on accepts 60 percent. How do I feel about this? Should we maybe be more open? Should we be less critical? Or maybe its OK. Its one more metric that developers might be interested in.

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Some Open-Source Projects Are More Open Than Others - Built In

What is Linux?

If you are eager to know about Linux, the first thing you should learn is Linuxs origins to understand the concept behind this operating system. Linux is a software layer between the hardware and the software in a computer operating system. It allows you to do productive things and create custom programs on your computer. In simple words, an operating system is a medium between the software and a computer systems hardware. An operating systemallows you to store data on your storage devices like hard drives, solid-state drives, and USBs. It manages data transmission from one element to another; for example, it oversees data flow from the operating system to printers in your office or home. If you have installed a standard Windows environment such as the Microsoft Windows operating system on your computer system, the Windows operating system runs the hardware. It controls the mouse, keyboard, printers, scanners, and other accessories. You will have to install Microsoft Office, Adobe readers, pdf converters, and other software as per your needs. You will pay for each program and have them installed on your system.

Linux is the same as the Windows operating system regarding the process of controlling the hardware. It is different because it acts as a medium between the softwares instructional code and the physical device. The most significant difference is that of the software you will use in the Linux operating systems. The software will be of a different type as compared to the ones that run on Windows systems. You cannot install and run Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop on Linux environment. Linux runs different servers like web virtualization servers, Apache servers, database servers, etc.

However, Linux has several distributions that are made for personal desktop computers. These distributions are similar to macOS and Windows operating systems. They run the same type of programs like word processors, image editors, and games. These Linux distributions appear to be more targeted for the home users searching for a free system alternative.

Linux did not kick-off as an operating system or a challenger to the Windows operating system. In the start, Linux happened to be a kernel that Linus Torvalds created. Linus was a student then at the University of Helsinki. The kernel is still useful in the system. In the start, the Linux kernel was used along with the GNU operating system. You can say that the GNU system was incomplete without the kernel. A kernel is defined as an integral component of Linux.

A kernel is considered the central part of operating systems, responsible for all the interfacing of applications and hardware. There are two types of kernels in the market now, namely Unix-like kernels and Windows kernels.

Between 1991 and 1994, Linus took a step further to create the Linux operating system. He combined the GNU OS with Linux Kernel. At the start, he wanted to create an operating system that did not come free, but instead, he needed something that he could customize to fit as per his programming needs. Linux appeared to be his pet project at the start. It was like a side hustle. UNIX is different from the Linux operating system. Linus built the entire Linux system from scratch. He created Linux because he desired to build an open-source operating system for the people to use. At that time, UNIX was not open-source. People had to pay someone to use UNIX. Similarly, Microsoft was also a paid operating system. Therefore, Linux came up with the idea of an open-source operating system. He worked up the idea with his friends from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Coupled with building an open-source operating system, they needed an easy-to-use and efficient operating system to customize to suit their programming needs.

When Linus was creating the Linux operating system, he stopped working on it for a while. During that period, he made the code for the operating system public. This allowed everyone to take part in the creation of the system. Scientists and computer geeks started working on the concept as well. They changed the operating system as they deemed fit. Prominent educational institutions and companies liked the concept of this new operating system because everyone who had the source code could install Linux on his or her computer.

This is how people started creating different versions of the Linux operating system. Students from the University of California, Berkeley, tried to start building a version. People from China and people with different occupations also started creating versions to suit their personal needs. The availability of the source code to the public facilitated the creation of distros or distributions. Distributions are different versions of Linux that people have been creating over time. Linux has different versions, and its many distributions offer it several capabilities. When you have to decide which Linux distribution you need to use, you have to decide what you want your computer to do with Linux. I will explain it by running an analogy with the Windows operating system. When you install Microsoft Windows operating system on our computer, every distribution is built to do things in a particular manner. There is a version of Linux known as Trustix. Linux Trustix is labeled as the most secure Linux operating system in the market. It is simply a brick. You set up Linux Trustix, and no one will be able to hack it until you do something foolish. There will be no sneaking in by viruses. It is a secure and reliable server. However, you have to decide that you really need a secure server before picking up the source code and installing the system.

Now that you have learned about the origins of Linux and its distributions, it is time to move forward to the concept of open-source licensing, which makes Linux different from other operating systems. Linux has open-source licensing. You might have heard of open-source software at some point in your life. Open source does not mean that your software is free to use. If you treat all open-source software as free, you will be on the verge of jeopardizing your programming career and company as well. This isnt good; therefore, we must discuss open-source software to clear the air. Open-source software means that whenever programmers write a code for a software, they give you the code to see how he or she wrote the program in the first place. It does not mean that the program is free to use. There are different ways by which open-source vendors are paid. The first way is through the Open Source model, where they give off their software free of cost. However, when you require support or training for the software, they will charge you a certain amount. For example, you can download the MySQL server for the Linux server. You find it useful and powerful as well. Even though you have learned the MySQL programs different intricacies, you may need to know or need support with some software aspects. Therefore, you approach the software developer, ask for training or help with the software. At this point, you have to pay the programmer or developer for his or her development efforts.

The second way by which developers are paid is through a non-commercial open-source license. This is where most people get into trouble. You have to pay them to use them.If you want a software for home use, there is no problem. Once you use it to connect to a business server, you own a licensing fee to use that software for commercial use. The worst thing is that licensing fees may be over $8,000. It can be that much expensive in some cases. Therefore, it is wise to stay conscious of how you may use the software for non-commercial, personal, or commercial purposes.

The third way by which open-source software programmers are paid is through a paid open-source license. Some of you might ask how software can be on the open-source license if it happens to be a paid software. A paid software is called open-source if the programmer of the software allows you to see their code.

The fourth way by which these programmers earn money is by recurring license fees for the open-source software. This is like most of the open license programs. They will let you download and test their software free of charge. They would let you see its code as well so that you know how the software works. However, if you want to have the softwares legal rights, you will have to pay a yearly or monthly fee for that. This is much cheaper than a one-minute licensing fee that is too much expensive.

The shell of any operating system is the screen by which you interact with that system. Take the example of Microsoft Windows. The Windows shell is its graphical user interface where you can see the mouse pointer at work. You use a pointer to navigate the screen and click on different desktop elements such as icons and folders.

The shell is generally of two types, the first being the graphical user interface (GUI) and the second being the line user interface (LUI). The LUI appears to be as DOS prompts. If you ever have the opportunity to work on the Microsoft DOS prompt, you should know that the screen you see and work on is the line user interface (LUI). It is a black-and-white screen. You see a bunch of commands on the screen to get a specific output from your computer.

Linux is a technical operating system, which is why programmers, engineers, and geeks prefer it. They like to use this line user interface because it facilitates them in programming. When you install Linux, you can install the Linux graphical user interface on your system, just like Windows. Here, you can use a mouse to click on things or access a line user interface more suitable for programmers. However, the line user interface on Linux works on a bunch of commands.

It would help if you kept in mind that the line user interface on Linux is more robust than the graphical user interface (GUI). However, when you install Linux with a line user interface for the Linux shell, you see a prompt instead of a mouse. If you do not know what a command prompt is or what you will do with it, you will most likely be stuck. To help you out, I will give functional examples of Linux commands and shell scripts.

The reason you should learn about the Linux operating system is the functionality of the server. The Linux operating system is incredibly rock-solid. Once you have installed the Linux operating system and once you have gone through the quirks and set up the configurations, a Linux operating system will run without overheating and dying in the middle of working. It would run on end. Once you have installed the Linux operating system correctly, it has the power to run for a hundred and fifty days without shutting down.

The Linux operating system is unlike Windows because you have to reboot it weekly to avoid certain losses of memory. If you have configured it correctly, the Linux operating system would run and do the job with the least concern about the circumstances. There will be lithe to no operational problems when you install a Linux operating system on your computer.

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The Origin of Linux and Reasons to use Linux - Technotification