If you follow the Linux community there is no doubt you frequent the DistroWatch website. For those of you who have never heard of DistroWatch, Wikipedia defines it well by saying: DistroWatch is a popular website which provides news, popularity rankings, and other general information about various Linux distributions as well as other free software/open-source…read more

Earlier today my Google Reader fed me some news about Zonbu, the new “$99 Linux PC”. The first thing I should point out about Zonbu is that in order to buy one for $99 you must sign a 2-year contract ($249 without). But what would a contract be without monthly payments? Well, Zonbu has 3…read more

  Many times since the inception of Shift+Backspace, friends have approached me asking what open-source software they should be using and where they can get it. Usually I toss out names such as FireFox, VLC, Nvu, and Filezilla. This prompted me to start compiling a list of open-source software I regularly use along with descriptions…read more

After posting the article on Ubuntu coming to mobile devices I finally remembered that I have been using open-source firmware on my iPod (5th generation) for the last few months. What exactly does this mean? Essentially, I have replaced the existing closed-source Apple firmware with the Rockbox open-source (and multi-platform) firmware. Rockbox allows the user…read more

It’s official! Dell has picked Ubuntu 7.04 as their Linux distribution of choice for offering an alternative to Windows with select computers. It appears as though Ubuntu will be offered and supported by Dell on a few offerings including both desktops and laptops. A Dell spokesman told CRNtech: “We are finalizing some final details and…read more

I apologize for the lack of activity on the site the last few days. As some of you may know, the latest installment of Ubuntu was released today (April 19th). However, on the 16th the release candidate version was released and I jumped on this opportunity to get Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn installed on my…read more

Here we go! The first open-source program recommendation. Have you ever had the problem where you open a media file in Windows Media Player and you see it looking for something called a codec but then it either fails to find one and the video does not play or the audio begins to play with…read more

Ubuntu Let’s start this off with an introduction of Ubuntu. Have you ever heard of the linux-based operating system? Well, Ubuntu is one of the many thousands of distributions available free-of-charge to anyone who wishes to use it. According to distrowatch.com, Ubuntu is still the most used distribution used by both enthusiasts and general users….read more

Every so often I come across pages on the web that sparks an interest and further research. After a couple of months of running Shift+Backspace, a website with a focus on free and open-source software (commonly referred as FOSS), I figured it was time to share the definition of open-source for the general reader. Now,…read more