With Linux, it is easy to customize many settings and features including appearance. Unity (one of many desktop interfaces) is no exception. Unity is the desktop interface that is maintained and developed by Canonical. Canonical uses Unity as the default interface for their popular operating system - Ubuntu. Users can easily change the theme, cursor, icons, and fonts used in Unity.

We mean, what’s really advanced about an advanced distro? Firefox and Chrome are the same, whether you’re in Linux or Windows, as is Thunderbird–and even grandma can usually make the jump from from Word to LibreOffice with little to no difficulty. When you get right down to it, the “advanced” part of a “not user-friendly” Linux usually has to do with either installation or configuration, and when did grandma ever do either? If your grandma’s like ours, she calls you up to get you to come over even to do a simple little configuration trick with her Windows machine.

What I typically look for in desktop distributions are a good graphical installation, a sane and sensible default desktop configuration that just work, and all the graphical tools that will make managing the desktop easy for all users, especially those not familiar or not willing to use the command-line.

Does this first release of Antergos meet those criteria? Read on to find out.

It's been a while since last running any Ubuntu Linux disk encryption benchmarks, but thanks to recent encryption improvements within the upstream Linux ecosystem, it's time to deliver some new Linux disk encryption benchmarks. In this article are results comparing Ubuntu 13.04 without any form of disk encryption to using the home directory encryption feature (eCryptfs-based) and full-disk encryption (using LUKS with an encrypted LVM).

Mageia 3 has finally been released after a two week delay, fixing the installation bugs of the release candidate, and bringing with it updates and refinements over Mageia 2

Hotline Miami a game we have said is coming to Linux now has in Beta form! Hotline Miami is a high-octane action game overflowing with raw brutality, hard-boiled gunplay and skull crushing close combat.

Yahoo is buying Tumblr for $1.1 billion. So let's get this straight: On one side of the table we have a big, aging Internet media company that needs to boost profits. On the other side of the table we have a blogging platform that has generate tiny revenues -- and no profits. So how exactly will Tumblr boost Yahoo's fortunes?

Joshua Kiepert, a PhD candidate from Boise University, has built an awesome 32-way cluster from Raspberry Pis. Although clusters from Pi's have been made before, and even much larger, this is still a seriously cool project.

The law of software patents took an interesting, and ultimately encouraging, turn a little more than a week ago. In the CLS Bank case, ten judges of the Federal Circuit issued five separate opinions, without any single legal theory gaining a majority. Their debate showed that the scope of the subject matter requirement for patenting software is far from settled. It also makes it more likely that the Supreme Court will speak to the issue, and get it right.

reposync is used to download an entire remote yum repository or a set of remote repositories. It will also synchronize changes in a repository with a local directory.

The Jolla smartphone was demonstrated today in an online announcement. Jolla runs on the linux-based Sailfish OS.

I'm not a fan of Tumblr, but I am a fan of freedom and WordPress, both of which are apparently now 'winning' as a side effect of this deal. While it's still unclear precisely how Yahoo's ownership may/may not affect Tumblr, users are already voting with their blogs.

The humble browser. Its main purpose, for many years, was to serve up simple HTML documents and provide information on just about any subject you could think of. In the last decade, with broadband taking over from dial-up, and net connections getting ever quicker, websites have increasingly provided applications usually restricted to the desktop. With the evolution of languages such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript helping push the limits of what could be done, we find in turn it provides new opportunities in openness and sharing. This has evolved to the point where there's really not much that can't be done or opened up online now.

A few minutes ago, Greg Kroah-Hartman proudly announced that the third maintenance release for the stable Linux 3.9 kernel series is now available for download.

Linux graphics drivers have come a long way in recent years for both the open and closed-source solutions from AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel. In this Sunday article, a Phoronix reader has shared his experiences in going from failing to setup two monitors under Linux just a few years ago with NVIDIA to now successfully driving six monitors on a single system using the AMD Linux driver.

Door Kickers is an innovative Real-Time Tactics game that puts you in charge of a SWAT team. With your help we can make this The Ultimate Swat Team Command Simulator.

At long last the third major version of Mageia, the popular community fork of Mandriva Linux, is now available. There's a lot of new stuff to Mageia 3 like a new version of RPM and updated systemd, but the distribution is still not shipping GRUB2 by default...

Zombie language gets XML, Java support IBM is giving its COBOL environment a cloudy flavour with an update to the ancient venerable and unkillable language.…

I’m already an happy customer of Ubuntu One and Dropbox, I use them for different things such as website articles on one and photo and documents on the other, but why don’t try a new service that offer 15 GB for free and a native Linux Client ?

Copy.com it’s a relatively new company that at the moment is offering the biggest cloud space for free accounts, in these days they offer 15 GB for free

Ubuntu is not a consensus-based community. Consensus communities rarely work, and I am not aware of any Open Source project that bases their work on wider consensus in the community. It would be impossible and impractical to notify our community of every decision we make, let alone try to base a decision on a majority view, but we do try to ensure that major changes are communicated to our leaders first (this is something we have been driving improvements in recently). We always need to find the right balance between transparency and JFDI, and sometimes the balance isn’t quite there, but that does not mean there is some kind of illuminati-ish scheme going on behind the scenes.

SugarCRM continues to grow fast. But is the open source alternative to Salesforce.com, Oracle Siebel and Microsoft Dynamics CRM a serious contender in the IT channel? I believe the answer remains yes. The bigger question is whether SugarCRM will remain independent, march toward an IPO, or seek a buyer over the next couple of years. Here's why.

Linux Advocates is pleased to announce Caitlyn Martin has agreed to become a regular contributing writer. Please make her welcome.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—Although Google's keynote at the I/O conference this week focused heavily on the APIs and behind-the-scenes development of the Android operating system, it looks like there's a lot more in store. This idea was especially apparent in a panel discussion today involving eleven members of the Android development team. The team sat for a forty-minute question and answer session, and while they dodged most inquiries about forthcoming features for Android, they did offer a bit of insight into what the future of Android might look like, what developers could do to help further the platform, and what they’ve learned from their journey thus far.

A few days ago, Canonical reiterated its commitment to restoring the Ubuntu "community" Web portal to front-and-center of official Ubuntu websites. At almost the same moment, news hit that the Ubuntu Technical Board has decided to discontinue the Ubuntu Brainstorm site, another part of ubuntu.com that has served in the past as a vector between developers and community members. Bad timing or cognitive dissonance? Here's a look at the details.

Mageia 3 is out. Finally. Linux Advocate Dietrich Schmitz gives a brief run-down of what's new.

The tee command is a little tool which is very useful but often overlooked. The function of tee doesnt sound very exciting, it was created for only one purpose: write STDIN to STDOUT and a file. But tee actually can do a lot for you. Basically if you want to redirect STDOUT of a program as well as printing it to the screen, tee is the right tool to use.

Linux has an ever-expanding library of thousands of free games, many of which are released under an open source license. A good selection of these titles are entertaining, highly addictive, offer captivating gameplay, and are most importantly, great fun to play. Identifying entertaining and challenging games is something that we have a passion for.

If Canonical succeeds in making Ubuntu Linux widespread on phones and tablets, it will revolutionize the role of open source software in mobile computing. But in a sense, the company has already achieved some remarkably revolutionary feats with Mir, the display server it started developing several months ago. This may sound like something only geeks can appreciate, but it could actually become a huge deal for mainstream IT.

When I wrote an article for FSM a few years ago about 3D printing it was a big topic in the open-source community but it had not yet gone fully mainstream. If there was one thing guaranteed to make 3D printing explode onto the mainstream news media it was an item about someone "printing" a gun. That got your attention, didn't it? Mine too. It's controversial of course but it might just be the beginning of a rerun of the Napster/Piratebay episodes in the 21st century - with the inevitable debate between patent-free, non-hierarchical open-source models and patent-encumbered proprietary software and hardware. Napster was a ripple. 3D printing will be a tsunami.

Ten years ago, Nick Carr said IT doesn't matter -- sort of.

The jarring headline of Carr's May 2003 article, "IT Doesn't Matter," is what many people remember, and it tends to overshadow his more thought-provoking thesis: that companies have overestimated the strategic value of IT, which is becoming ubiquitous and therefore diminishing as a source of competitive differentiation.

"The opportunities for gaining IT-based advantages are already dwindling," Carr wrote in the Harvard Business Review article. "Best practices are now quickly built into software or otherwise replicated. And as for IT-spurred industry transformations, most of the ones that are going to happen have likely already happened or are in the process of happening."