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Linux and Windows. It’s like comparing Apples and Oranges. Software can be compared, but how do you do so fairly and honestly? And what sort of presumptions should I make concerning where the reader of this article stands? I presume you are among the “rare” Linux users.

Not easy at all. Let’s start of with where I come from. I use Linux because I really prefer the stability and security of the platform. My system’s performance is better.. Hands down Linux is much better than any flavor of Windows in those three categories. But then there’s the software issue.

I’m going to compare software simply on a “Does it do the job?” and is there a Linux equivalent, or how close to equivalent they are.

In this case, the title might be a little misleading. And that is because awk is more than a command, it's a programming language in its own right. You can write awk scripts for complex operations or you can use awk from the command line. The name stands for Aho, Weinberger and Kernighan (yes, Brian Kernighan), the authors of the language, which was started in 1977, hence it shares the same Unix spirit as the other classic *nix utilities.

In my last article, I looked at some of the ways in which you can use Vimscript, Vim‘s built-in scripting language, to set up that text editor to do exactly what you want it to. Apparently you liked what you saw and asked for more, so here are some additional tips and tricks to help you get Vim to jump through the hoops of your choice, including techniques for specifying ranges to work on, accepting user input, and debugging.

In an effort to foil crackers attempts to cover their tracks by altering text-based syslogs, as well as improve the syslog process as a whole, two Red Hat developers are proposing a new binary-based tool called The Journal that could replace the syslog daemon in as early as the Fedora 17 release.

A straightforward way to save any Flash video you can watch in a browser.

Many network administrators know OpenSSL as a tool that implements Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) cryptographic protocols to secure your web surfing and email. But as we learned earlier this month, OpenSSL can do far more. With OpenSSL you can encrypt and decrypt files, verify file integrity, and see which encryption protocols and ciphers any server supports.

Icon Tasks is modified KDE 4.7 taskbar applet that comes with some of the best Unity / DockBarX features. It supports Unity quicklists, counters and progress bars, window previews with media player controls, comes with DockManager API (you can use the Docky helpers in Icon Tasks) and lots more.

ReText is a nifty text editor for those who appreciate markup systems like reStructuredText and Markdown.

The Independent Games Festival (IGF), an annual festival at the Game Developers Conference is the largest annual gathering of the indie video game industry. Linux games Minecraft, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Cobalt and Tiny and Big were finalist in last IGF with Minecraft being the grand prize winner. Amnesia and Minecraft together won 5 out of total 10 awards. Next Independent Games Festival will be held in March 2012 at San Francisco's Game Developers Conference. As many as 570 games have been submitted and many of them are our favorite Linux games. Lets have a look at these Linux games one by one.

Currently there are a few game sales going on I would like to point out to you lovely readers to enjoy.

Mario Kemper and Shutter Team proudly announced a few minutes ago that a new version of the Shutter desktop screenshot utility for Linux platforms is available for download.

The KDE team proudly announced a few minutes ago, November 24th, the first Beta release of the upcoming and renewed KDE Software Compilation 4.8 environment.

Don’t panic Ubuntu fans but your favorite desktop Linux distribution has fallen to fourth place in DistroWatch’s latest ranking. It’s obviously way too early to say whether Ubuntu, in actual use, is declining or not. However, if this is any indication of which way the wind is blowing, it’s time for Ubuntu to take notice.

One of the most anxiously-awaited Linux releases in quite some time --Linux Mint 12 -- is now available for download on the Linux Mint Mirrors worldwide According to this ZDNet article, some are hoping that this release will be the "Peacemaker" of the recent Linux desktop disputes, between Gnome 2, Gnome 3 and Ubuntu Unity.

The KDE community is proud to announce that next year's Akademy will be held in Tallinn, Estonia from the 30th of June to the 6th of July. Akademy is the annual world conference held by the KDE community to celebrate the Free Software desktop and work towards the future of KDE. Akademy 2011 in Berlin ended a few months ago. It was part of the Desktop Summit, which was a great success. Next year's Akademy awaits us in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. read more

This tutorial shows how you can set up an OpenSUSE 12.1 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest we have included a feature on updates in Plasma Active from Marco Martin. In addition, the usual list of updates: Window Thumbnail support for QML in Plasma Workspaces Mouse cursor size is now configurable, Oxygen mouse cursors (pseudo) scalable Basic routing activity added in Marble read more

One year after the Radeon and Intel drivers supported precise vblank timestamps, there's a new patch for enabling this support in the open-source NVIDIA (Nouveau) driver...

Linus Torvalds has issued a Thanksgiving Linux kernel update for those not in a food-induced coma from this American holiday. The delicacy is the Linux 3.2-rc3 kernel...

Knight talks about his gaming roots, and how it changed his life in subtle but fundamental ways.