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This article identifies the finest open source vector graphics editors. Vector editors are ideal for technical illustrations, diagramming, flowcharting, artistic illustrations, promotional posters, banners, signage, logos, typography, vehicle wraps and layout. Bitmap editors are more suitable for retouching, photo processing, photorealistic illustrations, collage, and illustrations drawn by hand with a pen tablet.

Business Process Management (BPM) continues to garner attention in organisation and enterprise architecture, bridging information technology and business. It is a holistic management approach that enhances business effectiveness and flexibility on the basis of a set of standardized IT technologies and tools.

In little over a year since the first stable version of Steam for Linux emerged, the number of Linux-supported games continues to grow at a rapid pace. Valve's digital game distribution currently hosts 376 games for Linux, with many quality commercial titles such as Shadowrun: Dragonfall, System Shock 2, and Europa Universalis IV to name-drop just a few of our favorites. With more game engines being natively ported to Linux, this trend is going to continue. For example, the CryEngine technology has recently been natively ported to Linux, so we could see ports of games like Ryse: Son of Rome and Crysis 3.

The top utility will require no introduction to experienced Linux users. It is a tiny utility that provides a dynamic real-time view of a running system, and is regarded as the standard tool for monitoring processes on a system. It helps with system administration by identifying users and processes that are hogging the system. It is also useful for non-system administrators, helping to track and kill errant processes. However, top is showing its age and there are a bunch of utilities that offer a more feature-laden alternative.

Markdown is a plain text formatting syntax created by John Gruber in 2004. It is designed to be easy-to-read and easy-to-write. Readability is at the very heart of Markdown. It offers the advantages of plain text, provides a convenient format for writing for the web, but it is not intended to be a replacement for HTML. Markdown is a writing format, not a publishing format.

Just a few home computers dominated the 8-bit market. The Commodore 64 sold about 17 million units, the ZX Spectrum had over 24,000 software titles released, about 80% of British schools had a BBC microcomputer, and the Amstrad CPC sold about 3 million units.

The life of Twitter clients can be rather brief. Unfortunately some of our favourite clients have bitten the dust. Tweetdeck was an excellent Linux desktop client. Support for Linux regrettably ceased, although it remains available on Chrome. Twhirl was another solid desktop Abode AIR powered client that is no more. We were also downhearted to learn that the developer of Hotot has ceased development of his cracking client last month.

There is a very interesting project underway to recreate the ZX Spectrum and more. The Bluetooth ZX Spectrum has been successfully crowdfunded, and it is due to go on sale in September 2014. If you want to go back to the 1980s - to the wonderful era of 8-bit gaming, you can instead try one of the many ZX Spectrum emulators.

Bitcoin is a decentralized peer-to-peer payment system and digital currency that is powered by its users with no central authority, central server or middlemen. Instead, managing transactions and issuing money are carried out collectively by the network. Bitcoin is controlled by all Bitcoin users around the world.

To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 5 highly promising open source IDEs. They are all in a fairly early stage of development, but are making real strides to become polished environments. They also have in common the fact that they run on Linux, Windows and OS X.

The idiom 'don't judge a book by its cover' can be extended to 'don't judge a computer game by its graphics'. Whilst many of the games featured in this article have unremarkable graphics, they have many redeeming qualities, including challenging gameplay, and stretching the brain.

LaTeX is a document preparation system and document markup language for high-quality typesetting. The system was originally developed by Leslie Lamport in the early 1980s. LaTeX is based on Donald E. Knuth's TeX typesetting language. Lamport says that LaTeX “represents a balance between functionality and ease of use”.

The open source community plays an important role in the social networking space. It helps individuals create their own social network easily. With the software featured in this article, users can take more control of their site, and help establish and maintain a connection between users of the site.

DLNA devices use Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), a collection of networking protocols that allows networked devices to discover each other's presence and share data, communications and entertainment without the need for manual setup. UPnP can be considered an extension of plug-and-play. The software featured in this article lets you stream digital media around your home network and enjoy the multmedia on a variety of UPnP compatible devices.

Listening to Pandora Radio using a web browser is not the best way to enjoy the service. Improve the experience by using a desktop client instead of a Flash enabled web browser. The operators, Pandora Media, Inc, offer the Pandora One Desktop Application which lets listeners play music from the desktop without requiring a web browser. However, the desktop application is only available for Windows and Mac users who subscribe to Pandora One. Fortunately, there are some excellent Linux clients that allow you to enjoy the Pandora service without needing a web browser or subscription.

This article highlights versatile open source software that aids cross-stitching and knot design. The software featured here helps individuals create their own charts from scratch or generate charts from imported pictures. Good quality open source software in this field is very sparse, fortunately there are still a few real gems.

Google Analytics is an excellent well known free service that lets webmasters and site owners access web analytics data.

Protecting email from unauthorized access and inspection is important particularly because the protocols that govern email do not include encryption. Email was not designed with any privacy or security in mind. The consequence of the lack of security is that email can be compromised on the sender's device, on a network, on a server, and on the recipient's device.

The spotlight usually focuses on the heavyweight Linux graphics tools such as Gimp, Shotwell, digiKam, Inkscape, and Krita. However, there are many other open source graphics tools that merit attention.

There are some top notch open source programs that offer a real alternative to OneNote. The purpose of this article is to identify our pick of the finest OneNote equivalents that run natively under Linux.