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You often hear that Linux will only become mainstream when more proprietary software is ported to Linux. Like the two characters waiting for Godot, thousands of people are apparently waiting for the day Microsoft Office or Photoshop releases a Linux version and demolishes its free-licensed rivals. Against all reason, the expectation persists.

Over the years, I've heard both Windows users and Linux enthusiasts make the claim that professional media production on Linux is impossible. While there may be some workflows so over-engineered that legacy software is a must, I firmly believe that, with effort, using Linux for media production is doable.

Windows 7 has approached the user share numbers set by Windows XP six years ago, hinting that unless Microsoft executes its Windows 10 upgrade plans to perfection, Windows 7 will persist on devices long after its 2020 retirement.

In 2009, I wrote that KDE had the evolutionary advantage over GNOME. By that, I meant that KDE had a clear direction for future development, and was the likeliest source of desktop innovation.

Security in OSes is a fairly hot topic in our modern, connected world. We don't want unauthorized people gaining access to our systems and making our computers do terrible things. Surprisingly, OS security boils down to one simple concept: Does the user have permission to do an action? So, how does the modern OS handle granting and denying permission?

Last year, the free software community was full of debates about systemd, the system manager that replaces init, the process that boots a Linux system. Now that systemd is uneventfully running the latest releases of major distributions like Debian, Fedora, and Ubuntu, you might imagine that opposition to it is melting away -- but you'd be wrong.

These days, smartphones and tablets have all but overtaken the PC in terms of user adoption. Even those folks who own desktop PCs usually spend far more time in front of their smart phones or tablets.

Randal and Aaron are joined by Mounir Idrassi to talk about VeraCrypt. VeraCrypt is a free disk encryption software brought to you by IDRIX and is based on TrueCrypt 7.1a.

If you think data is more precious than ever, you should certainly consider its security to be a priority. And with more and more businesses working with multiple platforms, you have to be prepared to work with encryption on just about every business-ready operating system available. Including Linux. Fortunately, you have plenty of encryption-ready tools to choose from.

Whenever I'm not at home, I'm taking my ThinkPad laptop with me hat I installed Linux Mint on. While I could run a flavor of Windows on the device as well, I made the deliberate decision to install Linux on the device to discover what it has to offer.

Mandriva is no more.

Fifteen years after Sun Microsystems released the code for OpenOffice.org, most users still don't know what they have, especially in the text processor Writer. Far from being an inadequate substitute for Microsoft Word, in LibreOffice, the code's latest incarnation, Writer is so far ahead of its rival that there's no competition. You would have to compare Writer with a professional tool like FrameMaker to find a suitable comparison.

Not that many years ago, buying a new PC meant spending hundreds of dollars just for an entry level machine. Fortunately these days the barrier to entry has been greatly reduced.

Linux GNU firebrand Richard Stallman says Windows and Apple's OS X are malware, Amazon is Orwellian, and anyone who trusts the internet-of-things is an ass.

The "battle" between Windows and Linux is more of a fictional one, and it has been raging on for the past couple of decades. It wasn't really a battle, despite what each side was saying, but that will undoubtedly change when Linux clearly becomes a force to be reckoned with.

The IT reform that the United Kingdom is working on is faced with strong opposition from tech giants operating facilities and doing business in the country, with some going as far as to blackmail MPs in order to block some changes from being adopted.

Chromebooks received a lukewarm reception when Google introduced them several years ago, though in more recent times, they've grown in popularity. Education remains the primary market for Chromebooks, followed by home consumers looking for a second system. Businesses aren't all that big on Chrome OS, but even with limited contribution from the enterprise market, Chromebook sales in 2015 are expected to rise 27 percent year-over-year, Gartner says.

Linux desktop users have two main sets of utilities: KDE's and GNOME's. The GNOME utilities are found in GNOME, MATE, Cinnamon and Unity. Neither KDE nor GNOME has any objective advantage over the other, but the user experiences are so different that they could almost be two different operating systems.

Most people believe that moving from Windows to Linux isn't possible because it lacks critical software and tools they need. Perhaps in some limited instances they're right, but I believe the bigger challenge is making sure critical workflows remain intact.

New versions of Windows usually generate a new PC sales bonanza, but don't expect such a big bump with the arrival of Windows 10 due sometime this summer.