Showing headlines posted by the_doctor

After a week of using GNOME, Eric Griffith concluded that GNOME was more usable than KDE, arranging features more intelligently and conveniently. Even a quick glance shows that he is right. In fact, considering the number of years that GNOME has focused on usability, the only surprising outcome would be if he were wrong.

The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 17.2 “Rafaela” KDE RC.

The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 17.2 “Rafaela” Xfce RC.

Ubuntu device maker System76 recently said in a blog that it will no longer pre-install Adobe Flash on all laptops and desktops. Why? Because the company deems the software a security risk. System76 is even urging its customers to get rid of Flash altogether.

This week Dmitri Popov about digiKam. digiKam is an open-source, cross-platform (Win/Linux/OS X) photo management application.

OS X is a solid operating system for those who enjoy Apple's vision of the ideal desktop. It offers access to pro-level applications that many industries rely on. Yet it isn't always the most practical operating system for the casual end user. In fact, in some cases, it's completely overkill.

These days, the desktop OSes grabbing headlines have, for the most part, left the traditional desktop behind in favor of what's often referred to as a "shell." Typically, such an arrangement offers a search-based interface. In the Linux world, the GNOME project and Ubuntu's Unity desktop interfaces both take this approach.

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.