Chances are if you like Open Source and Linux you like Android, since it’s both Open Source and Linux. Quite ironically though many new Android devices, specially the very Open Source community friendly Nexus line, don’t support the USB Mass Storage Protocol, instead Android relies on MTP (Media Transfer Protocol), sadly it doesn’t quite work in Linux distros, although you may get MTP to work you’ll get transfer speeds of around 5 Kb/s or 17 minutes to transfer a 5 Mb MP3 (if you’re in this kind of situation, of either not being able to transfer anything or transfers taking… Continue Reading

After 3 years Microsoft is ready, or so they say but Intel disagrees, to launch their new operating system. The old proverb goes keep your friends close but your enemies closer, so while Windows 8 isn’t literally an enemy it indeed is the competition, since most computers are sold with Windows included you need to be able to convince some of those users (normally relatively knowledgeable ones) to try, install and replace Windows with, what some of us believe, is a better alternative. So it’s always important to know what’s happening in Redmond, however, more often than not changes to their… Continue Reading

For many years the consensus among “experts” (journalists) has been that Linux wouldn’t ever reach the consumer market, nor would Apple. Recently on a famous and entertaining (yet technically deprived) show On The Verge from the american website known as The Verge, Mary Jo Foley laughed at the idea that Linux could ever be relevant. This is a form of delusion, as I pretend to show in this editorial: The year of Linux has already happened, while its now Microsoft the one crawling to get its own. Surely many readers would dismiss such an assertion based on Microsoft’s share of the PC market,… Continue Reading

Plasma is KDE’s and therefore Netrunner’s desktop and workspace. I’ve explained what Plasma is and how to change it to your liking in the past. Unlike its competition KDE puts the user in charge of his or her desktop, and in the mobile age of technology, KDE should get an easy and pleasant experience for touch-input devices as well mouse pointing devices, specially when Windows 8 is coming out, and many people migrating from a Windows 8 PC will now have this feature. This is where Homerun hits the scene, developed by Aurélien Gateau and Shaun Reich, whom contribute to Gwenview… Continue Reading

A screencast explaining the advantages of repositories in Netrunner. And the similarities between this system and the now popular mobile stores. Of course, as title suggests, it’s mainly about learning how to add repositories as well as understanding how useful these are.

As we pointed out last week, Netrunner isn’t just any Linux distribution, it’s a truly web enabled experience. As such it recognizes that in the modern world most users don’t store their contacts or calendars on their local hard drives, rather this type of information is stored in the cloud. Dryland Second Edition provides the necessary tools to be useful in this new world, not only by offering ways to sync your cloud stored data with it, but rather making it as straight forward as possible. While applications like Kontact have always support this kind of integration, these features were… Continue Reading

Netrunner is not just another Linux-based distribution, it has a clear web connected vision of the future, this can be seen as soon as the cursor appears: Web Accounts, Runners-ID, Network Drives, web apps readily available on the main menu, are the first contact users will have with Netrunner. A few weeks ago we published a video on our channel showing Runners-ID, but this well designed feature not only deserves an article of its own, it deserves to be compared with some major mainstream offerings, including those of the Internet giant known as Google Inc. In the aforementioned screencast, I… Continue Reading

The new version of Netrunner is out. Dryland Second Edition has quite some new features, and comes with the following software: KDE 4.8.3, Gimp 2.8, Firefox 12, the just released Skype 4.0, Wine 1.5.3, Virtualbox 4.1.10, VLC 2.0.1, LibreOffice 3.5.2,  among many others. However, perhaps, the biggest news is Netrunner’s integration of web- and especially cloud-services. From Facebook and GMail to owncloud and Runners-ID, we’ll be checking everything about how to setting them up and squeeze them in the next days, screencasts included. You’ll get a mix of the latest Kubuntu 12.04 LTS and some new cloud integration technologies. Because Neturnner is… Continue Reading