There are many office application available for Linux, but very few designed for people who need to deal with many numbers, Lyx is designed to write documents with a lot of mathematics, but don’t get confused, it will handle your regular documents just as well. Among scientists LaTeX has been some sort of standard, however, it is complicated to learn and may scare newcomers, or, well, curious people. Lyx is a Qt application designed to offer mathematical capabilities (is built around LaTeX) while offering a user friendly interface and a relatively small learning curve. Lyx is also different from other… Continue Reading

As we reported earlier this week Calligra 2.4 was released. The majority of users probably don’t know what it is, the reason is a mixed of two things: A change on branding and LibreOffice. Formerly known as KOffice, Calligra is KDE’s new and shiniest suite of productivity applications. All applications are designed following the same set of guidelines such that a lot of the knowledge obtained by the user while using one of the apps is transferred to other members of the suite. Moreover, all members are coded to improve interoperability, in other words, all applications integrate with each other. Calligra is,… Continue Reading

On our first Linux Inside we not only explained the origin of and what package managers are, we made a very specific case: Linux, hand to hand with APT, was at least a decade ahead of the competition. Such a powerful advantage ought to be exploited. Muon Suite is set of applications designed to deal with APT ranging from a user friendly, and incidentally less powerful, interfaces to advanced interfaces. If any reader is uncertain about what APT is, we recommend reading our previously mentioned: Linux Inside: Package Managers. Muon Software Center As can be seen in the previous screenshot… Continue Reading

In the most popular desktop operating system applications are installed using binaries which contains everything that app needs to run. This approach has many advantages: It’s easy, people just click on it, wait for it, and that’s it. But it also has its share of problems, binaries tend to be big, since they need to contain everything, multiple apps containing the same libraries install a new one every time, and there’s little cross library use beyond what Microsoft provides. Because of its nature, there never was any need for a centralized system, because all binaries contained everything Apps needed, software… Continue Reading

Let’s talk about password management. Basically, it sucks. There’s no universal, trusted single sign-on service for everything (not really a bad thing, I think), so every user is forced to come up with some sort of password management scheme whether they want to or not. And seriously, does anyone really want to? How about remembering just one password, which opened up a database that contained the rest of your passwords instead? KeePassX to the rescue There’s one bit of software that has greatly simplified my life, at least the password-related aspects of my life, and that is KeePassX. KeePassX is… Continue Reading

People sure do like to customize things, and GNU/Linux users are no different. I want to take a look at some of the “Aftermarket Bling” you might want to add to Netrunner after installation. Each application is something I use frequently — in fact, most are among the first things I install after getting Netrunner up (the very first thing is usually any machine-specific drivers). Yakuake I’m not here to argue GUI vs. CLI (cli is better!), but no matter your preference you’ll still find yourself needing a terminal from time to time. If you like and enjoy the terminal… Continue Reading