I would like to apologize in advance. This article is going to feature screenshots taken on a Windows 7 machine only, which might strike you as odd, given the fact this is a Linux-related topic we are discussing here. But it is exactly why we will use Windows. Nothing like pitch black to demonstrate pure white. Or the other way around. Indeed, LibreOffice 4.2 has been officially released, and it’s a major one. This latest edition of the most popular free, open-source office suite comes with a range of new options, tons of speed improvements, a variety of fixes, and… Continue Reading

The most famous e-mail client for Linux is probably Thunderbird, a powerful customizable client with support for numerous extensions. Geary is the new kid on the block, written entirely using Vala, instead of a power user heaven it attempts to be as simple as possible. Following GNOME’s philosophy. Why would anyone choose Geary over Thunderbird? Some may think the only good reason would be if you happen to appreciate really lightweight and minimalistic applications. There’s more to it than that. Easy to setup Setting up a Geary is as simple as it can possibly get. If you entered your name… Continue Reading

Soon Microsoft will end support for its aging Windows XP. I’m sure most readers are baffled, rightly so, by the idea that people would still choose to use it. Yet is second in number of users: According to Net Marketshare almost 30% of computers still run XP. The real number is likely even higher as it seems reasonable to expect many machines running XP don’t connect or connect as often the web as do machines running modern operating systems. This presents what is perhaps a unique opportunity to push Linux into mass adoption. Moreover, there’re many incentives that promote governments as… Continue Reading

A couple of weeks ago we checked some of Linux best emulators for the so called old-school gamers or retrogamers. The article was partially motivated by the hype produced by OpenEmu, which is a pretty open source front-end for a variety of emulators for Mac OS X (but is functionally limited in some ways). Is there something like OpenEmu for Linux? Kinda. While not as pretty there’s a very good multi-emulator front-end. Libretro Libretro is an opensource API to which any emulator (called “cores”) can plug into. Then front-ends can plug to libretro and access all the different cores available…. Continue Reading

Text is the bread and bacon of pretty much every digital creation. Games, software or just pure prose, they all start as innocent words, text, written onto a blank canvas of pixels. Whether you’re talking about your website, your summer project or maybe notes, you should keep a text editor handy. Which one? Well, let’s have a little competition. Or at least, an all-out melee. The only war more fierce, more longer lasting than the famous Thirty Years’ War is the war of the Linux text editor, famously started back in the golden days of vi and emacs. But it… Continue Reading

A few days back, we reminisced on how KDE changed from version 3.5 into version 4.0, and, in that a great social split was created in the Linux community. The Trinity Desktop Environment project was created to address the gap, and a new desktop was born. Sort of like MATE. Today, we will talk about Razor-qt, a desktop born with a different mission statement. It does not come to satisfy our emotional needs; instead, it is supposed to be fast and light, while being based on the Qt technologies. In a sense, this makes Razor-qt somewhat similar to LXDE. Once… Continue Reading

If you  like gaming Linux is not yet the best option, most new triple A games aren’t released for it. Indie games, on the other hand, are being ported and released to Linux more and more often, and the trend will undoubtedly continue. Steam for Linux (which ships installed with Netrunner) and SteamOS have a big chance at fixing this. What doesn’t need fixing is the availability of top notch emulators. Last month an open source “emulator” was released for Mac OS X, it’s main characteristics are that it has a pretty user interface, you can run games from many different systems and… Continue Reading

Every time someone dares to mention Linux suffers from some unnecessary fragmentation, someone eventually appears claiming Linux is all about choice. “Choice is what makes Linux better” or any number of equivalent statements. We could even dare to formulate Godwin’s law open source analogue: As an online discussion involving Linux grows longer, the probability of someone stating Linux is all about choice approaches 1. Let’s start by dissipating a common misconception. Freedom and choice are not synonyms A slave given two choices for who will become his master isn’t more free than a slave with a single choice. When the FOSS… Continue Reading