For many people, the release of Firefox 29 unto the market signified a symbolic death of Mozilla’s flagship product, the Firefox browser. The specific edition came out with looks barely indistinguishable from Chrome, and with a big drop in UI productivity. As a result, a large number of Firefox users started prowling the Web, searching for alternatives. In this article, I’ll try to provide some, without linking to my rather R-rated review of Firefox 29 and the tutorial on how to transform it into a usable application. You can search for those, if you like. We will be focusing entirely… Continue Reading

October 31 is supposedly supposed to be a frightening date, especially when it falls on Friday. Go figure. But no need for that. In fact, it’s a happy date, because we are going to continue our Windows to Linux migration saga with a brand new chapter, and this one discusses the delicate topic of mail clients. I have never given a proper overview of this subject before, like ever, so this is a fantastic debut. More specifically, we will discuss a handful of mail client software offerings available on a typical Linux distribution, talk briefly about how to set them… Continue Reading

Our tutorials on Windows to Linux migrations are slowly getting progressively more complex. We started with the office applications, a well familiar field, continued with media codecs and software, and finished with the third article, which covered the gaming side. Now, we will jump into the realm of drivers and devices. But there’s more. Unlike the previous three guides, in this one, I am going to show you not just how easy the transition is, and how successful you can be when you follow all the steps, I am also going to demonstrate failure. Not always is the migration simple… Continue Reading

Let’s have a short break from the more tutorialesque side of articles on Windows to Linux migration. Only not quite. We will remain in the realm of this delicate subject, but rather than discussing specific topics, like mail, office and others, we will generalize. In other words, should a friend ask you, what software they can run in Linux, you will point them here. The idea is not just to list software they can have when moving to a new operating system. It’s about providing the exact same functionality that they used to have. Satisfying their needs so they will… Continue Reading

The third part of our migration slash conversion adventure takes us into the realm of gaming. Alongside Office really, this is the big reason why so many people still keep Windows around, myself included. There are still a huge number of games available only for Windows, and we want to be able to play them. True, the Steam revolution happening on Linux is sending shockwaves of changes throughout the community, but we are still a couple of years away from total, seamless indifference. In order to help the bi-boot-curious people bridge the gap more easily, today, we will dabble in… Continue Reading

Welcome to the second article in the series, one which teaches the wonders of migration from Windows to Linux in small, easily digestible chunks, with step by step instructions and a plenty of great tips to get you cozily underway. In the first piece, we discussed office programs, how they can be installed and used, both from official application stores as well as manual downloads and setups. We learned how to use the Software Center in Linux Mint, and we repeated all our actions from the command line, too. Today, we will focus on multimedia programs. Namely, how to get… Continue Reading

After reading my Ultimate guide to Linux for Windows users, a handful of people emailed me their suggestions on how the guide can be extended and improved. They offered some ideas that might work in a comprehensive book, and others that fit much better as standalone articles. And that’s why we are here, to start a series of tutorials on making the Windows to Linux conversions less painful. I deliberated quite a lot on how to make this happen. Naturally, I ought to choose a single distribution, and stick with it, so that users can sort of relate to my… Continue Reading

If you have been a Linux user for some time now, then you must have come across more than one article telling you how to improve the speed and responsiveness and whatnot of your Linux distribution at home. In fact, the Web is awash with guides and tips on tuning your system to the max, offering the promise of greatness to those bold enough to redirect values into /proc. The reason why we are here, today, we few, we happy few, we band of geeks, is to discuss this delicate topic, or rather, to debunk it. Because Linux desktop tweaking… Continue Reading