June 4th, 2011 by Aseem Kishore
Adding support for a wide range of formats, codecs and media in Linux can be a bit daunting. There are numerous playback engines (Xine, MPlayer, GStreamer, VLC), which can be confusing. And since Linux – by its very nature – favors open solutions, you often have an operating system that often doesn’t have much out-of-the-box [...]
May 23rd, 2011 by Aseem Kishore
If you’re a regular, on-the-go user of a laptop, one of your main concerns is likely battery life. The longer your device can go without needing to be recharged, the better off you are. And one of the things that drains battery life more quickly is when your computer runs its CPU at full speed. [...]
May 20th, 2011 by Aseem Kishore
There are many Linux distributions available. Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Debian, RedHat, the list goes on and on. In many cases, however, what may differentiate one distribution from another (at least for the casual user), is the desktop environment. Some distributions use GNOME, others use KDE, and many distributions aimed at older or computers with less [...]
May 17th, 2011 by Aseem Kishore
At times it becomes necessary to rename a large number of files at once. Maybe it’s because you just downloaded a batch of photos from your digital camera, or maybe you realized a lot of your MP3 files weren’t named correctly. Regardless of what and why, it can be incredibly tedious to have to rename [...]
May 16th, 2011 by Aseem Kishore
If you’re a GNOME Linux user who’s ever needed to record something – either through your computer’s built-in microphone, line-in jack, or just the sound coming through the soundcard – it can sometimes be a bit tricky. So it was nice to stumble across an option called Audio Recorder. The project (formerly known as rec-applet), [...]
May 13th, 2011 by Aseem Kishore
There is a lot to like about the Xfce desktop environment. It’s fast, responsive, very easy on system resources, and over the past few years has really matured so that it looks very nice, has a ton of themes, and even a bit of eye candy. But for Linux users switching from GNOME to Xfce, [...]
May 5th, 2011 by Aseem Kishore
If you’re a new, or even experienced Linux user, chances are pretty good that no matter how hard you try, there is always that one Windows program you need. Maybe it’s for work. Often a business will mandate a certain format for documents, and no matter how good it is, or how comfortable you might [...]
April 29th, 2011 by Aseem Kishore
In Ubuntu, thanks to the Update Manager, it is incredibly simple to keep track of available updates. The Update Manager is scheduled to start every time your computer does, and it regularly checks to see if any new pieces of installed software have been updated. If so, it automatically starts, and shows you all available [...]
April 25th, 2011 by Aseem Kishore
There are a lot of different ways to launch applications in Linux. You can use the menu system. You can use the Run Dialog. You can open a Terminal and type in the name of the program. You can open the /usr/bin/ folder and double-click on the launcher inside. You can create Panel shortcuts. For [...]
April 24th, 2011 by Aseem Kishore
Overall, elementary OS is a pretty nice operating system. It’s fast, stable, looks great, and the developers have made some interesting choices for default applications. AbiWord and Gnumeric instead of OpenOffice. Midori instead of Firefox. Three brand-new, custom applications – Postler, Dexter and Lingo – to replace your standard email, address book and dictionary. You [...]