Free Software

The other day I noticed that KDE UserBase has a new look. For those of you unfamiliar with KDE, it is a free and open source desktop environment, development platform, and application suite, primarily for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems.  Portions of KDE are also available for Mac OS X and Windows. KDE UserBase [...]

NetworkWorld has an interesting take on Oracle’s announcement of their “new” Linux kernel, which supposedly has amazing new features not found in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), which is, otherwise, the underlying source code for their own Unbreakable Linux. The truth, according to the article, is that Oracle is still using RHEL for the other [...]

KDE 4.5 should be released this week.  This is my preview of the latest software compilation of the free and open source desktop environment. When KDE 4.0 was released, it was clear that it was not finished and not ready for production. By version 4.2, the completely redesigned and recoded desktop environment was starting to [...]

Basket Note Pads is a multipurpose note-taking application for KDE. Business people can use it to keep track of important tasks and notes. Writers can use it to organize their thoughts. Students can use it for note taking. And generally anyone can use it as a virtual paste bin or clip drawer. Basket was one [...]

I have an EeePC 1201n that has a pretty descent graphics processor (Nvidia Ion), but I was still noticing a little bit of sluggishness with KDE’s KWin desktop effects enabled.  Things like minimizing or switching desktops produced minor little hiccups.  Overall, it was still fast, but it was enough to make me try some different settings. I [...]

HTML5 video will hopefully soon replace Flash Player as the video streaming method of choice for websites.  YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, and others are currently providing beta examples of their future HTML5 video players.  While these demos are OK, they do not really showcase how beautifully seamless the experience can be. SublimeVideo does just that.  It [...]

I am way behind in posting my articles. I have been very busy working on the final projects in the final semester of my degree. So, here is a quick run-down of my latest writing. Miniaturize Your Photos With TiltShift Generator How to Install QtCurve in KDE How to Install OpenOffice.org 3.2 in Ubuntu 9.10 [...]

Just a quick note. I discovered that the Ubuntu Jaunty (9.04) version of sun-java6 provided in one of their updates is a higher version than the base version provided in Karmic (9.10). This produces installation errors if you try to add any additional Java packages. The solution is to remove sun-java6 and its associated components [...]

KDE 4.4 Beta 1 has been released, and the talk of the town is the new “tabbed windows” feature. They completely slipped this one past me. I didn’t even know anyone was working on it. Anyway, it is exactly what the name implies: the ability to have multiple windows all tabbed in one window. You [...]

Since its creation, over fifteen years ago, free software and open source advocates have longed for the day when masses of people around the world would adopt GNU/Linux or Linux (depending on who you ask). There is little doubt that the past five years have seen tremendous strides in Linux desktop adoption. Some hardware vendors, [...]