Last week we transferred over our basic Outlook data to Thunderbird. Now we'll install a calendar, task manager, and note feature, and we'll set up auto signatures. When we're finished we'll have a robust, standards-compliant not-malware friendly, cross-platform email client.
What do Ubuntu, Mepis, Linux Mint, Knoppix, Damn Small Linux, Xandros, Gibraltar, gNewSense, 64 Studio, Nexenta, and a host of other Linux distributions have in common? They're all derived from Debian. Bruce Byfield examines the largest, most flexible, and most community-driven Linux distribution, and why it endures and prospers.
A Linux netbook plus a few essential gadgets equals lightweight, inexpensive, portable, fully-featured happiness for the business traveler. Paul Ferrill takes a look at a slim yet productive kit to keep the traveling worker productive, happy, and not bogged down.
Virtualization on the server is being hyped until we're sick of hearing about it. But virtualization on the desktop is very useful for a lot of different uses: development, making screenshots for howtos, testing, having access to applications without rebooting, and many more. Matt Hartley compares VMWare, VirtualBox, Parallels, and several other virtualization candidates, and their fitness for the desktop user.
Carla Schroder reviews the book "Wicked Cool Ruby Scripts", and answers the questions is it really wicked cool? Do you have to be a guru to use this book? What the heck is Ruby, anyway? Come inside to find out.
Bruce Byfield reports that Linus Torvalds may have switched too soon from the KDE 4 desktop because of usability problems. Less than a week after he made his off-hand comments, KDE 4.2 has been released, adding many of the customization settings that Torvalds and others complained were lacking in the KDE 4 series.
Doesn't this sound like a perfect package manager? "Nix...allows multiple versions of a package to be installed side-by-side, ensures that dependency specifications are complete, supports atomic upgrades and rollbacks, allows non-root users to install software..." Bruce Byfield takes a look at NixOS and answers the question "Is this the final answer on Linux package management?"
People have been wanting something like a netbook ever since we can remember, even way back in the last millennium. But hardware costs made them unattractive. Now we're tripping over netbooks every time we turn around, and have a wealth of attractive choices. Paul Ferrill takes the Lenovo Ideapad, loaded with SUSE Linux, for a test drive and reports his findings.
Logitech's Squeezebox Boom streams music from your PC to anywhere the Boom can find your wireless network, and it also accepts wired Ethernet. Anything you can play on your PC will probably play on the Boom. It even supports Linux. Joseph Moran gives us a tour of this small but feature-packed digital audio player.
A good offsite backup strategy is not sending boxes of unencrypted tapes home with your party-hearty college intern. Carla Schroder reviews the Spideroak online backup service to see if they offer something better, more secure, and more convenient.
Linux is a powerhouse audio production platform, and while you have to shop carefully, there is a lot of good-quality audio recording hardware that works well with Linux. The M-Audio MobilePre USB is popular with Linux users; Carla Schroder takes a look to see why.
The newly-released book "How to be a Geek Goddess" is supposed to be a helpful, not-condescending computing howto for women. Tina Gasperson, who blatantly admits to being of the female persuasion herself, isn't sure it meets these goals, and suffers from severely mixed feelings. Read Tina's review to find out if this is a must-read or a must-fling-against-the-wall.
LinuxPlanet Classics: Bruce Byfield reviews his choices for the top general-purpose Linux distributions, and their strengths and weaknesses.
In which Rob Reilly's old heap dies for good; he replaces it with the laptop equivalent of an American muscle car, stuffs 64-bit Kubuntu on it, and goes joyriding. Is it a good trip? Does it perform to expectations? Come on in and find out.
Linux Mint says its "purpose is to produce an elegant, up to date and comfortable GNU/Linux desktop distribution." With hundreds of Linux distributions vying for our attention, what sets Linux Mint apart? Paul Ferrill learns that it does indeed have some worthy features not commonly found in other distributions.
Discover how to start developing for the Android platform with this extensive guide, which provides a reference to the Android platform as well as a look at developing your first Android application. You'll explore the top 10 features for developers as well as learn design and development tips that go beyond the phone and target tablet development as well.