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8

CentOS 6 review

CentOS, Community ENTerprise Operating System, is a Linux distribution derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Not many would consider it a desktop distribution, but it could be configured as one, though it requires a bit more tweaking than other well known desktop distributions to just work. The latest stable version, CentOS 6, was released on [...]

on August 11, 2011 12:59 pm
6

Feature preview of Fedora 16 installer

Fedora 16 is more than two months away from final, stable release, but pre-Alpha installation ISO images have been floating around. News from the Fedora camp have already indicated that btrfs will be the default file system on Fedora 16, joining the ranks of MeeGo, the first (Linux) distribution to use btrfs as the default [...]

on August 8, 2011 5:24 pm
0

Install Mandriva Desktop 2011 on a btrfs file system

Mandriva Desktop 2011 will be the next stable release of the popular desktop Linux distribution developed by Mandriva, a Linux software publisher based in France. Screenshots from the second release candidate are available here. Though the second release candidate still spots some bugs, the installer will not change when the stable edition is released on [...]

on August 2, 2011 12:09 am
5

Mandriva Desktop 2011 pre-release screenshot review

The last of the pre-releases of Mandriva Desktop 2011, Mandriva Desktop 2011 RC 2, was made available for download yesterday, just one day behind schedule. It, of course, looks better, runs better, than the previous pre-release, which I previewed here. As the title suggests, this article is not a full review, but a screenshot tour [...]

on July 28, 2011 3:19 am
4

Linux and BSD desktop distributions with support for disk encryption

Disk encryption is not something most personal computer users think of when they consider ways to boost the security profile of their computer. A firewall? Yes, that in the minds of most is what computer security is all about. However, a firewall is a network security tool, and it is useless if your computer is [...]

on July 26, 2011 5:19 am
2

Sabayon 6 GNOME review

Sabayon is a multi-purpose, Linux distribution based on Gentoo, with support for binary package installation. Sabayon 6 is the latest stable release and installation images for the E17, GNOME, KDE, LXDE, and Xfce desktop environments have been released. The KDE edition has already been reviewed. (See Sabayon 6 KDE review.) This article is a review [...]

on July 24, 2011 5:29 pm
7

3 graphical clients for managing the Uncomplicated FireWall

ufw, the Uncomplicated FireWall, is Ubuntu’s user-friendly, command line frontend to IPTables, the command line utility for managing Netfilter, the firewall application built into the Linux kernel. It is installed not just on Ubuntu, but also on all Ubuntu-based distributions. As simple to use as ufw is, a graphical interface is even better, especially for [...]

on July 22, 2011 5:02 am
13

Pardus 2011.1 review

Pardus is a Linux distribution developed in Turkey. To be specific, it is developed and maintained by the Turkish National Research Institute of Electronics and Cryptology (UEKAE), an arm of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK). It is a desktop-oriented distribution based on KDE, the K Desktop Environment. This article presents a [...]

on July 19, 2011 10:33 pm
8

Lancelot menu

Lancelot is one of three menu styles for KDE, the K Desktop Environment. It is similar in some respects to mintMenu of Linux Mint, but with a lot more features and a lot more configurable options. This article is written to showcase all the features of this menu, which is developed and maintained by Ivan [...]

on July 19, 2011 8:47 pm
1

How to install PCLinuxOS 2011.6 on an encrypted LVM file system

The 2011 editions of PCLinuxOS have started rolling off the shelves, with the KDE and LXDE editions being the first set out. (See PCLinuxOS 2011.6 KDE review for a detailed review of the KDE edition.) If you have been using PCLinuxOS, you probably know that the installer, which it inherited from Mandriva, has support for [...]

on July 16, 2011 2:41 pm
35

PCLinuxOS 2011.6 KDE review

PCLinuxOS is a (Linux) distribution that was derived from Mandriva Linux. It is a rolling release distribution, which means that once installed, updates are continually made available so that re-installation or upgrading when a new ISO image is released is not necessary. The project makes installation images available for all major desktop environments. Three versions [...]

on July 15, 2011 4:10 pm
1

Pardus 2011.1 screenshot pre-review

Pardus is a desktop-oriented Linux distribution with roots in the National Research Institute of Electronics and Cryptology (UEKAE), Turkey. The latest table version, Pardus 2011.1, was released just yesterday. Like Pardus 2011, Pardus 2011.1 is made available via DVD installation images, and also via Live DVD testing-only images. While a review is still in the [...]

on July 12, 2011 2:34 pm
2

Ubuntu 11.10: Screenshot preview

Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 2 was recently released for the brave and adventuresome to test. I did not do much of a testing, but ran the system in a virtual environment to see what it looks like. Aside from the kernel, there is really no major change, as far as I could tell, from the last [...]

on July 11, 2011 2:40 am
8

Sabayon 6 KDE review

Sabayon is a Gentoo-based, Linux distribution with support for binary package installation. Installation images for the major desktop environments are regularly published and updated. The KDE and GNOME 2 editions of the latest, Sabayon 6, were released just last week. June 23, 2011, to be precise. This article presents a comprehensive review of the KDE [...]

on June 30, 2011 5:16 am
26

How to dual-boot Fedora 15 and Windows 7

Previous tutorials published on this website about dual-booting Fedora and Windows 7 have shown how to do it by creating partitions for Fedora manually, either on an existing or a new installation of Windows 7. This tutorial will show how to do it, by modifying the logical volumes automatically configured by Anaconda, the Fedora system [...]

on June 27, 2011 5:53 pm
1

Install Mageia 1 on an encrypted LVM file system

Mageia is a new Linux distribution formed by former employees and contributors of Mandriva, a Linux software provider and publisher of a line of Linux distributions of the same name. The first stable release (of Mageia) has since been reviewed for this website (see Mageia 1 review). This article presents the steps necessary to install [...]

on June 27, 2011 4:41 am
4

Fedora 15 KDE review

Fedora 15 KDE is one of several officially-recognized Fedora Spins. The others are, in order of popularity, the LXDE, Xfce, Security, Electronic-Lab, Games, and Design-suite Spins. The KDE Spin sits atop the popularity list. The LXDE and Xfce Spins have been reviewed on this website. (See Fedora 15 LXDE review and Fedora 15 Xfce review.) [...]

on June 25, 2011 4:49 am
0

Install Mageia 1 on an encrypted btrfs file system

Mageia is a new Linux distribution forked from Mandriva. The first release was just last month and it has since been reviewed on this website. (See Mageia 1 review.) Btrfs is a relatively new file system in the Linux kernel, It is a copy-on-write file system with built-in support for, amongst other features, subvolumes (the [...]

on June 22, 2011 2:25 pm
1

Dual-boot Fedora 15 and Ubuntu 11.04 with either side on an LVM partitioning scheme

How to dual-boot Fedora 15 and Ubuntu 11.04 on a computer with one hard disk is the subject of this tutorial. If you have ever configured dual-booting between Windows and a Linux distribution, the steps involved should be very familiar, but if you have not, this tutorial is detailed enough that you should not have [...]

on June 20, 2011 3:14 pm
30

Mageia 1.0 review

Mageia is a Linux distribution forked from Mandriva Linux by former contributors and members of Mandriva, As expected, there was a flurry of activities between the announcement of the fork of the distribution (on September 18, 2010) and the first official (stable) release (June 1, 2011). Teams had to be put together, servers and hosting [...]

on June 18, 2011 5:29 am
41

Dual-boot Linux Mint 11 and Windows 7

Dual-booting between a GNU/Linux distribution and Windows on a computer with one or more hard disks is a common practice for those who use both operating systems. It is a somewhat hassle-free approach to keeping a foot in both OS worlds. If you are new to Linux Mint and want to attempt dual-booting between Linux [...]

on June 11, 2011 8:37 am
18

Linux Mint 11 review

Linux Mint 11 is the latest release of Linux Mint, a desktop distribution based on Ubuntu Desktop. This is different from Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE), a version of Linux Mint based on Debian. (See a review of LMDE.) The Linux Mint project makes different installation images for the major desktop environments, and this article [...]

on June 10, 2011 2:50 am
19

How to replace GRUB with BURG on Linux Mint 11

GRUB, the GRand Unified Bootloader, has been the default boot loader on virtually all Linux distributions since LILO (LInux LOader) lost its shine. LILO is still an option in only a handful of distributions (Mandriva is one), but on most, GRUB is the sole boot loader. GRUB’s menu has a very bland interface, and BURG [...]

on June 4, 2011 1:02 pm
0

Guest session and user management on Linux Mint 11

A common system management-type question I usually get from new users pertains to creating and managing user accounts on Linux. On Linux Mint 11, as on all other Linux distributions, it is a very easy task, made possible by a simple graphical application. If you are running Linux Mint 11 now (or a previous release), [...]

on June 4, 2011 10:56 am
4

Manual disk partitioning guide for Linux Mint 11

This article provides a step-by-step guide on how to create partitions on Linux Mint 11, the latest stable release of Linux Mint. And because it encompasses most of the steps involved in the installation process, it can be considered a Linux Mint 11 installation guide. The steps involved are pretty simple, but if you a [...]

on June 2, 2011 8:41 pm
19

Fedora 15 LXDE review

Fedora 15 LXDE is a Fedora 15 Spin, an alternate edition of Fedora, “tailored for various types of users via hand-picked application sets and other customizations.” Presently, seven Spins have been released. These are, in order of popularity about the time I hit the Publish button, the KDE, LXDE, Xfce, Security, Games, Electronic-Lab, and Design-Suite [...]

on June 2, 2011 5:36 am
2

Install Linux Mint 11 on an 8 GB SDHC card

SDHC cards, very small storage cards designed for use in mobile devices, can be used to install your favorite Linux distribution. You can install any distribution on one of these cards in much the same manner that you would to a regular hard disk drive. As far as your computer is concerned, they are just [...]

on June 1, 2011 2:09 am
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How to triple-boot Fedora 15, Ubuntu 11.04 and Windows 7

Triple-booting windows 7 and two Linux distributions is a little bit more involved than dual-booting it with a distribution. You have to decide in what order to install the Linux distributions, and sometimes, the order you choose might not work. Such was the case with this attempt to triple boot it with Fedora 15 and [...]

on May 31, 2011 3:45 pm
4

How to install Linux Mint 11 on a btrfs file system

Like Ubuntu 11.04 on which it is based, Linux Mint 11 has support for btrfs, a modern journaling file system with features that are not available on the default file system on Linux. For example, with btrfs, you can: Writable snapshots Subvolumes (separate internal filesystem roots) Object level mirroring and striping Integrated multiple device support, [...]

on May 30, 2011 7:34 pm
8

Fedora 15 Xfce review

Fedora 15 Xfce is a Fedora 15 Spin. In Fedoraland, a Spin is an alternate edition of Fedora, “tailored for various types of users via hand-picked application sets and other customizations.” Presently, five Spins have been released. These are, in order of popularity, the KDE, Xfce, LXDE, Security and Games Spins. This article presents a [...]

on May 28, 2011 4:30 pm
4

How to install and configure Adobe Flash Player 10.3 on Fedora 15

Fedora 15, code-named Lovelock, does not ship with commercial applications. Which means that you are not able to install essential applications like Adobe Flash Player from the graphical package manager. There are a few open source Flash plugins, but they do not render current Flash content very well, if at all. If you are not [...]

on May 28, 2011 3:06 am
0

Clear evidence that cell phone use increases the incidence of head cancers

We believe that urgent action is needed to protect our children and young people from a epidemic of brain and other tumours in 10 to 30 years time. The majority of malignant gliomas (the most common type that has been associated with mobile phone use) are fatal within 3 to 5 years of diagnosis, even [...]

on May 27, 2011 2:24 am
5

Guest session and user management on Fedora 15

User management on Fedora 15 is just as easy as on any other distribution or operating system. And the graphical user management tools (there are two) are very intuitive to use. There are two types of user accounts on Fedora 15 – Standard and Administrator. The Administrator has root or super user privileges. During installation, [...]

on May 26, 2011 5:16 am
0

How to install Fedora 15 on an encrypted btrfs file system

Fedora 15, the latest stable release of the Red Hat-sponsored Linux distribution, is the first Fedora release to have btrfs, the B-tree File System (also called Butter F S), as a file system option during the installation process. On earlier versions, you would have had to pass the btrfs option to Anaconda at boot time [...]

on May 25, 2011 3:32 pm
0

GPT disk partitioning guide for Chakra 2011.4

GPT is an alternate disk partition table scheme that solves two issues associated with the MBR partition table scheme. It allows the configuration of more than four primary partitions, the maximum supported by MBR, and it also supports disk partitions of more than 2 TB. Chakra, an Arch Linux-based distribution, is the only Linux distribution [...]

on May 24, 2011 12:34 pm
0

Guest session and user management in kubuntu 11.04

Managing users on Linux is one of the very first tasks that new users want to know how to accomplish. In Kubuntu 11.04, the graphical user management tool has all the features expected on such an application. For those new to Kubuntu, and who might need some hand-holding in creating and managing users, this article [...]

on May 23, 2011 3:02 pm
65

Install Ubuntu 11.04 on external hard disk

Installing Ubuntu 11.04 or any other distribution on an external hard drive connected to a computer via USB is about the same as the method used to install it on an internal hard disk. Your choice of external disk to use are many, but the one I used for this tutorial is a 2.5′ hard [...]

on May 23, 2011 1:43 am
104

How to dual-boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.04

For those Windows users who have discovered what Linux has to offer, but for one reason or another are not ready to completely abandon Windows, dual-booting between the two operating systems is one method of keeping a foot in both worlds. And to help those users, this article presents a step-by-step guide on how to [...]

on May 22, 2011 11:57 pm
0

Android Open Accessories

Android’s USB port has in the past been curiously inaccessible to programmers. Last week at Google I/O we announced the Android Open Accessory APIs for Android. These APIs allow USB accessories to connect to Android devices running Android 3.1 or Android 2.3.4 without special licensing or fees. The new “accessory mode” does not require the [...]

on May 19, 2011 6:46 pm
0

Yum in Redhat Enterprise Linux 6.1

Editor: This post is by James Antill. It looks at yum, the command line tool for managing applications on certain RPM-based Linux distributions like Redhat Enterprise Linux and Fedora. Time to look at a few features of yum in RHEL-6.1 now that it’s released: Search is more user-friendly – As we maintain yum we are [...]

on May 19, 2011 6:41 pm
0

Systemd for Developers

Systemd not only brings improvements for administrators and users, it also brings a (small) number of new APIs with it. In this blog story (which might become the first of a series) I hope to shed some light on one of the most important new APIs in systemd: Socket Activation – In the original blog [...]

on May 19, 2011 8:49 am
0

Hardware Encryption Developed for New Computer Memory Technology

Security concerns are one of the key obstacles to the adoption of new non-volatile main memory (NVMM) technology in next-generation computers, which would improve computer start times and boost memory capacity. But now researchers from North Carolina State University have developed new encryption hardware for use with NVMM to protect personal information and other data. [...]

on May 18, 2011 2:08 am
1

Android Vulnerability: Use Precaution on Public WiFi

Yesterday, researchers from Germany’s University of Ulm reported that some Android applications transmit sensitive authentication data without properly securing it, making people vulnerable to having their private data (e.g. Calendar Contacts, Pictures) accessed by an attacker. When a vulnerable device transmits its authentication data, an attacker can eavesdrop and view transmitted data if you are [...]

on May 18, 2011 2:05 am
0

Top 10 upcoming Android tablets

Contrary to popular belief, the iPad 2 isn’t the only tablet computer in the world. Yes, it is rather wonderful, and the game support is staggering, but there are still some niggling issues that take the shine off the supremely shiny device. Consider the bizarre lack of Flash support, which creates a distinctly web 1.0 [...]

on May 16, 2011 1:47 pm
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