System resources are always limited, no matter what type of computer or server you're using. You never seem to have enough RAM, CPU threads, or disk I/O. High level tools like `top`, `htop`,`sar`, `io ...
Bitcoin is the most established digital currency available today. It provides a safe, anonymous way to send and receive a virtual currency everybody trusts. However, managing bitcoins is not _quite_ a ...
I was recently given an ebook by a friend. It was a photography book, with tons of hi-res images and very little text. When I opened it with Ubuntu, Evince (the default PDF viewer that comes with Ubun ...
Nowadays, the Internet is all about the Web. Users seem to have forgotten that it's possible to receive updates about anything that is posted on multiple web sites in seconds: this non secret is calle ...
Some services line Netflix have an annoying geolocation restriction that made them unavailable outside the United States. In case of Netflix, this is due to licensing issues. It's not a slim differenc ...
Image manipulation in GNU/Linux has always been associated with The Gimp. However, most users will find Gimp vastly oversized for their needs. Fotoxx is a neat, simple and yet very advanced photo mani ...
__quickplot__ is a fast, interactive 2-D plotter. All it needs to do its job is a text file with _x_ and _y_ points in a list. If those points are _longitude_ and _latitude_ in decimal degrees, __quic ...
In a previous article on syncing and restoring your GMail account with the excellent GMVault I voiced one minor and perhaps unfair criticism. Namely, that as backed up e-mails had no recognizable titl ...
Backing up all your precious data and settings is a given. However, when it comes to e-mail we tend to develop amnesia. It's the ghost at the banquet, yet losing your e-mails, your address book and co ...
Yes, you read that correctly. If you've ever wanted to put together a bespoke PDF document and then edit it to add or delete features, you don't really need to hunt for some specialist software to get ...
Spare a thought for old time stalwarts like Konqueror. Many great features have been stripped out but it's still a a great file manager (and a decent browser) even if Dolphin has been promoted as the ...
I love Mozilla Thunderbird. I love using it with IMAP which lets me synchronize with GMail. To make the experience complete, I also like to view my RSS feeds. Setting them up is shamefully easy. There ...
All desktops are created equal; however, some desktops are created more equal than others. LXDE, Gnome, Unity and KDE are brimming with menus but Fluxbox is Spartan by comparison. Great for speed on o ...
Think "installing software in distros like Debian and Ubuntu", and you think automatically of Synaptic, `apt-get` on the command line or the new kid on the block, Unbuntu Software Centre. Sometimes, y ...
Whenever the The Electornic Frontier Foundation (EFF) commends Ubuntu for "retrofitting operating systems to support privacy against local attackers" as a worthy objective, I'm inclined to sit up and ...
When it comes to file managers, Linux users are spoiled for choice. But that doesn't stop developers from building tools for juggling files. Take Sunflower, for example. This file browser is built for ...
The most used graphic program in the free software jungle is Gimp. It is a hugely powerful piece of software, but when all you want to do is to crop a JPEG image without any loss of quality, it's posi ...
In my entomological work I often need to compare two images of bugs side-by-side. Comparisons are surprisingly hard to do with either of the image viewers I normally use, namely Eye of Gnome and Ristr ...
I like tea. Well, I'm British. I've just discovered a new brand that I've never seen before. You can't dunk it in a cup of boiling water but it has some powerful features. This article explores two of ...
There's been a lot of noise on the internet recently about the fact that the Windows-based software being used in the remote control system of drones use by the American military has been hit by a vir ...