Showing headlines posted by slacker_mike

On Twitter, I recently put forward the heretical opinion that systemd is actually a good thing (as I've written a bit about before). Now, systemd is not flawless or without worrisome tendencies and it has a number of features that I'm indifferent to, but I do think that it gets quite a lot of things right. Today I feel like trying to list them off (partly so that I have this in one place for future use).

To prove it, we're going to show you how to play modern PC games on a Linux PC no matter what kind of hardware you own. This guide will primarily be targeting the newest version of Ubuntu (12.10), arguably the most popular and user-friendly version of Linux, but most or all of it will be applicable to any other Debian-based Linux distribution, such as Mint.

The Arch BSD operating system is moving forward, an attempt at a BSD platform that's inspired by the Arch Linux distribution and using its package-set.

Over the years, many people have speculated about when Ubuntu will be ready for the casual computer user. Some individuals have compared Linux distributions to other operating systems, such as OS X. In this article, I will be offering a unique comparison between Ubuntu 12.10 and OS X Mountain Lion. Since I have access to both operating systems in my home office, I was able to take the time to narrow down where each operating system excels and where improvement is still needed. I have also attempted to do so without bias or platform-specific hype.

It's been clear for some time now not only that IT professionals face better-than-average prospects in today's tough marketplace for jobs, but also that those with Linux skills tend to fare even better.

Microsoft and HP won't share a study claiming that the German city of Munich had its numbers wrong when it calculated switching from Windows to Linux saved the city millions - although an HP employee did provide the data to a German publication that reported on the results.

For a Linux distribution only a little over two years old, the uptake of Mageia has been impressive, with the distro now regularly being found Distrowatch's top five distros, along with heavyweights such as Fedora, Ubuntu and Mint.

On February the 19th, Wellington will be awash with some of the greatest and brightest minds in computing as the Multicore 2013 Conference kicks off at Wellington Town Hall. I caught up with one of the keynote speakers, Paul McKenney, who is IBM's Chief Technology Officer of Linux and got to pick his brains on the rise of Linux and machine intelligence.

Well, you have probably read a million guides on how to backup your personal data using rsync, a highly useful and versatile data copying tool. Here's another one. I would like to show you some basic tips and tricks for smart and safe rsync usage, how to make a flexible and useful setup, and how to automate your backup procedure, as a part of a comprehensive backup strategy, which you must have.

Statistics are a matter of your viewpoint.

After the launch of Steam Linux beta, you may have seen a big Tux logo on Steam client download page.

Note: The English translation of the interview follows the Croatian one, about half way through the page.

AMD is getting back in the Linux game with a huge driver release that should be able to save face on the open source platform.

Encouraged by the very positive trend shown in the last release, I decided to see how well Fedora 18 would behave. As you guess most correctly, this is a first of several reviews. We will follow up with Cinnamon and MATE articles, too. For the time being, let's do KDE, as the Gnome version is out of the question. Shall we commence?

This page discusses the relevant changes introduced in CRUX 3.0. Everybody upgrading from the previous release is advised to carefully read the following notes.

I have spent the last 3 or 4 years slowly getting a reputation for extending Emacs in mad ways. So much so that fsbot on #emacs will tell you that nicferrier-fix is:

most problems can be fixed by writing more elisp

I will be continuing this trend in 2013. There's a lot going on so I thought I'd write a summary of everything that I see happening.

The developers of the SolusOS Linux distribution have announced the Consort Desktop Environment. This user interface for Linux systems is based on code from the same components that currently provide GNOME 3's fallback mode, also known as GNOME Classic. This mode works without 3D acceleration and provides a desktop which resembles that of GNOME 2; however, the associated code will be removed in GNOME 3.8 – among the reasons given is that nobody has maintained the code base and that the interface appears to have undergone very little testing in recent times.

Microsoft may have rebuffed Linux's early advance in the domain of the emerging netbook, but Glyn Moody thinks that the rise of the tablet has neutralised the "must-have" nature of Windows.

According to plan, today openSUSE 12.3 Beta sees the light. The beta comes with mostly smallish changes as we’re in serious testing waters now – we hope you’re out there to help us clear the way to the final release!

There's a popular saying, almost an axiom, but one that is definitely provable within the limits of this universe, that if there's a file that cannot be played in VLC, it is not meant to be played. Audio or video, VLC eats them all, no matter what encoding, what format, no matter if it's a preview file downloaded in eMule or an online stream. But what happens when VLC does not play a file? In that case, you will be left wondering what may have gone wrong, because VLC will merely shows its traffic cone logo on a black background and refuse to play. That's all. No fancy messages, no fanfare, and no Sherlock Holmes clues for you. Let's unravel a secret, shall we? Today, you will learn how to make your file playing skills that much better, in VLC.