Showing headlines posted by Erlik

For me the the best free media player for Windows and Linux is Mplayer. The one thing that it lacks is a good graphical user interface to access all the power it has under the hood. Several GUI front ends have been written for mplayer, but in my opinion there is one that stands head and shoulder above the others: Smplayer.

Last week I made a summary of the current state of the Linux netbook market. Today I will show you that Linux netbooks are at a crossroad. They can reach a bright future and a significant market presence through 3 different paths: the smartbook path, the cheap path and the power path. I will explain how each path will lead the Linux netbook to market dominance in a specific niche.

Microsoft has finally released the pricing structure for Windows 7. The good news is that the new version of Windows will be a bit cheaper than the equivalent version of Windows Vista. The bad news is that since I am now used to receiving Ubuntu for free this made me realize that a Windows 7 license is in fact f*cking expensive!

There has been a lot of talk about the success or failure of the Linux netbooks recently, to the point that it is now a very controversial topic. I think that it is time to go back to the facts and perform an objective analysis of the Linux netbook market. You will see that Linux netbooks have been neither a complete success nor a complete failure.

One of the questions that some beginners do worry about is "from where do I get Linux?" After all most people received their current operating system preinstalled with their computers or purchased it in a box at a retailer such as best buy or office depot. To some extend you can still do that with Linux, however there are also others, cheaper, options.

One of the questions I see the most in forums and sites like Yahoo Answers is : "What is the best Linux distribution for beginners?" or "What is the easiest Linux distribution?" Well, unlike what you may think these questions are not that easy to answer, as the easiest Linux distribution is not necessarily the best for all beginners because other factors like the availability of support and commercial applications availability have to be taken into account.

A few days ago I reviewed what is in my opinion the easiest Linux distribution for Windows switchers: Linux Mint 7.0 The small group of talented people that manage this distribution is led by Clem, the "founder" of Linux Mint. Today he was kind enough to grant me an email interview as a follow up to my review.

There is a soft spot in my heart for Linux Mint: Mint 3.0 was the first Linux distribution that I really used rather than experimented with. Since then I have moved on to Ubuntu (on which Mint is based), but the release of the new Linux Mint 7.0 codenamed Gloria made me want to install and review Linux Mint again.

So Asus decided to part way with Linux, the operating system that made the brand famous, to join forces with Microsoft. And they decided to make it in a very public way by stating a nice 'better with Windows campaign'. Well, sorry to disappoint you Asus, but this is turning into a Public relation disaster!

When someone want to switch from Windows to Linux, he or she has a tendency to only think about the advantages of Linux and not think about the disadvantages. Most people have very good reasons to switch from Windows to Linux, but before actually switching it is important to review the disadvantages of Linux as well as the advantages.

[I am going to let you all have at this one, why spoil all the fun. - Scott]

Content creation used to be the stronghold of Apple and it's OSX operating system, but recently there have been signs that content producers are more and more attracted to Linux. What made me realize that creative software on Linux had made it with the content creation crowd is this poll on the DAZ Studio forums: more than 150 Daz Studio users would like to see a Linux version.

We have seen a lot of action at Computex around the Snapdragon based android eeepc and all the shenanigans around it. Despite this there are so many manufacturers preparing Android and Snapdragon Based devices that Asus can't afford to miss the boat. I also think that the new Android smartbooks will not only be cheap, but that eventually they will be free and I'll explain why below.

The first thing that puzzles someone new to Linux is the concept of Linux distribution. When you want to get Linux on your computer, what you install is actually a Linux "distribution" that contains a Linux kernel and some applications like Firefox (web browser) and Open Office (word processor and spreadsheet). To help you understand what is a Linux distribution I will take the Windows world as an example.

I suspect that Windows is slowly killing the netbook concept. I realized this when I walked into a big computer shop and saw the following sign beside the Netbooks aisle: please note that these computer have reduced functionality and will not run games. After investigation it seems that the sign was put there by the salesmen because...

Before we start our journey to Linux land there is one question you need to ask yourself: why do YOU want to switch from Windows to Linux? What do you expect Linux to achieve?