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This article provides simple suggestions that you can employ to customize an installation of Linux Mint 12 KDE that would make it a little bit more user-friendly and fun to use.

Step 1. Apply updates – By default, the first time you log into any installation of Linux Mint 12 KDE, new or old, the system will check for updates 30 seconds after you log in and every 15 minutes afterwards. To ensure that you are running the latest software versions, it is best to apply or install any available updates pronto. But do you want the system to be checking for updates every 15 minutes?

So we moved from Linux Mint 10 KDE to Linux Mint 12 KDE because Linux Mint 11 KDE did not make it out of the developer’s box.

Being based on Ubuntu Desktop, Linux Mint shares many of that distribution’s features. Other than changes in software and kernel versions, there are very few new features in this release, so rather than go through the usual review drill, I will concentrate purely on usage experience.

From the description, Bouncer is like a security agent that scans the marketplace for malware, relying on signatures of known malware to do its job. Besides looking for malicious applications, Bouncer also analyzes “new developer accounts to help prevent malicious and repeat-offending developers from coming back.”

The idea, as Hiroshi described it, is to provide an “automated scanning of Android Market for potentially malicious software without disrupting the user experience of Android Market or requiring developers to go through an application approval process.” Sounds good to me.

GhostBSD is a desktop distribution based on FreeBSD. It comes as an installable Live DVD image and is developed by Eric Turgeon and Nahuel Sanchez. The latest edition, GhostBSD 2.5, based on FreeBSD 9, is the project’s fourth release, and was made available for public download on January 24.

This article provides the first review of this distribution on this website, and it is based on test installations of the 32-bit version.

Endian Firewall Community is a free edition of Endian Firewall, a security-focused Linux distribution developed by Endian S.r.l., a Linux solutions provider based in Bolzano Italy. Endian Firewall Community is designed for small, non-profit organizations and SOHO (Small-/Home-Office) deployments. The latest version, Endian Firewall Community 2.5.1, released today, comes with several feature enhancements, including support for most modern UMTS/3G USB dongles, trusted timestamping using OpenTSA, and improvements to the policy-based and static routing modules.

Version 3 of ownCloud, the open source, cloud application that enables you to run your own cloud server from your computer, has been released. This comes roughly 47 days before the launch of a commercial entity that would provide products and services for ownCloud.

The protest against Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) has come and gone, but the fight is just getting started. Proponents of SOPA, a legislative proposal thought to be dead by those opposing it, have promised to make another pass at making it the law of the land, and PIPA is due for a test vote on January 24. This thing is just getting started.

Takeoff Launcher is one of my favorite menu styles and I consider it one of 2 cool reasons to use the K Desktop Environment. Though it is not in Fedora’s repository, there is an rpm package that you can install from the project’s website. In this tutorial, you will read about the steps necessary to install and customize it on Fedora 16 KDE, a Fedora Spin that was previously reviewed on this website.

I am always looking for tools and applications that make the desktop a lot more fun to use, while boosting my productivity at the same time. Such tools should accomplish those objectives without getting in the way. I have already written about two of them in 2 cool reasons to use the K Desktop Environment.

In this article, steps you need to install another one of such applications in Linux Mint 12 KDE are presented.

While we are still waiting for Btrfs, the B-tree File System, to be mature enough and be used as the default file system in Linux, it is already possible to install your favorite (Linux) distribution on a Btrfs file system. Linux Mint 12 KDE, a distribution based on Ubuntu Desktop, is one of those. In this article, the steps required to install it (Linux Mint 12 KDE) on a Btrfs file system, are presented in an easy to follow manner.

Razor-qt is a brand new desktop environment based on Qt framework, the same development framework that KDE is based on. Though it is still in its infancy and, therefore, not as feature-complete as KDE or other well known desktop environments, it has a bright future ahead of it. And from what I have seen so far, it could be taking KDE and the rest to the cleaners in the very near future. Compared to KDE, one thing it has going for it right now, is that it is fast. How fast? Very.

HDMI Dongle is an Open Source, USB-sized set-top box from Always Innovating. A TV on a stick, it is designed to turn any TV with USB and HDMI ports into a connected TV. It comes with a simple remote control that has voice control and Near Field Communication (NFC) capabilities. On the software side, it can run Android 4 (Ice Scream Sandwich).

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, the popular Linux distribution for desktops and servers, just announced Ubuntu TV, a version of the distribution targeted at OEMs and ODMs for use in connected TVs. This is the company’s first step outside its core business segment. The zillion dollar/euro/rouble/rupee/yuan question is, will it fly?

KahelOS is a desktop Linux distribution derived from Arch Linux. Unlike Chakra, another Arch Linux-based desktop distribution, which uses the K Desktop Environment, KahelOS uses the GNOME 3 desktop environment. It employs a rolling-release development model, and comes to use by way of the Republic of the Philippines. While the last two releases of KahelOS had 32- and 64-bit editions, for this release, only a 32-bit edition has so far been made available for download, and it is an installable Live DVD ISO image weighing in at about 2.7 GB. The boot menu is shown in the image below.

Cinnamon is a new desktop environment, forked from GNOME 3 by the developers of Linux Mint. It is intended as an optional desktop for those who have not taken kindly to GNOME 3 or Unity desktop environments. While it is still very rough around the edges, I find it a lot better to use than GNOME 3 and slightly better than Unity. It has nothing on KDE, though. In this article, the simple steps required to install and use it in Ubuntu 11.10 are presented in an easy to follow manner.

Installable packages are already available for a few distributions. However, I have only been able to install and use it on Linux Mint 12 and Fedora 16 (see how to install Cinnamon on Fedora 16).

Though I have been able to install it on Ubuntu 11.10, every attempt to use it has failed. As soon as I figure out why it does not seem to be usable on Ubuntu 11.10, I will post it. Cinnamon’s menu and panel have a few aspects that can be configured by right-clicking, but a few others need to be configured with the gconf-editor. This article shows how to install and use gconf-editor on Fedora 16 and Linux Mint 12 to modify them.

Cinnamon is a very recent addition to the list of desktop environments available for Linux, BSD and other UNIX-like operating systems. It was started by Clement Lefebvre and his crew at Linux Mint and it is an attempt to make the GNOME 3 desktop more user-friendly. If you are not happy with GNOME 3, and are using Fedora 16, that is, the main edition, which uses the GNOME 3 desktop environment, you will find Cinnamon a lot more fun to use. This short tutorial gives the steps on how to install and use it.

Cinnamon is another attempt to make the GNOME 3 desktop acceptable to those in the community who have so far refused to have an unpalatable substance rammed down their throats. While MATE is a fork of GNOME 2, Cinnamon is a fork of GNOME 3 Shell. And though better than the other attempts, it does not really represent a sharp break from GNOME 3 + MGSE. Imagine GNOME 3 + MGSE without the Applications view or menu, and you have Cinnamon.

Because of the nature of Linux, when you boot into the Linux half of a dual-boot system, you can access your data (files and folders) on the Windows side, without rebooting into Windows. And you can even edit those Windows files and save them back to the Windows half. It is a very simple process, and requires very little work on your part. This brief tutorial shows you how it is done when dual-booting a distribution that uses the GNOME or KDE desktop environment.

Pear OS is a desktop Linux distribution based on Ubuntu, Desktop, but with a desktop appearance fashioned after the Mac OS X UI. A review of the latest edition, Pear OS Linux Panther 3, has already been published on this website.

This article presents a step-by-step guide on how to dual-boot Pear OS and Windows 7. To start, you need to download Pear OS Panther 3 from here and burn it to a CD or transfer it to a USB stick. The computer used for this article has a 500 GB hard drive with an existing installation of Windows 7, and it is assumed that you will also be attempting this on a computer that also has an existing installation of Windows 7.