Gimp is a versatile image editor. I have been using Gimp exclusively for editing images and photos targeted for the web. Over and above its usefulness, it is also a Free software. But when it comes to finding tutorials in creating special effects of photographs, you find a whole lot of them for Adobe’s Photoshop but not that many for Gimp. This could be because there is a whole industry that has

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I was always of the impression that the function of a music player was little more than playing music. That impression took a beating when I tried a versatile music player called AmaroK. This music player is developed specifically for the KDE environment but can also be used in other window managers. What is unique about this music player is that it supports a wide variety of features apart from

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That is right, Debian has got itself a new Win32 installer. This new software is targeted at people who are not too tech savvy to know the steps needed to burn the Debian ISOs on to a CD/DVD. The first time I read the news, I wondered how it was any different from installing Linux on a UMSDOS filesystem ? It is very different it seems…

The setup consists of a Debian installer loader which

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I am an ardent fan of the versatile text editor Vim created and maintained by Bram Moolenaar. A side effect of being enamoured by this editor is that I am tempted to document each and every unique characteristics of Vim when I come to know of it. In all these many years of using Vim, I am astonished by the fact that a simple text editor such as this can show such versatility and flexibility to the

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One of the advantages of using GPLed software is that anybody who wish to use or modify the code can do so without fear of any repercussions. Ditto for the documentation of the software. This has at times tempted many a book author to release their books under a liberal license and make their efforts available for free in an electronic format.

One such author is Greg Kroab-Hartman who has

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Linspire is synonymous with the popular CNR (“Click ‘N Run”) software where you download a package of your choice from the Linspire CNR store and install it just like you do in Windows – that is by double clicking on it. The CNR warehouse has a collection of over 20,000 Linux packages, libraries and products, some of them commercial products like Win4Lin Pro, CodeWeavers’ CrossoverOffice and

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SELinux is a project started and actively being maintained by the U.S Department of Defense to provide a Mandatory Access Controls mechanism in Linux. It had been a long standing grouse of Linux power users and system administrators over its lack of fine grained access control over various running processes as well as files in Linux. While Solaris touts its famous RBAC and Microsoft Windows has

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Today, I came across a very good collection of screencasts which visually walks one through the backing up, repartitioning and then installation of Open Solaris on ones laptop. The OpenSolaris release is 5.11 and all the installation steps are shown. You need Flash player ver 6 or greater to watch the screencast – not a big issue as Adobe has released Flash player ver 9 for Linux. In a nutshell,

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I am sure anyone who is at the least Internet savvy, will be aware that to move data from one point say A to another point B across the Internet, it has to pass through a number of intermediary points say C, D,E…. But what many won’t know is that your data is not transferred in one piece when it is sent over the net, rather, it is split into chunks of say 1500 bytes each, then each chunk is

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A few weeks back, I had shared with you the news of Sun Microsystems distributing free Media Kit consisting of the latest build of Solaris 10 operating system. I had placed an order for a media kit at their website and guess what, a couple of days back, I received my copy of Sun’s free media kit.

The media kit is a fabulous DVD case consisting of three DVDs – a copy of Solaris 10 6/06 build

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It seems the One Laptop Per Child project which aims to provide a very cheap, child friendly laptop powered by Linux for each child in the third world countries is making steady progress. The design of the laptop has been finalized and a couple of prototypes have already found its way into the hands of a select few in the media who have come out with a review of the laptop.

To the uninitiated,

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Many news sites are abuzz about the new Nokia offering in the form of an Internet tablet named N800. Previously, I had written about the Nokia N770 which is the predecessor of N800. Nokia has reportedly added a number of enhancements to N800 which are lacking in its predecessor such as an integrated web cam, better style, enhanced hardware specs such as more processing power and more memory, two

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Ever wonder how Microsoft got so rich ? Yes, I can visualize you pointing to their flagship OS Windows. But it is not as simple as it looks. A major portion of Microsoft’s revenue through sale of its OS comes from deals struck with various hardware vendors. The revenue it gets through sale of boxed versions of Windows is only a tiny minuscule percentage when compared to the money it gets through

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Ever wonder what KDE 4.0 is going to look like when it is finally released some time this year ? As far as end users should be concerned, it is going to be much more beautiful, responsive and usable than KDE 3.5.

Some of the features that it will have are as follows:
KDE 4.0 is perceived to make extensive use of SVG (SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics) for images instead of non scalable

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Python, the dynamic object oriented programming language created by Guido van Rossum is known to deliver both the power and general applicability of traditional compiled languages without the complexities accompanying them. Coupled with its ease of use, programs written in Python can be run on multiple Operating systems and system architectures which gives it the same portability of any

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When you use good fonts in articles either in print or in screen, it always makes a positive impression on the reader. Good fonts motivate a person to read the article from start to finish. Many times I have come across books – especially scientific journals which have a very small type face – so small that you end up squinting your eyes to read the text. In those circumstances, even if the

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Today is the dawn of a new year, the year 2007. Every year, we wish, hope and dream that it will be the year when GNU/Linux will gain critical mass appeal – not that it has failed to significantly widen its base. One of the most endearing aspect of GNU/Linux for me over and above the ideological considerations is its simplicity.

A couple of years back, when I was yet to be introduced to Linux, I

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The regular readers of this blog will remember me mentioning a competition being conducted by Worldlabel.com in conjunction with the OpenOffice.org documentation project for creating Open Source templates. Guess what…, On the eve of the New Year, they have released the winning template which is a Thesis template for OpenOffice.org Writer designed by Matthias Ansorg. This template won the first

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When ever I try out a GNU/Linux distribution, the one thing which hound me atleast in the initial stages is the lack of awareness about additional repositories particularly the ones which contain software packages which are necessary to make working in Linux a complete experience. So the first time I tried Red Hat, I had to scrounge the Net to get the addresses of additional repositories because

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There is good news on the horizon… which is that Linus Torvalds has merged the KVM code – which is the Kernel Virtual Machine Module in the kernel source tree leading to Linux Kernel 2.6.20. This opens up a lot of avenues as far as Linux is concerned. Using KVM, it is possible to run multiple virtual machines running unmodified Linux or Windows images.

KVM is not the only technology that is

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As a continuation of the previous post, here are 25 shortcomings found by CNN’s Frank J. Ohlhorst when he reviewed the yet to be formally released Microsoft Vista OS. I have added my views which are enclosed in parentesis, alongside the Vista shortcomings.
Vista introduces a new variant of the SMB protocol – (I wonder what is the future of Samba now…)Need significant hardware upgradesNo

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Consider this scenario… Your machine running GNU/Linux has been penetrated by a hacker without your knowledge and he has swapped the passwd program which you use to change the user password with one of his own. His passwd program has the same name as the real passwd program and works flawlessly in all respects except for the fact that it will also gather data residing on your machine such as the

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When a multi-billion dollar company famed for their extreme stand for all proprietary software is on the verge of releasing their much touted next generation OS named Vista, what does Free Software Foundation which shuns all things proprietary do ? That is right, they start a campaign trying to enlighten the computer users about the pitfalls of buying Vista and also introduce them to the Free

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The hot news right out of the oven is that RPM – the famous package manager that is the base of all Red Hat based Linux distribution packages is going to get a shot in the arm. The Fedora project has decided to create an active community around the RPM. Already a wiki for RPM has been setup which details the project goals.

My first foray with Linux was with Red Hat and during the course of time,

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A couple of weeks back, Sun Microsystems created a buzz in the tech world when it announced its decision to release their flag ship language Java under a GPL license albeit GPL v2. But even though it could have surprised and gladdened the Free Software fans the world over, it is clear that it was a well calculated, deeply thought out decision which was aimed at the survival and further

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Over the years, I have accumulated a couple of hard disks which I salvaged from my old computers. I have a Seagate 12 GB hard disk, a Samsung 2.1 GB hard disk apart from another Seagate 20 GB hard disk. In fact, these were just lying around with out being put to any use and recently I decided to add one of them to my present computer.

I opened up the case and inserted one of the hard disk in the

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Recently, one of my friends shared with me this rather funny ode to Linux which was passed on to him by a friend of his, which I am in turn sharing with you. So without much ado, here is the rhyming ode to Linux …

A is for awk, which runs like a snail, and
B is for biff, which reads all your mail.
C is for cc, as hackers recall, while
D is for dd, the command that does all.
E is for emacs,

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We are moving towards an era where the line demarcating a computer and the rest of the electronic devices is at best getting hazy. Take the mobile phones for instance… Now a days, the sheer power and the number of features available in some models of mobile phones rivals those found in a low end PC. Electronic devices are fast morphing into gadgets which are many things for different

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Anybody who has played games on their PC will be familiar with a classic game called Breakout where you have to bounce a ball with a paddle and smash all the bricks. While this game in its original make does not sport any special features, it has helped spawn a number of breakout clones which provide additional special effects such as power-ups that provide more power to the ball for a short while

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The fifth international GPLv3 conference was held on 22nd and 23rd of November in Akibara Tokyo Japan. A couple of months back, RMS had spoken at the 4th GPLv3 international conference held at Bangalore India. These conferences are a part of a serie…

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