The Linux file system hierarchy is much different than that of Windows. So much so that it becomes a show stopper for many new users. I hope to clear up a lot of the confusion here and now at gHacks. So, without further adieu, I give you the Linux file system hierarchy. / – This [...]

Anyone who has pondered the idea of migrating from Windows to Linux knows there are differences between the two operating systems. But just what are those differences? Many people considering this migration might be more apt to make the jump if they know just what the differences are. So I thought it would be a [...]

Ever since the inception of GNOME and KDE there has been confusion among new Linux users which is which and which is best to use. The former question is fairly simple to answer. The latter question, however, is a bit more complex due to user-specific needs/wants. With that in mind let us begin by illustrating [...]

Unless you search it out, you’re not likely to come across a PC that comes with Linux pre-installed (exception being the wide-variety of netbooks being sold). Because of this if you want to use Linux you are probably going to have to install the operating system yourself. To hard-core geeks that is not only a [...]

For those of you considering a migration from Windows to Linux I have a very simple piece of advice that will make the migration much easier. That advice: Choose the right distribution. Let me begin at the begining, or at least the best starting point. The Linux operating system is built with a number pieces. [...]

Hello gHacks faithful. My name is Jack Wallen and I am here to give you the gift of Linux. Appropos seeing as how it’s the holiday season. Let me explain…I have been brought on board gHacks to write about Linux. Why? Because Linux is the future of computing…or at least that is what my soapbox [...]

Whilst first person shooters are mainly confined to the console, several good FPS games are available for PC. I’m nothing more than a casual gamer but I enjoy shooters and I was surprised by the sheer number available. I use a Mac, so this article will primarily focus on cross-platform shooters. AssaultCube AssaultCube is a [...]

A friend recently introduced me to the idea of X11 tunnelling, which is accessing programs over SSH whilst still maintaining a graphical interface. Most Linux distributions, and OS X, have built-in X11 support and to connect to a computer and be able to run graphical programs remotely, ssh server -x is the only command which [...]

LimeWire is a popular P2P client which uses the Gnutella network. Unfortunately, it limits the amount of ultrapeers to whom connections can be made, in effect reducing the amount of search results and the number of people from whom downloads can be made. LimeWire only removes these limitations if its Pro version is bought at [...]

OpenOffice.org 2 GoogleDocs is an Open Office extension that is compatible with OpenOffice.org 2.0.4+ or StarOffice 8+. It provides import and export options for Google Docs, Zoho or WebDAV servers from withing Open Office which should be interesting for all users who use at least one of the services and Open Office regularly. Installation of [...]

When creating a presentation, a web design, a leaflet or a brochure, it is important to find suitable images to use. Whilst one option is to pay for stock photos to use under a restrictive licence, another option is to find free (gratis and libre) photos. Wikimedia Commons is the repository which Wikipedias and other [...]

Windows is a proprietary operating system which you cannot compile or modify at a sourcecode level. This allows Microsoft to maintain control of their operating system and many people disagree with the notion of using closed source software. ReactOS is a free and open-source operating system, which has been in the alpha stage of development [...]

Adium and Pidgin, the popular multi-network IM clients popular on OS X and Linux, lacks support for many features of MSN Messenger, such as webcams, audio conversations, voice clips and winks. This can prove to be annoying if the other party of the conversation wants to conference but lacks software such as Skype. aMSN is [...]

GnuPG allows you to encrypt data so only the intended recipient, with a key and a password, can decrypt it. It also provides a mechanism for verifying data is from the person who has claimed to send it. GnuPG can also provide a way for you to securely prevent your files from being opened without [...]

Adeona is a free Open-Source software to track your computer. It works completely independent and is running in the background on the computer system. It automatically recognizes a change of location by analyzing the network connection of the notebook. If someone would connect to a WLAN the software would automatically do IP lookups to determine [...]

Voting is already underway for the 2008 Sourceforge Community Awards which for the first time allowed nominations for projects that are not hosted at the website to become a true Open-Source award. If you look at the finalists you immediately notice the cream of the crop of Open-Source applications. If you take a look at [...]

Changing file associations in Windows XP and Windows Vista can be a tedious task. You first have to load the Folder Options in the Tools menu, select the File Types tab afterward, wait for the list to load, scroll down until you find the file type that you want to change, click on the change [...]

Image editing applications have been coming and going on my desktop for some time now. I used to be a Photoshop user, but I decided to give free software a chance and after going through Paint.net and Gimp, I finally decided Gimp was for me. However I have since missed the intuitive menus in Photoshop [...]

Open Office recently pushed 3.0 as a beta release. It’s a bit slower the 2.4, it’s got a nice new start centre, an icon refresh, a zoom control on the status bar and is now capable of supporting extensions to increase functionality. To be honest I can’t say there are a great many useful downloads [...]

Capivara is a Java Open Source file manager that supports the FTP and SFTP protocol plus file synchronization. It does not have the massive functionality of a software like WinSCP, which by the way supports file synchronization as well. One advantage of Capivara is that it was programmed in Java which means that it can [...]

A few days ago Sun Microsystems created an extension for OpenOffice which enables you to edit any MediaWiki page, which will be a blessing for those of us who are trying to maintain a Wiki. I myself prefer to edit pages online, through the normal interface, but when I am using a Wiki for personal [...]

In my last post about everyone’s preferred music player, I mentioned that I was dying to try out the Linux player Amarok because I’d heard great things about. There’s just one problem: I’m a Windows user. Luckily, the guys at Amarok have decided to give the Windows users a taste of what this music player [...]

I got a call from a friend sometime back, frantically asking me if I knew anyone who could create a movie trailer for her. It was part of an assignment that was due in a couple of days. I figured the average video store MIGHT do it but they would probably charge a bomb. I [...]

User generated content is not only popular on the web but becomes increasingly popular in Open Source development. The prime example is of course Firefox which has such an active community that thousands of extensions have been created for that browser. The Open Office development team decided to walk along the same road and add the ability to extend Open Office with user generated extensions.

A week ago WordPress released some shots of their upcoming tweaks to the admin for version 2.5. I have to say that it looks good, I don’t think this is what WordPress needs to be judged by. Apparently theme authors will need to update, as well as plugin developers, but this is also sort of [...]

Martin posted back in December about switching to a tripple-boot, having XP, Vista and Linux on the same machine. I myself installed Ubuntu a while ago and am recently switching near full-time to it. One app I really love is Amarok, one of the media players in the repositories. Amarok is just like any quality [...]

If you are the proud owner of an iPhone or an iPod Touch, you know by now that you are subject to a lot of limitations such as being restricted to the AT & T Network. In addition, you will be unable to install or run any third party applications on your device. With all [...]

Yesterday I spent about 4 hours trying to get a pdf right. I was making a subscription based newsletter for my website, so I obviously needed something of high quality. I couldn’t use Acrobat, since that costs an insane amount of money, and everything else I use couldn’t get it right. Sure, you can use [...]

I wrote a really long review on my blog recently on Flock, the community browser and thought I’d share some of my findings with you guys. Flock is basically a Mozilla based browser, much like the new Netscape was, but it offers a lot more, especially in terms of social site integration. It recognizes a [...]

After my last post about the powers of PuTTy in conjunction with an SSH-enabled router, I started thinking about tutorials.

If you set up some kind of SSH Connection on a windows computer over the past few years, be it to connect to the university’s network or to secure a line for an insecure FTP Transfer,you have probably encountered the program PuTTy on the way to salvation. It’s easy to use, free and OSSish powerful. What many people don’t know about PuTTy though, is what other powers aside from or better in addition to SSH slumber inside the little executable.

I was thinking on rounding up some of the net’s best freeware apps and putting them into one easily installable pack. As these things go, it seems like some clever people have beaten me to it. While I am a bit sad, I am actually really happy to have found this, since they did a [...]

Oxygen Office Professional was formerly known as Open Office Premium, so basically a modified version of Open Office with lots of extras that remind me of the extras that ship with Microsoft Office. The extras include more than 3400 images including clip arts and photos, more than 90 fonts, templates and sample documents, VBA support, better PDF support and lots more.

Not many free or open source video editing software suits exist and many people rely on commercial programs like Adobe Premiere to transfer videos from a camcorder for instance and edit / convert the video. Jahshaka is a open source video editing program that offers its users a huge functionality that can almost be compared to those commercial programs.

Watching tv through the internet is becoming more popular.
Just take a look at the many sites that links all kinds of tv series that are online on the different video sites.
Or what about all the other videos made by all kinds of users on those video sites (youtube, google video, dailymotion etc.)
Democracy Player might be the next step on internet television.

Keyboard shortcuts make our lifes easier, hitting Win +M is nicer than to minimize every windows by hand. Windows XP already has a method of assigning new keyboard shortcuts to programs but this method is very limited. You are only allowed to assign shortcuts using a combination of at least two STRG, ALT and SHIFT keys plus one additional letter, number or symbol.

Wikibooks is a great service that collects books that are freely available. The bookshelf (aka the listing of all available categories) provides links to categories like computing (and its subcategories like Programming languages) and Humanities and in those categories descriptions and links to those books. Some categories contain subcategories that contain the links, for example the programming language main category contains lots of subcategories that contain all the various programming languages.

If you are looking for freeware gaming alternatives to full priced products the osswin site at sourceforge should be what you are looking for. Games are categorized in categories like board games, first person shooter, strategy and simulator games. All games link to their producers website where you normally recieve lots of information and of [...]

After a lot of people told me that I forgot one of the best anti-virus freeware products out there I decided to take a look at Clam Win to get a better judgement on the claims made. The good thing besides that its free is that it´s also Open Source which makes it more transparent than the rest of the free antivirus programs.

Rapid leech is a fine server script that is able to download files from sites like rapidshare using a server instead of your home connection which speeds up the download process. You need of course a server to install the script and run it from there.

I found a site that has a list of 46 freeware programs that they call the best ever freeware utilities. Lets take a closer look at some of the tools.

Every entry has a title explaining the category , for example Best Free Adware / Spyware / Scumware Remover or Best Free Spam Filter for the Average User. After the category a short essay gives information about the category and the choice of programs chosen to be best.

OpenOffice 2.0 is finally available for eve…