Do you use the terminal in Linux? If you use Linux long enough you will. And chances are, if you are using the terminal in Linux, you are using either the GNOME terminal or KDE’s konsole. Each has their pros and cons and each has a lot of tricks tucked up inside their sleeves. I [...]

If you are a Ubuntu fan, you know the change is coming. As of Ubuntu 11.04, the default media player will migrate from Rhythmbox to Banshee. When I first read this announcement, I have to admit I was a bit disappointed. I was a fan of last.fm and knew, in order to stream last.fm in Banshee [...]

When you use Linux long enough you are going to use the command line. Although nearly every command line trick can be done from a GUI front end now, there are times when the command line is the only route (headless server for example). When you have to go that route, you will be glad [...]

If you are an electrical engineer, or someone who likes to dabble in designing electrical circuit boards (or anything with regards to electricity) and you’re looking for a FOSS (Free, Open Source Software) CAD program to aid you in the process, then Electric might be the solution. Although it doesn’t have the most modern looking [...]

The Open Source software jPDF Tweak offers options to manipulate one or multiple pdf documents. Have you ever felt the need to split or merge pdf files, move pages around or add watermarks to a number of pdfs? If you answered yes to at least one of the questions then jPDF Tweak is the software [...]

I own a few boardgames that I can rarely play at home or a friend’s house. Why? There are several reasons for this. I’m often unable to find enough players that like a specific game to play it. Britannia and Civilization come to mind. These games last upwards of four hours and it is hard [...]

With my on-going search for making my life ever-easier, I have turned to using smaller applications to keep my readers and fans informed. This can get to be an overwhelming problem when you are tweeting, facebooking, blogging, and – oh yeah – writing. So instead of adding to my already-large collection of tabs in Chromium [...]

As a writer of ebooks I have to constantly be promoting my works. There are three main ways to do this for free: Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr. Of the three, Tumblr allows me to be the most flexible in what I post as well as allows more people to see what I’m posting. But I [...]

We could all use some handy tips now and then. Wouldn’t it be great if they were, quite literally, at our fingertips? If you are a Ubuntu user, those tips can be at your finger tips with the help of a handy tip applet. This applet works in conjunction with the Fortunes application and serves [...]

Recently I have had to do some video tutorials. I tried recording these tutorials with Ubuntu’s default Cheese Webcam Booth, but unfortunately the combination of my Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000, Ubuntu 10.10, and Cheese didn’t want to record video in any usable FPS. So I had to look elsewhere. My search turned me to GUVCView [...]

If you’ve followed me long enough, you know I have a soft spot for the Enlightenment desktop. I have gone to all lengths to make sure my distribution of choice has either E16 or E17 installed for those days when I just need a little enlightenment. Those days are many. Fortunately there are plenty of [...]

Ah the ebook readers. They are the future for avid (and even not-so-avid) readers. With them you can carry around your entire library (without a hand cart) and even add your own content. But adding your own content can be a hassle if you’re not using a tool to aid you in this task. That [...]

I am a writer. I write loads of technical documentation as well as novels (check out my fiction on Smashwords and Autumnal Press). Because of my trade I am always seeking out tools to aid in my own process. And although the web has made everything so much easier, it is still good to have [...]

If you have ever had to change a service to either start or not start on a Linux machine, you know that process can be a little daunting. Not that it’s impossible, but it’s not always the simplest task. Fortunately there are plenty of tools available to make the process easier. One of those tools [...]

Generally speaking, if it is a web-based tool that starts with “php” (such as phpMyAdmin or phpLDAPadmin) you know that tool is going to make your administrative life a lot easier. Such is the case with a php-based tool created to help you manage all of your VirutalBox VMs from a single tool, from anywhere [...]

Oracle, with the purchase of the software company Sun, is the current main sponsor of the Open Source project. Members of the Open Office project formed The Document Foundation back in September 2010 and made available a fork of Open Office that they called Libre Office. Open Office is governed by the Community Council which [...]

There are many reasons why you might want or need to control what is seen via a web browser. Be it children, work, or any other reason, you might want to have more control than just your standard proxy software offers. That is where the incredibly powerful WebContentControl comes into play. The WebContentControl GUI takes [...]

If you have been following my latest series on the OpenShot Video Editor (Read “Create videos with OpenShot Video Editor“, “Add transitions with OpenShot Video Editor“, and “Add titles to OpenShot Video Editor projects“) then you will have noticed my mention of a bug in animated title feature that plagues Ubuntu. This bug is caused [...]

Recently I began covering one of the best open source video editors available (see my articles “Create videos with OpenShot Video Editor” and “Add transitions with OpenShot Video Editor“.) From those two articles (and an ounce of creativity) you should already be creating outstanding videos for various purposes. But now it’s time we take it [...]

If you ever had to sort a huge amount of files stored in the same folder you know that automation can speed up the sorting considerably. Maybe you want to sort the folder with hundreds of mp3 files that you have downloaded or recorded, maybe a download folder that you never cleared before. FileMess is [...]

From the Linux command line you can send a running job into the background which will return your bash prompt to you. You might need that prompt to quickly run another command, or you might just want to let that command run in the background for a while and do not need to view the [...]

Recently I tasked myself to begin creating promotional videos for the ebooks I have written for my publishing company Autumnal Press. These videos needed to be short snippets that could serve to attract attention to the books. Naturally I turned to open source solutions and open source solutions directed me to one very obvious, powerful, [...]

If you have a need to manage MySQL databases, you know that learning the syntax for the various MySQL tools can be a real nightmare. Fortunately there are tools out there that make this job far more easy. But of the web-based tools, which are easiest? You might have given phpMyAdmin a try, but found [...]

In the land of Linux applications have what is called their “nice” value. This value sets the priority that any given application receives. The nice value ranges from -20 to 19. The lower the number the higher the priority. The higher the priority the the more CPU time a program will get. This comes in [...]

Lets say you have used the Mozilla Thunderbird client for some time and have decided to move to the cloud, more precisely to Gmail or Google Mail. Question is, how do you get your emails and the folder structure over to Gmail? Sure you could do that manually; Create the folders over at Gmail and [...]

Are you a Facebook junkie? Do you find yourself constantly posting status updates? And…more important…do you constantly  upload photos of yourself, your friends, your animals, and your computers to your facebook account? If the latter is the case, do you find the standard method of uploading photos to facebook cumbersome? Don’t you wish there was [...]

If you are looking for a tool that can give you a graphical, interactive representation of what is taking up all of that hard disk space on your Linux machine, look no further than Baobab. Baobab (also a tree native to Madagascar) is a graphical, menu-driven viewer that allows you to get a birds eye view of [...]

There are so many ways to install applications in Linux. There’s Synaptic, apt-get, dpkg, Ubuntu Software Center, and many more.  In Ubuntu (or a Debian derivative) you can even install from your browser with the help of GDebi. But did you know there is another way to install with the help of the Firefox browser? That’s [...]

If you are a fan of Pandora Music and a user of Linux you know that Linux is a bit behind in the app space for this service. There are only a few possible clients and, until now, those clients simply were not options. The official Pandora client, due to flash issues, could bring your [...]

As most of you know, Samba allows your Linux machine to work with Windows machines (and vice versa). Without Samba Linux would be locked in an unable to play nicely on heterogeneous networks. So what most Linux users do is install Samba to allow file/folder sharing and network browsing. Typically speaking, Samba is very easy to install [...]

I sometimes need to get a quick overview of a computer system that I work on for the first time. Windows Build Audit is a free portable application that can generate Windows system reports in HTML format easily making it ideal for that task. The Open Source software has a size of less than 300 [...]

By default, a Ubuntu desktop with Samba installed will be a member of the Windows workgroup named WORKGROUP. Because that machine is a member of WORKGROUP, you would think you could browse and connect to other machines on the same network by hostname. That is not the case. Instead you would still have to locate [...]

For many, the introduction to the Ubuntu Software Center was a breath of fresh air for the installation of applications on the Linux desktop. With the ability to install thousands upon thousands of applications from a single location, the Ubuntu Software Center was the Apple App Store well before Apple could migrate from the iPhone [...]

If you do any graphics you know that, at some point, your work is going to have to turn to much higher quality tools. Although I find The GIMP great for day to day raster work, when you need higher quality, line art and vector graphics, you have to turn to a took like Inkscape. [...]

So you finally made the plunge and have a brand spanking new Ubuntu Linux desktop. You feel far more superior and safer than you did prior to using Linux. So much more safer you feel like there’s nothing more you need to do to keep your machine and your data safe. And relatively speaking you [...]

Seahorse is a very powerful tool for the creation and managing of various keys. Seahorse is the default keyring manager for the GNOME desktop. I have covered Seahorse here on Ghacks before (see “Create, sign, and publish your PGP keys with Seahorse“), but one aspect I didn’t cover was the use of Seahorse for secure [...]

There are certain applications, such as MySQL and Apache that are configured upon installation. The most familiar to you might be MySQL. At the point of installation you configure the server address, admin password, etc. But what happens when you need to reconfigure that tool and you don’t want to go through the process of [...]

File integrity checks should play an important part in a computer system’s backup strategy. Nothing is worse than having to find out that the needed backups are corrupt and cannot be used anymore for restoration purposes. File Verifier++ is an Open Source software for the Windows operating system that can create and store hash values [...]

Server OSes, such as CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and SUSE Linux Enterprise do not enjoy the same simplicity as does the modern Linux desktop when it comes to issues like sharing out directories (even though they share the same default desktops). You can see how easy it is to share out folders in my [...]

If you’ve been reading Ghacks long enough, you know my favorite console-based text editor is Nano. Nano is simple to use, efficient, and extensible. Nano can be used for many things: Writing, programming, editing configuration files, and more. Depending upon your needs, you might need to check the spelling of what you are writing or [...]

I love menus. Actually, I love to be able to configure menus in order to make the Linux desktop be as efficient as possible. The problem with that is, I tend to not go with the usual desktop (GNOME or KDE). So sometimes getting the menus exactly how I like them (or to suit my [...]

CentOS might well be one of the finest Linux distributions for a server environment. It is basically a mimic of Red Hat Enterprise Linux without the proprietary software and the price attached to it. With that in mind, it makes perfect sense to set CentOS up as your go-to Web server. It’s reliable, it’s stable, [...]

The task of joining Linux to a Windows domain can be a challenge. I have covered it before here (see my article “Join a Ubuntu machine to a Windows domain“), but many users have had issues with Likewise Open either not being able to join or not being able to reliably remain joined. Naturally, if [...]

I use the terminal A LOT. Why? Because I’m an old-school Linux user. Because of this I like to have multiple ways to quickly access my terminal. In my never-ending search for more and more ways to make my desktop life easier, I came across a nifty way to add a program shortcut to the [...]

Many administrators/users prefer to set up their servers as headless machines. If you’re not sure what a headless machine is – it’s a PC without a monitor. This is an outstanding way to use Linux as a server as typically people install Linux servers sans GUIs. Thing is, a problem has arisen with recent iterations [...]

I have reviewed the open source tool Extcv back in July and came to the conclusion that it offered TrueCrypt users an elegant and unobtrusive option to resize the TrueCrypt volume on the fly. The biggest problem back then was that the software was only compatible up to TrueCryt 6, and incompatible with TrueCrypt 7 [...]

There are many ways to preview your files in Linux. Most often there is a single application used to preview a different file type. You have the Eye of GNOME for images, the Document Viewer for PDFs, and more. But what about a single application that will preview all types? Is there such a thing? [...]

Let’s face it, when you opt to use certain Linux distributions, you do so knowing that there are going to be bugs. Fedora is one such distribution. Since Fedora is a testing ground for the enterprise-level Red Hat Linux operating system, having bugs goes hand in hand. It’s a bleeding-edge distribution and bleeding-edge distributions tend [...]

There are many reasons why you might want to lock down a desktop. Say you run an internet cafe and you don’t want your users to be able to do certain things. Or what if your Linux box is being used as a kiosk and you don’t want users to be able to exit out [...]

Linux is resplendent with administration tools. No matter what you need to monitor, Linux has a tool to suit your needs. You can monitor everything from file I/O, to network processes, and everything in between. You can test systems, check systems, start and stop systems…you name it. There are so many tools it’s hard to [...]