Germans rejoice. The Internet TV client Zattoo can now be downloaded by German users to watch 21 TV stations using their computer. There are no information about payment at this moment and it is possible to download and run the client without reading anything about costs and payment. So, you can download and run it for free at the moment.
Linux Operating System
Here at Ghacks we cover the various Linux distributions, updates, Linux tips, tutorials and everything else that is related to the Linux family.
Categories:
Linux Software - Linux Desktop - Ubuntu - Live CD
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5 Things Linux does better than Windows - Syncing your iPhone (or iTouch) with Linux
Download Open Office 2.3 early
While the official release date for Open Office 2.3 is still September 17th it can already be downloaded using various official Open Office mirror sites. It seems that the releases get spread throughout the mirror sites first to be ready when the announcement is made on the official Open Office website.
Retroshare secure Instant Messenger
Retroshare is a secure Instant Messenger with File Sharing options. It uses a 2048-bit RSA encryption keys in combination with trust style authentication to ensure maximum security. Connections are only established to friends who received your Retroshare certificate which is of course a little bit more complicated but it is well worth it.
Open Office 2.3 Release Candidate 1
The first release candidate of the upcoming Open Office 2.3 has been released today and is available on the Open Office development website. The release notes show a huge list of changes, as far as I can tell there have been a lot of fixes and improvements in this version and it should be worth the download if you are an early adopter.
Install Ubuntu without partitioning with Wubi
Many novice users fear the technical process that has do be done before or during the installation of a Linux distribution. Partitioning is something that most are not familiar with and the fear to do something wrong and wreck their standard operating system is probably one of the main reasons why many users do not install a Linux distribution.
Pan Newsreader
I have been trying several newsreaders for the Usenet until I finally found the one and only newsreader Newsbin. I purchased it years ago and can only recommend it to everyone else who is serious about the Usenet. I do know however that some users prefer free software and that is why I took a look at the Pan newsreader which is available for Windows, Mac and Unix.
Pan Newsreader is offering a lot of features that commercial Usenet readers such as Newsbin are offering as well. It does support download binaries of course offering single-click encoding, multiple connections and simultaneous downloads and image previews of downloaded images.
Manage all your media collections with Data Crow
I found a great free software that is able to manage all of my media collections with ease. One of the greatest feature of Data Crow is that it is not only a software for managing DVDs, CDs or books but provides a way to manage all of them. To be precise it is able to manage Software, Movies, Music Albums, Audio CD’s, Books and Images.
Dell to finally ship PCs with Linux
First Dell PCs with AMD chips and now Dell PCs with Linux preinstalled. It seems that Dell finally managed to see that giving its customers a choice is the way to go in this matter. Linux has some advantages over PCs that ship with Windows Vista or Microsoft Windows XP. The first and most prominent one is of course the price tag. Dell can reduce the costs that customers have to pay for a PC even further and advertise this properly.
Use one mouse and keyboard on multiple computers
I prefer to use a mouse and a “real” keyboard over working with the touchpad and the keyboard of my Toshiba notebook. I do like slim keyboards but I’m not that used to keyboards from notebooks and have troubles typing as fast as with the keyboard on my desktop pc. I obviously have to use the keyboard and an external mouse when I’m travelling around with my Toshiba notebook but I thought that it would be nice if I could use the keyboard and mouse from my desktop pc for my notebook as well when I’m at home.
VLC Media Player 0.86b Test 1
The VideoLan team has upped a first test version of VLC Media Player 0.86b which happens to be my favorite media player. The new version fixes some crashes, adds VP31 decoding to Windows platforms and Direct3D Video Output modifications for Vista compatibility. You can download this version right from the VideoLan ftp site; Simply select the version for your operating system (Win,Mac,Linux) and install it. I had no problems using the new version. If you experience crashes you might want to try this new version out.
Open Office 2.2 released
The open source alternative for Microsoft Office Open Office has been released today. In version 2.2, users will immediately notice the improvement in the quality of text display in all parts of OpenOffice.org. The reason for this is that the previously optional support for kerning, a technique to improve the appearance of text written in proportional fonts, has now been enabled by default. OpenOffice.org’s unique pdf export function has also been enhanced with the addition of the optional creation of bookmarks feature, and support for user-definable export of form fields.
Create a secure data safe with True Crypt
This article is going to show everyone, even the inexperienced, how to create a data safe that can store as much personal information and files as you want using the open source program True Crypt. True Crypt makes it very easy to encrypt almost every piece of hardware including partitions, hard drives, usb keys and other storage devices. Once everything is setup you would mount the True Crypt container using the password that you have selected while creating the encrypted container. This is actually the only password that you have to remember, everything else can be kept in the encrypted container for safety reasons.
Ubuntu Tweaking Guide
Time has passed since my last article about Ubuntu and I have decided to concentrate more on Linux and Ubuntu because it is a real alternative for Windows Vista. The Ultimate Ubuntu Tweaking Guide is a new user friendly guide that explains how to tweak Ubuntu for a better performance. It is a guide for new users because it explains every step instead of explaining just some and assuming that the user has the experience to get to the point where the explanation starts.
Semi-Automatic MP3 Tagger
Music collections are usually a big pile of messy filenames and folders that have artist, album and song names mixed up. Some files do have mp3 tags, some don’t and it would take a long time to go through your music collection manually and edit the mp3 tags. I literally tried and tested a dozen mp3 tagger before I came up with the best solution that would be the most precise and at the same time most automatic way of tagging my mp3 files.
Use SoundJuicer to rip mp3 directly in Linux
Soundjuicer is a nice CD ripper for Gnome 2 and probably the tool of choice when it comes to Cd ripping in Ubuntu. Depending on your installation it could be that ripping CDs directly to mp3 is not supported by default and has to be added to make this possible. This could be useful if you own a mp3 player that does not support the ogg or flac format.
VirtualBox a Vmware alternative
You all know that you can run virtual operating systems using vmware. VirtualBox is a free open source alternative to vmware which currently runs on 32-bit versions of Windows and Linux and supports the following guest systems: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Linux 2.4 / 2.6, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista.
Manage your Tasks with Task Coach
The older I grow the more I have to rely on notes to remember due tasks. It is not that bad at the moment but I do seem to forget tasks more often than a few years back. A software like Task Coach comes in handy to aid me and everyone else who needs to write down certain tasks to remember them. Task Coach can be used as simple reminder of tasks to come (birthdays, events) or for business projects adding budgets and start, due and completion dates.
Why you should switch your parents pc to ubuntu
About a month ago my mother called and asked if I could help her with a problem on her computer that I build and installed for her. The computer reacted slowly to her input and was opening unknown websites for no reason. It was immediately clear that some sort of spyware or even worse virus or trojan was responsible for this behavior. She was really desperate and I began to scan the system immediately.
My first day with Ubuntu
I tried to install Kubuntu yesterday but the partitioner failed and I decided to try out Ubuntu today because I knew they were using different partitioners. I downloaded the Ubuntu iso image and burned it to a CD. I then changed the boot sequence in the bios to be able to boot Ubuntu from CD. The distribution that I downloaded is a live CD and installation CD at once which means it will boot the complete operating system from CD first and give you the choice to install it or simply use the live CD version.
Skype 3.0 final has been released
A new version of the communications suite Skype has been released today. Just head over to the Skype homepage and download the version for your operating system. Skype 3.0 introduces some new features and bugfixes, please take a look at the release notes if you are curious about them. The interface has seen some slight changes and some new features like public chat have been introduced.