Articles by Jack M. Germain

Regolith Linux brings together three unusual computing components that make traipsing into the i3 tiling window manager world out-of-the-box easy....

Walmart has a new weapon in the grocery delivery wars against other top e-commerce rivals Walmart online shoppers can subscribe to a US$98-per-year "Delivery Unlimited" plan that aims to siphon customers from Amazon's Whole Foods and Target's home delivery programs....

Sometimes new Linux distros still in beta-only status can offer pleasant surprises with a key feature not available elsewhere. Check out Enso OS for a prime example....

Two of the more commonly used cloud storage services for personal use are Google Drive and Dropbox. Both cloud services are simple to set up and use reliably. Either one can be a suitable choice for storing personal files using free or paid plans That said, Google Drive, despite long-festering promises by Google to provide a non-browser-based file ...

Fraudsters have been stealing online advertisers blind -- to the tune of US$23 billion, based on the latest industry report from Cheq "The Economic Cost of Bad Actors on the Internet, Ad Fraud 2019" conservatively places the direct global economic costs of ad fraud at $23 billion and suggests that indirect economic and social costs might increase t...

MX Linux is a blend of mostly old and some new things. The result is an appealing midweight Linux operating system The midweight category is a bit unusual. Desktop environments that run well on minimal hardware typically fall into the lightweight category. Lightweight environments like Xfce, LXDE/LXQt, Enlightenment, and iceWM often are paired with...

Payment processing company Stripe on Monday launched Chargeback Protection, a machine learning-based system to limit the impact of fraudulent credit card transactions on merchants A chargeback is a demand by a credit card provider for a retailer to make good on a fraudulent or disputed transaction by repaying the full purchase amount plus a chargeb...

Open-source operating systems, in general, are less worrisome because their code is open to inspection by anyone with the skills to understand it. Does that mean Linux computing platforms from nongovernmental sources in politically tense countries are equally worry-free? At least one situation last year brought FOSS' safe-to-use reputation into que...

GitHub has made it easier for open source developers to garner financial support as recipients of paid sponsorships GitHub Sponsors, launched in beta last week, is a new funding mechanism that enables open source users to make recurring payments, much like crowdfunding services such as Patreon and managed open source subscription services backed by...

Aside from malware and viruses, nothing has the potential to be more dangerous to your computer's health than power outages. Here is how to ensure your computer keeps its boot on when a power failure turns the lights off With the approach of the turbulent summer season, it is important to know what kills the electrical lifeline, how to safeguard yo...

Linux Mint may no longer be an ideal choice for above-par performance out of the box, but it can still serve diehard users well with the right amount of post-installation tinkering The Linux Mint distro clearly is the gold standard for measuring Cinnamon desktop integration. Linux Mint's developers turned the GNOME desktop alternative into one of t...

Budgeting apps come in all sizes and shapes. Budget apps for Linux are part of a software category that has been all but abandoned. But take heart. Several Web-based solutions will more than meet your budget-tracking needs. If you still insist on finding a pure Linux-based application, do not mix the concept of open source with free If you want a f...

Flexa on Monday launched a new digital payment network that uses cryptocurrencies to cut processing costs, eliminate fraud and preserve users' privacy The network uses Flexa's Spedn app to process consumer transactions at cooperating merchants. The new payment platform makes it possible to spend Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and th...

Microsoft this week announced that its own full Linux kernel will power WSL2, the newest version of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) This marks the first time that Microsoft will include the Linux kernel as a component in Windows. Microsoft also introduced a Windows command line terminal that will add functionality to PowerShell and WSL....

Are you Looking for a hassle-free Linux operating system that is very user-friendly and extremely stable? Pop!_OS from System76 is a prime candidate to fit that order Pop!_OS is an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution featuring a custom GNOME desktop. Custom is *the* essential part of that description. The developers have done an impressive job of tailo...

Almost two years after the infamous Equifax breach, many organizations still struggle to identify and manage open source risk across their application portfolios Meanwhile, the latest report tracking open source security shows a 40 percent rise in the average number of open source components detected in each codebase analyzed. The scanned software ...

A new Linux OS gets to the core of Linux computing with a revamped desktop environment and a new way to have fun with your daily computing tasks. Developer Jacque Montague Raymer on Monday debuted the MakuluLinux Core OS. He hopes Core becomes the crown jewel of the Series 15 release family.

Feren OS might well be the Linux computing game-changer that lures you away from your current operating system Feren OS is based on Linux Mint 19 and the Cinnamon desktop environment that Linux Mint devs developed. This distro currently does not give you any other desktop options. However, it comes with a wide assortment of configuration choices th...

Red Hat is the new keeper of the keys to two popular versions of the open-source Java implementation, OpenJDK 8 and OpenJDK 11. The company has taken over stewardship from Oracle, it announced last week Oracle ended commercial support for Java 8 and the Oracle JDK 8 implementation of Java SE last year. Oracle left the enterprise Java business when ...

Hackers piggybacked onto a Microsoft customer support portal between Jan. 1 and March 28 to gain access to the emails of noncorporate account holders on webmail services Microsoft manages, including MSN.com, Hotmail.com and Outlook.com Microsoft has confirmed that a "limited" number of customers who use its Web service had their accounts compromise...