Articles by Jack M. Germain

Kdenlive is a multitrack, nonlinear video-editing suite packed with some of the most recent video technologies. This application can be a great tool if you have serious video work to do, but you need to fully test it before attempting any mission-critical editing tasks Kdenlive requires some effort to learn. That's especially true if you have littl...

Software quality is a topic close to most developers' hearts, whether they work with open-source or proprietary code Assessing quality, however, isn't a simple matter. As a result, several efforts have sprung up to tackle the challenge, including the Coverity Scan project....

If you are looking for a really decent, snappy and lightweight KDE distro that installs easily onto a flash drive, check out ZevenOS' Neptune. LinuxInsider's Picks and Pans column has been devoting considerable time lately to playing with countless Linux distros. Rarely have I found truly bad distros -- after all, Linux is Linux -- but more times ...

As CEO of AlienVault, Barmak Meftah faces enemies every day who play out their attacks from faraway lands using seemingly unbeatable weapons ...

GoAnywhere OpenPGP Studio is an easy-to-use, cross-platform desktop tool by Linoma Software that protects files using the OpenPGP encryption standard. Why opt for this relative newcomer instead of other, more mature open standards-based encryption solutions? If for no other reason, OpenPGP Studio is "pretty good protection," which is the basis of ...

The Cr OS Linux distribution is an interesting blend of the Cinnamon desktop with a special edition of the Chromium Web browser.

Businesses and government agencies are in a race to gather, quantify and clarify an ever-increasing stream of data. Housing the bits and pieces of their digital treasures can be just as much of a problem as deciding whether to trust traditional relational platforms or adopt more flexible databases designed to handle unstructured data. ...

Keeping track of my bits and pieces of information across several computers running Linux and Microsoft Windows has long been a problem. CherryTree is a sweet solution that keeps my information local and cloud-free.CherryTree is an outliner-style hierarchical note-taking application that features rich text and syntax highlighting. It stores data i...

With countless high school and college students heading back to school at roughly this time of year, now is a good time to get acquainted with Zotero, a great cross-platform tool for collecting, organizing, citing and sharing research sources....

In the cloud storage competition for customers, a battle is raging over innovative software-only storage systems and wannabe innovators still hawking yesteryear's legacy hardware solutions. Dollars and performance are the battlefield stakes Nexenta, an open-source provider of software-defined storage solutions, is waging the fight with its flagship...

Paragon's ExtFS is a cross-platform application that can make using Linux much easier in multiple-OS platforms As much as I try to stay exclusively in the Linux OS world, every so often a work situation arises that puts the comfort zone of staying with Linux to the test....

"Enigma" may be the nickname of the latest release of the Netrunner Linux distro, but there's actually nothing enigmatic about it.

Cloud storage technology options, along with developing trends such as Big Data, are driving rapid industry growth. Cloud storage developed around three model options: Infrastructure as a Service; Platform as a Service; and Software as a Service. Merging with these cloud service models are technologies providing cloud computing space and cloud ba...

Looking for an everything-included Linux distro designed for people who are just transitioning to Linux? Need an OS specifically tailored for the needs of students? Then look no further than UberStudent....

KororaLinux has the potential to grow in popularity among users looking for a better, more user-friendly Linux distro that reaches beyond Fedora's enterprise appeal....

Porteus Linux is an almost perfect portable distro that gives you a choice of the KDE4, Razor-qt, XFCE or LXDE desktops in both 32- and 64-bit versions.

Shutterstock has a nearly insatiable appetite for data storage. From its inception, the company -- a global provider of licensed photographs, vectors, illustrations, and videos -- refused to pay higher prices just to stuff its storage needs into somebody else's cloud. Instead, the almost 10-year-old image-storing warehousing operation built its own server farm and created its own cloud software system at home...

BoxTone's enterprise mobility management platform is designed to bring Android security up to levels better-suited to the rigors of the business workforce, but in making Android enterprise-hardened, the company left Android's open source trappings intact As part of that EMM platform, BoxTone delivers its service in three categories of functionality...

The latest release of Linux Mint 15, nicknamed "Olivia," tries really hard to reach new design goals but is marred by a series of petty flaws.

Music management programs for Linux often leave me wanting more -- more flexibility, more file type options, more friendliness towards large song collections, etc. Guayadeque, on the other hand, is a music player that proves that less can be more....