Articles by Jack M. Germain

SolydXKis a Debian-based Linux distribution that offers a choice of two desktops: Xfce and KDE. It is a very new Linux OS, but do not push this new kid aside assuming stability and performance need a lot of maturing....

Does it make good business sense to migrate corporate database software from costly proprietary platforms to free open source solutions or low-cost commercial open source replacements? The answer is a no-brainer, according to EnterpriseDB CEO Ed Boyajian....

After a hiatus of more than two years, the developers of Debian last month released a major upgrade. That surely came as good news to fans of this granddaddy Linux OS, but the new Debian 7 "Wheezy" may not be worth the wait if you are happily using more popular Linux options....

A thin line between traditional IT monitoring and management services and monitoring real-time operations divides what Zenoss offers its customers and what other vendors provide The IT monitoring space is becoming more crowded with proprietary and open-source software solutions. According to Chief Technology Officer Alan Conley, Zenoss offers a uni...

The Great Little Radio Playeris a perfect example of how great things can come in small packages....

Mozillux is a French Linux distribution that is leaner and more family-oriented than is typically found in young open source communities....

The Exaile music player hits a high note as a solid performer with trimmed-down features that make it elegant yet easy to use....

Midnight Commander is one of those original computing tools that keeps getting better with age. It may be old school, but its file managing capabilities keep it at the head of its class....

Graphs are everywhere. You find them on websites adding social capabilities. Telecommunications companies use graphs to personalize customer services. Innovative bioinformatics researchers, and other organizations are adopting graph databases to model and query connected data. ...

Gnome-Pie could be one of the best user interfaces for accessing menus on any Linux desktop....

Jason Huggins took Web browser and website testing to new levels. Pushed by several Aha! moments, he recognized a pressing need for automation in applications testing ...

The latest release of Canonical's Ubuntu Linux distro, version 13.04, or Raring Ringtail, comes with a big yawn factor.

Luke Kanies has a passion for the Puppet language he created. He always wanted to start a software company with Puppet as its foundation. The problem he faced was how to make the open source model support his software innovation without getting lost in the process. ...

Pencil is an advanced drawing and animation tool that creates traditional, hand-drawn 2D animations and static sketches. Think of this animation/drawing application as an Etch A Sketch with colored sand on steroids....

CAST Software is a software analysis and measurement firm that uses an automated approach to capture and quantify the reliability, security, complexity and size of business applications. A main company objective is increasing software assurance around reliability and security of applications delivered to the U.S. government ...

If you are looking for a fast, reliable, trouble-free, lightweight PDF viewer, and you stumble upon xPDF in your distro's app listings, keep stumbling. Chances are it will not run on your Linux configuration....

Business intelligence could be one of the most essential but little-known secrets that drives executive decisions in the marketplace. ...

Knoppix is a lightweight Linux distro that is anything but light in its features and functions. It equals or exceeds the performance of all the desktop varieties I run in Ubuntu and Linux Mint. It also could easily replace the portability on a stick I get with Puppy Linux....

PeaZip is a handy utility for reducing the size of large files and archiving different files into one big container. Unlike most file compression tools for Linux, PeaZip's user interface makes it easy to manage. When it comes to zipping and unzipping files, simplicity counts for most everything.PeaZip is a cross platform file and archive manager a...

Open source technology is central to Morphlabs' business model. ...