Articles by Jack M. Germain

Linux Mint 13, the Maya release, is an impressive upgrade that builds on the progress found in version 12. It contains few additional innovations to the operating system. But it updates numerous core elements and provides more solid performance from the two new desktop interfaces introduced in Mint 12.Linux Mint 13 offers one of the best alternati...

Few things scare me more than disk partitioning and GRUB configuration software. Both of those chores involve knowledge about hard drive operations and a good slice of luck. And both can render a computer unbootable with one slight user error. So discovering the latest version of Grub Customizer helped lower my anxiety levels considerably....

Whether you are writing code or creating editorial content, a noisy computing environment often can silence your productivity. The Pyroom Text Editor gives you a quiet environment where computing noise cannot distract you from your creativity....

The Internet is a hub for acquiring music, video and a just about anyother form of content. Miro is one of the most capable player apps thatI have seen for all of this media.

The latest edition of Canonical's Ubuntu 12.04 desktop operating system shows considerable maturity. Precise Pangolin is built around the default Unity interface with an optional Heads Up Display (HUD) designed to keep hands on the keys rather than constantly interrupting the work flow by grabbing the mouse....

Music lovers have numerous strong choices for organizing and playing their collections of songs on the Linux desktop. But music creators have far fewer professional-strength options among Linux applications. With Linux MultiMedia Studio, or LMMS, though, one option may be all you really need....

Sometimes too much of a good thing in free software can create bad impressions. For instance, some of the free stuff so easily available in Linux distro package managers is so archaic that newcomers to the OS might understandably shriek in horror.

Linux Administration: A Beginner's Guide by Wale Soyinka is a hands-on manual for IT staffers who must dance with Windows and Linux. It is a practical guide for network admins who deploy and maintain Linux and other free and open source software (FOSS) In this Sixth Edition opus, Soyinka provides an extensive update on the latest Linux distros. His...

Regardless of how good they are, some Linux applications have very little appeal to all but users with specialized needs. That is not the case with Xournal. If you do not use a tablet for inputing notes, this app still lets you create with style. ...

One of my biggest problems in managing appointments, to-do tasks, notes and reminders is that I work on a variety of desktop and laptop computers in multiple locations. To bridge the access gaps, I rely on a tablet computer and a smartphone tapped into cloud storage. When I find a really good PIM (Personal Information Manager) app, frustration bui...

Canonical, the commercial developer of the Ubuntu Linux operating system, seems at times to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. Some testers and industry watchers alike have praised the company's innovative Unity desktop shell and the Heads Up Display (HUD) bolted on top of it in this month's release of Ubuntu 12.04, the Precise Pangolin But ...

Not all search tools are the same. Just like users have a variety of Linux distros that appeal to a wide range of needs, search apps do different tasks for different users....

I thought I had found image-manipulating Nirvana with GimpShop. But the wide world of open source software and the Linux community failed me this week. My quest for a better GIMP tool to give me a Photoshop-like Windows experience (as in Adobe's Photoshop) turned into a fool's folly. ...

The TEA Text Editor is a very handy writing tool that delivers a much different user interface. For most computer users cranking out words or program code for digital consumption, text editors are often preferable to feature-bloated word processors. TEA pours on features yet keeps from getting too steamy....

Windows 8 is on its way. In fact, it's already here, in a manner of speaking. Microsoft recently released what it called a "consumer preview" version of the OS. When the final versions arrive, it will finally give Microsoft a leg up in the tablet market. That might take a bite out of the market share Android has managed to scratch out in tablets.

Mirage is a fast and simple GTK+ image viewer for the GNOME desktop. Its lightweight structure includes just enough editing power to make it an ideal choice for everyday use....

The ultra-cheap Linux computer on a circuit board has its roots in the classroom. But the bare-bones computer, dubbed "Raspberry Pi," has potential to teach industrial embedded programmers some new tricks Raspberry Pi, a US$35 credit-card-sized computer sold without keyboard or monitor, runs several Linux distros and can hook up to a mouse, keyboar...

It's no wonder that the Linux desktop operating system is not attracting hordes of new users from Microsoft Windows and the Mac OS X platforms. Linux has almost too many desktop choices, and most of them are far from good One clear exception is the Lightweight X Desktop Environment, or LXDE. I am becoming increasingly enamored with it as the near i...

The Clementine Music Player is an up and coming application that could replace your default music app. It is a close cousin to Amarok with just enough of its own personality to make it stand apart from the crowd....

If you spend endless hours at a keyboard crunching words, avoiding distractions is essential. Sometimes, the worst offender in causing distractions comes from all the bells and whistles in the word processor itself. That is where WordGrinder comes to the rescue....