Desktop FreeBSD Part 4: Printing

As a writer, the only reason I ever got that first computer was because it was far more efficient than a typewriter, and certainly more readable than my own handwriting. The sheer volume of what I've turned out over the years would be impossible for me to manage on paper. Add to that all the stuff written by others that I wanted to save, and it boggles the mind. Still, most of what I've written is read by others on paper. That means I have to translate my electronic files into readable paper copies. That first computer would have been nearly useless to me without the attached printer.

Five Points for KDE

I think that Tim Butler’s article, “Why GNOME’s Got it Right,” raises some serious points worthy of consideration by every KDE user and advocate. However, I would like to add the following points that should also be considered.

Stirring the GNOME Fires

Over the past two years or so, Tim Butler and I have discussed GNOME quite a bit. He likes the current trend, and I don't. Tim's article, "Why GNOME's Got It Right" was partly stirred by the Slashdot article but also by our discussion.

Why GNOME's Got it Right

Last week, some developers disagreeing with the direction of the GNOME Project decided to create what appears to be the beginning of a fork of the project — GoneME. Like many from KDE Project and elsewhere in the community, GoneME's major complaints boil down to what has proven to be GNOME's most controversial move: simplifying the user interface. While naysayers, including the GoneME developers, seem to feel that the simplification of the interface, undertaken with the encouragement of such GNOME leaders as Havoc Pennington of Red Hat, is actually just “dumbing down” the interface, I think these critics are actually missing the point completely.

The Stealth Desktop II: Sight and Sound

I hope that Part I of the Stealth Desktop series was a good start for our series about using Slackware as a desktop. I would like to thank our kind readers for the feedback, encouragement and suggestions.

Rendezvous with the Desktop

This past week a number of exciting developments toward the popularization of Open Source desktops occurred. Novell heralded the arrival of Mono 1.0. Mandrakesoft announced the acquisition of a French IT services firm, further indicating its return to financial health. Real Networks inked deals to bundle Helix and Real Players on major GNU/Linux desktops. Out of the noise and clammer, nevertheless, there are two announcements that I believe are the best tickets to moving the GNU/Linux desktop forward, and they both had a name other than Red Hat, Novell or Mandrakesoft attached to them. They both involved Apple.

The Stealth Desktop Part I: Finding a New Distro

The issue of GNU/Linux as a desktop operating system is hot these days. You can hear here and there about someone switching their proprietary desktops, or considering doing such a thing, to GNU/Linux. Most of these stories refer to some desktop-oriented or mainstream distribution, such as Mandrake, Red Hat/Fedora, or SUSE. However, there is one distribution you would seldom hear about and yet, it is uniquely qualified for heavy-duty desktop usage. I would like to show you how you could use this GNU/Linux distribution for desktop fun and profit.

Update [July 9, 2004]: thanks for all the feedback. Some minor corrections added. --Eduardo

Sim-Fireworks: A Treat For The Fourth

Everyone loves fireworks, right? Well, at least most everyone does. If money and a safe place were not considerations and you were free to produce the show of your dreams, what kind of show would you produce? Would you want to plan it down to the minute details or would you prefer just to select the varieties of fireworks? This fourth of July, what if you could do all of that — on your Macintosh computer? Read on to find out how.

Fire Internet Explorer and Outlook Express With Mozilla Alternatives

With new security holes appearing every day and spy/ad-ware spreading rampantly, the combination of Internet Explorer and Outlook Express are becoming increasingly dangerous choices for safe web browsing and e-mail. Yet what is one to do if they can't or won't switch from Windows to another operating system? It's simple: bring the security and power of Open Source applications to Windows. The Mozilla Project's Firefox web browser and Thunderbird e-mail client do just that, and do it without sacrificing the easy-to-use, clean interface users demand. As associate editor Ed Hurst noted in his OpenCD review earlier this year, many of the Open Source community's best applications are available conveniently packaged for Windows, and the Mozilla Project's applications are no exception.

Switching to a New View

A few months ago, we looked at the IOGear Miniview Extreme series of keyboard, video and mouse switches (KVM's) that can be used to control multiple computers without the clutter of multiple input and display devices. Unlike many KVM's, however, the IOGear unit provided multimedia support — speaker and microphone sharing — in addition to its abilities to share the normal stuff people expect KVM's to work with. Like the IOGear units, Avocent's creatively named SwitchView USB 4-port (Audio) Switch, is one of these new “KVMP” multimedia switches.