In our recent discussion about Ubuntu Remixes, there were a few names that kept popping up in the comments. One of them was a distro mostly unknown to MTE but immediately of interest, and that’s Bodhi Linux. With an Ubuntu base it’s got a solid core behind it, but the real kicker is the Enlightenment (E17) desktop. Over the last few years many distros have tried to base their desktops around the notoriously unwieldy Enlightenment, and the success rate has been somewhat limited (though Elive is certainly worth a look). Bodhi seems to not only include a usable Enlightenment desktop, but a few extra options when it comes to choosing just how that desktop will look and act.
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Joshua Price
Getting Enlightened with Bodhi Linux
By | January 20, 2011 |
A First Look At Diaspora – The Open Social Network
By | January 13, 2011 |
Some people love Facebook, others hate it, and many have a little of both. It can be a great way to keep in contact with old friends and relatives, but it’s also a great way for third parties to harvest loads of free data that may not be used the way you want. Plenty of social sites have popped up over the years in the hopes of dethroning Facebook, but not many have had the goods, or really provided much that would entice a user to switch.
Not long ago, a couple students got together and decided to do something a little different: an open and distributed social network that did not rely on a single company or website to host all the data. Instead, anyone who wishes can create a node for their friends, and users of these nodes can communicate without handing over all their data. This is Diaspora, and right now it’s in some of the early testing phases. We’ve put together an overview of what Diaspora has got now and where it’s likely to go in the future.
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LibreOffice – The Likely Future of OpenOffice
By | January 6, 2011 |
For those of you who don’t follow tech news, here’s a brief summary: OpenOffice, supported by Sun, has long been known as a excellent free alternative to MS Office. When Oracle bought Sun, many feared that Oracle’s control might not necessarily be a good thing for the project. Some members of the OpenOffice team decided to create The Document Foundation as a central place for the work to continue in an open community fashion, and even invited Oracle along in the hopes that “we can all just get along”. Well Oracle declined, and the result is that The Document Foundation will soon release LibreOffice, a community-based fork of OpenOffice which has already received backing from the likes of Canonical, Red Hat, and Google. While the final release is not yet available, we can get our hands on the release candidate which should tell us what kind of changes we’re in for.
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Ubuntu Remixes: 4 Of The Best Alternatives to Ubuntu
By | December 30, 2010 |
Our recent article entitled Ubuntu As Intended drew in a fair amount of discussion about the base software and configuration in the default Ubuntu install. Some readers pointed out a few alternatives that aim to take the standard Ubuntu desktop and give it more polish than the original. Some of these projects just include a few extra packages, some replace the standard software suite, and others are complete makeovers. Today we aim to sift through a few of the more popular Ubuntu variants to find the best ones of the bunch, and see what they can offer.
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Fetching Files with wget
By | December 23, 2010 |
Perhaps your X server has crashed. Or you’re working on a shell script. Or you’re SSHed into a headless server. For one reason or another, if you need to fetch a file and a web browser’s not an option, you might want to look into wget. If you’ve used the Linux shell much and worked with scripts or package installers, there’s a good chance you’ve seen wget in action. At the simplest level, it does just what the name implies and gets a file from the web (or FTP). Underneath that, though, is some clever functionality.
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Ubuntu as Intended. My Experience Of Using the ‘Default’ Ubuntu
By | December 16, 2010 |
Like many so-called “power users”, the first thing I do after installing Linux is customize it. I set it to my preferred desktop settings, applications and configuration because I know what I like, and I normally go to great lengths to get it just right. Recently, after setting up a new Ubuntu Maverick install for my wife, I began to wonder what it would be like to run a system on the defaults. To try things their way – to use Ubuntu’s desktop settings, Ubuntu’s preferred applications and configuration. This meant I could not install any of my favorite applications (Chrome, VLC, Exaile…) if Ubuntu already provided an equivalent (Firefox, Totem, Rhythmbox…). How did it turn out? Frustrating, but with some surprising results. (Note: This is not your usual Ubuntu review, but my miscellaneous ramblings, and some praises. Read on for details.)
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Minecraft Tips and Tricks for Newbies
By | December 9, 2010 |
If you haven’t actually played Minecraft by now, you’ve probably at least heard the buzz about it. Perhaps the astonishing sales numbers, or the guy who built a working CPU with game blocks, or the attack on their servers from angry script kiddies. If you haven’t tried it, imagine this: if the entire world was completely endless, and made of nothing but lego blocks, what could you build? As with many things, flexibility breeds complexity, and some aspects of Minecraft can be pretty confusing. Today we’ll cover some things like art packs, migrating between OSes, and working with water and lava.
As popular as it already is, Minecraft is still in the Alpha stage of development. The information here is based on Minecraft Alpha 1.2.5. At this point, anything and everything is subject to change.
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A Long Overdue Look at XFCE
By | December 2, 2010 |
Here at MakeTechEasier, we’ve covered Linux desktop issues of all kinds, and we’ve examined desktop environments both well known (Gnome and KDE) as well as somewhat obscure (Window Maker, LXDE). For some reasons, we’ve never taken a close look at the very popular XFCE desktop environment. It’s nearly as feature-rich as Gnome, but with a smaller footprint. As it’s been a big name in the Linux desktop world for quite a few years now, it seems we’re long overdue to check out this polished and useful collection of software.
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How to Play The Sims 3 in Linux
By | November 18, 2010 |
Wine has come a long way in the last few years, making it fairly simple to install many popular Windows games on Linux. Cedega and PlayOnLinux have made it even easier by providing GUI assistance and management of your games. One game series, however, has proven to be consistently difficult to get working, and that’s The Sims. With its copy protection, hefty system requirements, and extensive dependencies, The Sims 3 is the most difficult of all. If you’ve been struggling to get this game up and running in Linux, look no further.
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7 Best User-Made Screenlets For Linux
By | November 4, 2010 |
If you’ve never tried desktop screenlets, you’re missing out. We’ve previously discussed how to set up your screenlets, but we’ve never put together a showcase of the best ones. Today we’ve gathered seven of the best from Screenlets.org, and they cover everything from audio eye candy to steampunk system monitors. If you’re finding your desktop lacking in flash or functionality, look no further.
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