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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Linux Game Review: Sun Blast
By | November 3, 2010 |
Remember those insane arcade games that kept you up all night, blasting away at ship after ship, leading up to a showdown with a massive star destroyer that relentlessly hurled various dangerous objects at you? More than likely, the game you remember offered a 2D top-down or side-scrolling view of space. But now take a moment to imagine all of that in 3D.
Sun Blast is a cross-platform, independent game from OBLONE Software that offers you exactly that experience. With it, you will feel like you are immersed in the arcade action, as space debris, enemy vessels, and menacing star ships all take aim at you.
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Qalculate is a Powerful Calculator For Linux
By | October 15, 2010 |
Regardless which platform you are using, there’s bound to be a calculator included in the stock OS. For simple calculation, these calculators work fine, but if you want to do more complex calculation, like solving an algebraic expression, it won’t make the mark.
Qalculate is a powerful calculator for Linux that can solve complex mathematical expressions, units conversion, graph plotting and many more sophisticated functions.
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Linux Gaming: Wine vs. Cedega vs. CrossOver Games
By | October 13, 2010 |
In previous posts, I have highlighted some of the outstanding new native Linux games that are coming out soon or have been out but may not be well known. For many Linux gamers, however, the pool of native Linux games is still too small.
As most already know, it is possible to play some Windows games in Linux using Wine. Additionally, there are two prominent commercial spin-offs of Wine that are both designed specifically for gaming: Cedega and CrossOver Games. At one time, there was little difference between the three, other than the graphical configuration interfaces. But over time, each has developed its own feature set and, in some cases, support for Windows functionality that the others do not possess.
Wine is completely free, and most Linux distributions make it easy for users to install it. Cedega is available for $25 for a 6-month subscription. CrossOver Games sells for a one-time fee of $39.95. Wine and CrossOver Games are also available for Mac OS X. The makers of Cedega sell a similar product called Cider for Mac users.
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How to Resize Video In Mac, Windows and Linux
By | September 30, 2010 |
Occasionally, while editing videos, we might need to resize it and change the screen resolution. It could be because the video screen size is too big to be uploaded to YouTube, or you need to enlarge a small video to fill up your large monitor.
Previously, we have mentioned several software for video editing, compression and even conversion. One thing that we didn’t touch on was video resizing. While there are plenty of video editing software out there (both free and commercial), not all of them support video resizing. Microsoft’s Windows Movie Maker is one of those without the video resizing feature. In addition, for those video editors that come with video resizing feature, it is always embedded deep in the settings and is not available in the frontend.
In this tutorial, let’s see how you can resize your video in various OS.
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5 Intriguing KDE Apps
By | September 29, 2010 |
The beauty of an open development platform is that anyone can take a stab at creating an application. KDE, which is built upon the Qt application and UI framework, is a shining example of this. A quick look at KDE-Apps.org reveals that new apps are added daily. I periodically browse through the latest KDE apps to see if anything stands out, and I found these five, some of which are in early development.
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Ninite For Linux: Install Multiple Applications Without Any Hassle
By | September 23, 2010 |
The one thing that almost everyone does after a system reformat is to re-install all the applications and restore the system back to its previous state. A troublesome, boring, and sometime tedious task. It can get worst if you do not have access to the Internet. Wouldn’t it be great if you can install all those applications at one go?
Windows users will be familiar with the popular Ninite web app that packages up your favorite apps into one installer. You just need to run the installer to install all your applications in one go. The good news is, a Linux version is now available.
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How to Limit The CPU Usage of Any Process in Linux
By | September 22, 2010 |
Have you ever experienced the situation where you open one particular application (such as Firefox) and it brings the whole system to a standstill? If you are running a web server, the last thing that you want to see is to have an application crashes the whole system and bring all the websites down.
Cpulimit is an application for Linux that can limit the CPU usage of a process. It is useful if you want to restrict a particular application from taking up too much CPU resources and thereby crashing the system. This can also be useful when you need to run several intensive programs simultaneously.
Note: cpulimit should work for all Linux distro. In this tutorial, we will be using Ubuntu for illustration.
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Spiritual And Religious Software For Linux
By | September 22, 2010 |
While some might assert that Linux itself is a religion, there are plenty of religious and spiritual people who use and love Linux. Therefore, there are naturally a number of software packages for various religions. In my search for such software, I have undoubtedly left some out, so feel free to suggest any I have missed. Most of the software is for the two largest religions: Christianity and Islam. Because of this, I have not included every software package for those two religions.
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How to Create a Custom Debian Live CD through the Web
By | September 14, 2010 |
If Debian means one thing, it’s functionality. You typically don’t go to Debian for cutting-edge features or fancy bells and whistles, but if you’re after an extremely versatile, stable, and dependable Linux, it can’t be beat. One of Debian’s newer offerings is the ability to create a custom Live CD directly from their website. You choose your options, they generate the image. Like all things Debian, it’s not flashy, you’ll get no AJAX animations or jQuery effects, just a functional, flexible, and powerful tool, and here’s how to use it.
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