Ever since Lucid Lynx (10.4), I’ve been unable to install Ubuntu Linux on my desktop PC because newer versions of the operating system did not play nice with my old Nvidia GeForce 7100 graphics card. Booting from the LiveCD would give me a black screen and hang, and none of the work-arounds that I found online would work. So for quite some time, I’ve been frozen at Karmic Koala (9.10), which wasn’t so bad, except that this kept me from trying out the newer stuff.
For years, my favorite presentation software has been Keynote on the Mac, which I use extensively in my Journalism classes. Between that and MS PowerPoint, I thought, you wouldn’t need much else. So I was surprised when some of my students began presenting information in a way I had never seen before. These presentations felt like movies—with the camera zooming in and out and panning smoothly to and from various elements scattered over a huge canvas. It was free-form presentation that still maintained some order and structure. The tool they used was Prezi, which bills itself as “The Zooming Presentation Editor.”
Are there free alternatives to OpenOffice? This question, which reflects uncertainty over the future of the free and open source office productivity suite, has gained some urgency in the wake of Oracle’s latest decision to sue Google over the use of Java in its Android operating system.
I NEVER thought I would one day be running software from Oracle on my personal computer. Until recently, the database giant just made products aimed at large corporate customers, not individual PC users. In fact, Oracle’s chief executive, Larry Ellison, had once made a big to-do about how personal computers would one day be replaced by glorified terminals that would get their applications from huge servers connected over a network. So I was a little amused to see the Oracle logo pop up when I ran the latest updates of two programs that I use quite a bit, OpenOffice.org and VirtualBox, on my Linux-based PC at home.
THE baloney detector on my computer went crazy this week when a reader wrote: “When it comes down to it, I still have to go to Windows to get work done because so many apps are just either not available under Linux or the choices and maturity of the apps are far, far inferior.” The comment left me puzzled. What kind of “work” did this guy do that he just had to run Windows? To put this nonsense to rest, I compiled a list of common applications that you might need at work and specific Linux programs that will do the job. And none of the programs I mention here are by any stretch of the imagination “far, far inferior” to their Windows counterparts. In fact, a number of them are not only open source and free, but are cross-platform to boot.
Is Linux more secure than Windows? The quick and easy answer is yes. Most viruses and malicious software today are written to target Windows systems and will not affect Linux or Mac computers. If you’re going to work – and play – in a Windows world, you better get protection.
FOR Linux users, running a new Windows 7 PC feels a bit like getting all dressed up with nowhere to go. The operating system itself is attractive, but there aren’t that many built-in applications to get you started. A recent upgrade of our office computers gave me the opportunity to compile a checklist of things to do to get a new Windows 7 PC ready for prime time.
COMPANIES that want to save on software licensing costs can get an excellent office productivity suite by using OpenOffice.org, a free and open source alternative to MS Office. Here are a few tips to help people who are making the switch.
WHAT’S the fastest browser? If you guessed Google Chrome 6 or Safari 5.0, you’re in for a surprise. The current speed demon is Opera 10.6, the alpha test version from the Norwegian company, Opera Software (http://www.opera.com). The Download Squad Web site reports that Opera 10.6 scored 25 percent better than Google Chrome 6 (development build), using the Peacekeeper browser benchmark. In fact, Opera’s developers say 10.6 users can expect a 50 percent improvement in JavaScript performance and page loading.
No relief from black screen problem in Ubuntu 10.10
I downloaded the alpha test version of Ubuntu 10.10, hoping that the live CD would solve my video problem. Sadly, the problem remains. If the goal, as Mark Shuttleworth says, is for Ubuntu to “just work” then nobody with a fairly standard desktop setup should have to jump through hoops just to get a picture, rather than a black screen, on his monitor.
THE MagSafe charger for my MacBook died last week. It had given me some warning. Every so often, the power indicator on the magnetic connector would refuse to light up, and I would have to jiggle the cable to just the right position to get it working again. Finally, it had become so unreliable that I decided I had to buy a new one. After all, it’s hardly good form to start a three-hour lecture by fumbling with the cord of your power adapter for 10 minutes, hoping the charge light will come on while your battery is draining.
AFTER installing a new version of Ubuntu Linux, I always add a number of utilities that make my computing tasks easier. Most of these are not full-blown applications, per se, though some are really quite complex in their own right. Rather, the focus is on enhancing the capabilities of an already great operating system. The list of utilities has changed over the years, but some of my old favorites are still seeing a lot of action. All the utilities featured here can be installed through the Synaptic Package Manager.
Digital Life is a blog that features a technology column by the same name that appears every Tuesday in Manila Standard Today, a national daily from the Philippines. This blog gives readers easy access to the column, which started in November 2002. Copyright 2009 Chin Wong.
Now showing on my PC desktop: Maverick Meerkat
THE baloney detector on my computer went crazy this week when a reader wrote: “When it comes down to it, I still have to go to Windows to get work done because so many apps are just either not available under Linux or the choices and maturity of the apps are far, far inferior.” The comment left me puzzled. What kind of “work” did this guy do that he just had to run Windows? To put this nonsense to rest, I compiled a list of common applications that you might need at work and specific Linux programs that will do the job. And none of the programs I mention here are by any stretch of the imagination “far, far inferior” to their Windows counterparts. In fact, a number of them are not only open source and free, but are cross-platform to boot.
Is Linux more secure than Windows? The quick and easy answer is yes. Most viruses and malicious software today are written to target Windows systems and will not affect Linux or Mac computers. If you’re going to work – and play – in a Windows world, you better get protection.
FOR Linux users, running a new Windows 7 PC feels a bit like getting all dressed up with nowhere to go. The operating system itself is attractive, but there aren’t that many built-in applications to get you started. A recent upgrade of our office computers gave me the opportunity to compile a checklist of things to do to get a new Windows 7 PC ready for prime time.
COMPANIES that want to save on software licensing costs can get an excellent office productivity suite by using OpenOffice.org, a free and open source alternative to MS Office. Here are a few tips to help people who are making the switch.
THE MagSafe charger for my MacBook died last week. It had given me some warning. Every so often, the power indicator on the magnetic connector would refuse to light up, and I would have to jiggle the cable to just the right position to get it working again. Finally, it had become so unreliable that I decided I had to buy a new one. After all, it’s hardly good form to start a three-hour lecture by fumbling with the cord of your power adapter for 10 minutes, hoping the charge light will come on while your battery is draining.
AFTER installing a new version of Ubuntu Linux, I always add a number of utilities that make my computing tasks easier. Most of these are not full-blown applications, per se, though some are really quite complex in their own right. Rather, the focus is on enhancing the capabilities of an already great operating system. The list of utilities has changed over the years, but some of my old favorites are still seeing a lot of action. All the utilities featured here can be installed through the Synaptic Package Manager.
