Archive for the 'reviews' Category

Speedlinks – 18 September 2008

Below are the links which caught my eye this week, I hope that some of them will be useful and interesting for you…

  1. Canonical Store is to sell multimedia codecs for Ubuntu. Codecs are developed by Fluendo and Cyberlink. It is still possible to do sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras and get that staff installed…
  2. In A comparative look at compact sysadmin distributions article Cory Buford shares the observations he got during review of several portable (not more 210 Mb) Linux distros which may be helpful to handle “minor catastrophes”. BTW I prefer RIPLinuX :)
  3. T-Mobile, Google and HTC announce that first phone based on Android platform will be out next week (23th of September 2008).
  4. Google is going to launch its own “computer navy” (sea floating data centres). Now jokes – rumors.
  5. Codeweavers company has adapted Google Chrome browser for Linux and Mac platform.
  6. Mozilla asks to display firefox EULA in Ubuntu 8.10. Some people are really disturbed about that.
  7. XFCE 4.6 first alpha is out for public testing.

And we just launched Linux and Open Source News aggregator at Linux Screw, so you are welcome to set it your homepage ;)

Linux aternatives to Windows software roundup

Below are the links to sites you may want to visit in order to find Linux equivalent of certain commercial Windows software:

osalt logo1. Open Source Alternative
Quick and useful guide to the best open source software. You can fing here the open source alternatives to your favorite commercial products (not only Windows ones). The main advantage of this site is that you can browse through their software categories and compare pros and cons of both commercial products as well as open source software.

2. The Linux Alternative Project

The goal is to provide an informational and available website for all linux users. I will be periodically updating the database with Windows software and the Linux equivalents and alternatives.

Nice and simple site to find Windows software alternative project name and see comments on it for your Linux box.

3. Linux Screw’s Windows Software => Linux Software page
That page is based on Linux Alternative Project’s staff but it is updated more often and contains some new applications suggested by our visitors. You are welcome to leave a comment and offer and Linux or Windows application you wish to be added to Linux Screw’s software equivalents list.

linuxquestions logo4. LinuxQuestions.org’s Linux Software equivalents page
This is categorized list of programs that was prepared to prevent duplicating threads like “Where can I get a program for Linux that is similar to XYZ program on Windows?”. Useful and informative list.

5. Windows-Linux Software
Russian table of equivalents / replacements / analogs of Windows software in Linux. Very informative and descriptive. The page is available in many languages including English, Russian, Italian, Spanish, French, German and others.

Of course you are welcome to use Google to find needed software :)

Review of sticky notes applications for GNOME

xpadFew will deny that applications allowing to create notes at Linux Desktop are very useful to plan one’s working/education process. As for me I use such applications in order not to forget something I want to do :) like blog posts came to my mind when I hadn’t access to Internet, everyday system administrating tasks and others.

sticky notes applicationsI tried several sticky notes applications for this purpose but only one seems to be the most suitable for me. It’s xpad. There are also some apps that can do the same, like KDE knotes, Tomboy Notes, gdesklet notes and other. You can see apps I tried at the next screen (top right is xpad).

To install xpad in Ubuntu, just execute:

sudo aptitude install xpad -y

Don’t forget to make xpad starting automatically when you login by adding it to Gnome sessions.

Debian/Ubuntu Linux apt-get vs. aptitude

Being an Ubuntu/Debian user (yes, I use and advocate both), I have fallen in love with the Advanced Packaging Tool, also known as apt. Before Ubuntu, I played in the world of RPM hell, with distros such as Red Hat itself, Mandrake (as it was called back then), and even SuSE. I would find some piece of software, try to install it, only to find that it would choke, saying that it relied on some certain dependencies. I would install the dependencies, only to find conflicting versions with newer software. Hell indeed. So when I discovered the Debian way of installing software, I wondered why no one had mentioned it to me before. It was heaven. This is the way to software, I thought. Read more…

Popular Linux bittorrent clients comparison

Two the most popular in Linux community bittorrent clients are compared in the following article.

BitTorrent is popular peer-to-peer sharing communication protocol used for transferring all kind of files over the Internet. Two of the most popular BitTorrent clients for Linux are Azureus and KTorrent. If you’re looking for a robust, fast, simple, and powerful BitTorrent client, you will probably go with KTorrent. If you want a Java-based client that runs on every platform and allows you to configure every detail for BitTorrent transfer, consider Azureus. Read more…

As for me, I prefer transmission with my Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04 as versatile and multi-platform BitTorrent client :)




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My name is Artem Nosulchik (artiomix AT gmail DOT com) and I'm Linux/Unix, Cisco systems engineer. The main idea of Linux Screw is to share relevant knowledge, skills and observations over The Web. Here you can find a lot of information related to different Linux distributions, FreeBSD, IOS as well as a other Open Source around staff. Read more ››