All posts tagged: Linux

stillOS offers one of the best Linux onboarding experiences I’ve ever seen

stillOS offers one of the best Linux onboarding experiences I’ve ever seen

Published by skeptic

Jack Wallen/ZDNET  Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET’s key takeaways stillOS is a new Linux distro aimed at consumers. This distro makes it incredibly easy to start using Linux. You can customize the desktop without having any Linux skills. Every Linux distribution approaches the onboarding process differently. Some take a minimal approach, while others hold new users’ hands every step of the way.  And then there’s the rare distro that finds the sweet spot where it makes it easy to take your first steps with Linux, but doesn’t make long-time users feel like they’re using a distribution with training wheels. Also: 5 of the easiest, quickest Linux distros to install – and I’ve tried them all stillOS is a distribution that nails the process of setting up Linux for the first time. Here’s how the stillOS website describes the distro: We got annoyed with Windows making us the product, and Linux being too complicated. So we made stillOS. We believe stillOS is the first truly consumer ready Linux distribution. Thanks to …

This Linux and Windows app makes managing all your documents easier

This Linux and Windows app makes managing all your documents easier

Published by skeptic

Jack Wallen/ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET key takeaways Paperwork is a free, open-source organization tool. The software is available on Linux and Windows. It allows you to tag, label, and search documents Because I’m a writer, I keep a lot of documents. By a lot, I mean hundreds. I need a way to organize my documents and avoid chaos. I could organize the documents manually, but that would take a very long time. On top of that, searching by hand is a hit-or-miss process. That’s where Paperwork comes into play. This simple (yet very effective) tool allows you to add documents, move the documents (to organize them), search them (by title or even within the body), export them, add keywords and labels to documents, view document properties, search by keyword(s), and change the document view. Also: This free tool keeps my bookmarks synced across Chrome, Firefox, and Edge – here’s how The Paperwork feature list includes scanner support, PDF support, auto-detection of page orientation, OCR, document labels, auto-guessing of labels to …

I gave my Linux gaming PC the Steam Machine trick everyone wants

I gave my Linux gaming PC the Steam Machine trick everyone wants

Published by skeptic

When Valve announced the Steam Machine, there was a lot of dismay (and rightfully so) over its price, and it was possible to even assemble a more powerful PC for roughly the same budget. But specs only tell half of the story. The Steam Machine also has a bunch of other tricks up its sleeve, something which many will find expensive (or in some cases, outright impossible) to implement. Whether it’s the custom, tiny Mini-ITX form factor or the whisper-quiet, low-power internals, the Steam Machine still excels in a few areas. One of these areas would be HDMI-CEC support — which comes fully baked in and integrated right into SteamOS. Since SteamOS runs on x86 hardware, this should be easy to implement, right? I wish it were that easy. I spent weeks in this rabbit hole, trying to make it work, and I believe I have a (mostly) foolproof workaround. Related Your next “HDMI” cable might actually be a USB-C Didn’t you hear? HDMI is dead. To get HDMI-CEC working, you’ll need three things A …

This simple antivirus tool is the easiest way to scan your Linux PC for threats – for free

This simple antivirus tool is the easiest way to scan your Linux PC for threats – for free

Published by skeptic

Jack Wallen/ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET’s key takeaways ClamUI is a user-friendly UI for ClamAV. This app is free to use and easy to install. The app includes profile scanning, logs, stats, and more. It’s long been debated whether Linux needs antivirus protection. I tend to fall on the side of not needing it, but I rarely share files with Windows users. However, on those rare occasions when I have to share files with Windows users, you can bet I want to make sure that they are free of viruses. To that end, I depend on ClamAV to ensure I’m not sending malicious files to other people. ClamAV is one of the more popular AV solutions for Linux. It’s open source, free, and can run via the command line or a GUI. The thing is, I’m not a big fan of the default ClamTK GUI. I find that it looks out of date and isn’t very intuitive. There’s another option, however, called ClamUI, which is much more modern-looking …

‘Just a hobby, won’t be big’: Linus Torvalds introduced Linux 35 years ago – and almost called it Freax

‘Just a hobby, won’t be big’: Linus Torvalds introduced Linux 35 years ago – and almost called it Freax

Published by skeptic

Screenshots from Linux Foundation YouTube channel / ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET’s key takeaways At the start, Torvalds had no clue how big Linux would become. Some early developers still work on Linux today. Torvalds has no intention of ever stopping work on Linux.  In 1991, Unix was an important but secondary x86 operating system. That year, on Aug. 25, a Finnish graduate student named Linus Benedict Torvalds announced on the Usenet group comp.os.minix that he was working on “a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.”  No one knew it, not even Torvalds, but the technology world was about to change forever. Also: Linux’s remarkable journey from one dev’s hobby to 40 million lines of code – and counting Thirty-five years later, Linux rules IT. Almost all major websites, including Google, Facebook, and Wikipedia, run on Linux. The same is true of the cloud. Even on Microsoft’s Azure, Linux is the most popular operating system. As for supercomputers, the world’s …

China joins Europe in scrapping Windows for Linux

China joins Europe in scrapping Windows for Linux

Published by skeptic

Sapphire/Moment/Getty Images Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET’s key takeaways The Chinese government is dumping Windows for some desktops. A Linux desktop version will replace Windows. The most likely candidates are Kylin OS or UOS. According to a Bloomberg report, attributed to China’s Ministry of State Security, the country has ordered some government agencies to drop Windows 10 China Government Edition for Chinese-made Linux distributions.  Why not Windows 11? Because China, like many other non-US governments, no longer trusts American companies with their software and services. This approach is all about digital sovereignty. Also: How digitally sovereign is your organization? This Red Hat tool can tell you in minutes In addition, even before the recent trend of governments outside America moving away from Windows, Beijing has started a long-running push to replace foreign technology in sensitive systems with domestic, open-source alternatives.  Specifically, Chinese officials said they had data security concerns about Windows, but didn’t give any details. Microsoft told Bloomberg that “Microsoft is not aware of a security incident affecting this …

Can MainstreamOS finally make Linux a household name? I tried it to find out

Can MainstreamOS finally make Linux a household name? I tried it to find out

Published by skeptic

Jack Wallen/ZDNET  Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET’s key takeaways There’s finally a Linux distro that makes Arch and Hyprland easy. Mainstream OS is everything you need in a desktop. This distro is beautiful, useful, efficient, and free. Every time I test an Arch-based distribution, I think, “When will Arch be my go-to?” Likewise, when I test the Hyprland tiling window manager/compositor, I think, “When will Hyprland be my go-to?” And then I run into a Linux distribution that not only combines the two, but does so in a way that leaves me wide-eyed in amazement, thinking, “Why hasn’t someone done this before?” Also: 10 Linux apps I install on every new machine (and why you should, too) That was my immediate reaction to MainstreamOS, a Linux distribution that is as polished as any I’ve ever beheld. The MainstreamOS site says it’s “one open system that feels right whether it’s your first Linux or your tenth. Nothing here needs a terminal, and nothing can’t be undone. Make yourself at home.” That …

The 6 AI-free Linux distros I recommend most – and why they’re likely to stay that way

The 6 AI-free Linux distros I recommend most – and why they’re likely to stay that way

Published by skeptic

Jack Wallen/ZDNET Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET’s key takeaways Not all Linux distributions will eventually include AI. Developers’ ethos often runs counter to AI technology.  Jack Wallen expects these six distros will continue to shun AI. AI is everywhere, and the technology’s tendrils continue finding their way into more and more places. Will we soon see AI in shopping carts, waffle makers, heated blankets — rocks? OK, maybe AI in rocks is a stretch, but you get the point. Microsoft and Apple are embedding their respective AIs into the heart of their operating systems, and some Linux distributions, such as Omarchy, have followed suit. Also: I tested one of the first Linux distros to go all in on AI – and I didn’t hate it Fortunately, not every Linux distribution has plans to add AI into the mix. In fact, several distros have either explicitly taken a stance against AI — or have a general ethos that ensures AI will not become part of the OS.  One thing to …

AI-enriched Linux 7.2 delivers cache-aware scheduling – here’s everything new

AI-enriched Linux 7.2 delivers cache-aware scheduling – here’s everything new

Published by skeptic

SEAN GLADWELL/ Moment via Getty Images Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. ZDNET’s key takeaways The latest Linux kernel incorporates many AI fixes. Cache-aware scheduling will speed up processing. The latest kernel boasts other improvements. Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux kernel 7.2 over the weekend. He wrote, “This last week of the release was — once again — bigger than I would have wished for, but hey, with the whole ‘new normal’ thing, if I delayed releases for that reason, we’d probably never have a release at all.” AI and Linux development “New normal,” you ask? He explained this earlier in his note about Linux 7.2’s seventh release candidate. “I can’t say that I’m exactly thrilled about the size of this all. But it is what it is: the new normal with a lot of fixes, many of them due to review by various AI tools.”  These changes — which are largely not new features written by AI, but patches to AI-discovered security vulnerabilities –add up.  Also: ‘I’m not a programmer’ anymore: …

The prediction that Linux had no future aged disastrously

The prediction that Linux had no future aged disastrously

Published by skeptic

A few months after Linus Torvalds released the first version of Linux, he found himself arguing publicly with someone whose work had helped shape the project in the first place. If you’re fuzzy on the terminology, what the Linux kernel actually does is central to the argument that followed because Torvalds and Andrew Tanenbaum fundamentally disagreed over how that core of an operating system should be designed. Tanenbaum was a respected computer science professor, the creator of MINIX, and the author of a widely used textbook on operating system design. Torvalds had used MINIX himself, and the story of how he created Linux and why it became free software is closely tied to the Unix-like systems and development tools already around him. The MINIX newsgroup was also one of the places where early Linux development took shape. Then, on January 29, 1992, Tanenbaum posted a message to comp.os.minix with a subject line that made his opinion pretty clear. The post that called Linux obsolete “Writing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a giant step back …