After 6 months of development, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Long Term Support) has been released. This release features a couple of few somewhat major changes both in the Unity desktop shell and in the operating system core. For instance, after all these years of criticism, Unity desktop now allows users to move the application launcher to … Read more
I recently wanted to record the audio track of a streaming video in Ubuntu 15.10 but there was no application available to use by default. In the past Ubuntu used to come with a sound recorder by default, not anymore it seems. It wasn’t a big issue anyway because there are many sound recording applications out there … Read more
Simplenote is a minimalist looking and a versatile syncing text editor that was only available for Mac OS previously. Not anymore though, because Simplenote developers have just released a new version finally enabling the application to natively run on both Microsoft Windows and GNU/Linux operating systems. You can use Simplenote for creating reminders, taking notes or for even creating … Read more
As GNU/Linux system engineers or administrators, knowing the type utilities that can be used to monitor, troubleshoot and fine-tune a system is a vital part of the skill one should posses. However, unless one will be using many of these tools each and everyday, it’s difficult to memorize all of them. That’s why Brendan Gregg, who’s a senior … Read more
Solus is a GNU/Linux distribution that was first called SolusOS which first appeared in 2012. Back then it was based on the Debian core, and the desktop environment was GNOME2. But due to lack of manpower, the developers abandoned it in October, 2013. Then in early 2015 it reappeared, calling itself EvolveOS and this time it … Read more
Microsoft Windows XP is an old operating system that has reached the end of its support from Microsoft. But if you’re still required to run it, then the best way to do so is to execute it on a virtual machine. I completely switched to ‘Linux‘ about a year ago and personally, and starting very recently, I … Read more
Recently I noticed that whenever I try to increase or decrease the audio level of SMPlayer in Ubuntu (15.10) through PulseAudio’s sound icon on the top panel, there’s a small (but noticeable) delay before audio output level change takes place. The same phenomenon is present when I’m using the built-in volume slider of SMPlayer too. I … Read more
If you’re looking for a EPUB viewer (reader) to use in your GNU/Linux operating system, FBReader is a great free application that you should try. It’s free and comes with a user interface that is easy to use. FBReader however does not support the PDF format, except under the Android platform. I primarily use it … Read more
In GNU/Linux, the free command displays information about the memory usage of the operating system such as the total amount of RAM available to the system, how much of it is free and how much is used by the operating system & user applications etc. There are many other commands in GNU/Linux that can be used … Read more
I have a USB DVD writer (Imation ‘Slimtype’) and the other day I tried to erase a CD-RW that I haven’t really used in a few months using Brasero DiscBurner (in Ubuntu 15.10). It had some data on it and the file manager was able to mount it, but Brasero for some reason failed to … Read more
SMPlayer, the awesome MPLayer (cli) based GUI capable of playing pretty much any multimedia file, has been updated to the version 16.1 which includes a couple of minor bug fixes and a new video bookmarking feature. Like many newer multimedia players, SMPlayer long had the ability to automatically resume from the last position of a video, but this … Read more
Yesterday after setting up my CentOS 7 (minimal install) virtual machine, I forgot my administrator password. To make things worse, I didn’t give administrative privileges to the default user (one that you get to create while installing) either. So at the end, I basically ended up with a useless user account (ai yai yai!). Luckily, as a fix, without reinstalling … Read more