Open Source

While many popular website applications (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc.) are open source and therefore freely available, running these PHP-based apps on a Windows IIS web server requires a bit of retrofitting.

GIMP, or GNU Image Manipulation Program, is an entirely free, open-source image editor and creator that---now in its seventeenth year of development---finally seems ready to take on the big guns. Criticized for years for being too oddball, too unstable, too un-Photoshop-like, GIMP has finally edged its way into the mainstream. Yes, it's still really different from Photoshop, but after two decades of Photoshop, is that really a bad thing?

When Ubuntu decided last year to abruptly replace the familiar Gnome UI with its own Unity interface, many users were upset. And according to the latest numbers from DistroWatch, Linux Mint has been the major beneficiary, so we decided to test Linux Mint 12.

If Finestra Virtual Desktops (free/donationware) hadn't crashed on me once or twice, it would've scored at least a half star higher than the 3 stars that I gave it. It's that elegant and suited to the task. The program allows you up to 100 virtual desktops (four's plenty for most folks), has a host of options so that you can control which programs open on which desktop, etc., and even makes great use of the Windows 7 live window thumbnails.

Music lovers will appreciate any of the options presented here. While there are vast differences in how they work, these tools enable your Android device to have access to the same music as any iOS device especially if it's DRM-free.

The free virtualizatin systems scores high, as does a new PC maintenance tool Slimware. The Syllable operating system, not so much.

Drupal 7 represents a conscious effort to make Drupal easier to use, but the results are mixed.

One of the big advantages of using Linux is that its security tends to be so much better than that of the competing alternatives. That's due in large part to the way Linux assigns permissions, but it's also certainly true that the open source operating system is targeted by malware writers far less frequently than Windows is, in particular, simply because it's less widely used and so much more diverse.

OpenSUSE is back with a new, improved version, but it reminds me of how spoiled I've been by other Linux distributions. I've liked openSUSE since before it was named openSUSE and went by the unlikely name S.u.S.E Linux 4.2 back in 1996. It's come a long, long way since then.

FreeOTFE may sound like a political bumper sticker, but it stands for "Free On The Fly Encryption." The "Free" part is self-explanatory; "On The Fly Encryption" refers to the encrypting/decrypting of data as it is written to or read from your hard disk. The data on your disk (either the whole disk or a portion of it, as you see fit) is stored in an encrypted form, and FreeOTFE handles all read and write requests, so that the operating system, applications, etc, operate normally. Despite what you might expect, speed impact is generally minimal and will probably not be noticed by a user under most circumstances.

Dueling open source alternatives to Microsoft Office match word processors, spreadsheets, and much more; which one should you choose?

Three years in the making, Red Hat Enterprise Linux ( RHEL) 6 is a gutsy, green upgrade that features native support for KVM, the Linux kernel-based virtual machine.