June 17, 2008
K Desktop Environment or simply KDE is an international technology team that creates free software for desktop and portable computing. Its products include a modern desktop system for Linux and UNIX platforms, comprehensive office productivity and groupware suites plus hundreds of software titles of various categories consisting of Internet and web applications, multi-media, entertainment, educational, graphics and software development.
There is always room for improvement in this feature-packed alternative to the commonly found commercial operating systems/desktop combinations. Source codes are available for anyone to look at, learn from, modify and improve. Helping programmers to create robust and comprehensive applications is an entire infrastructure that has been designed and implemented for such purpose.
June 16, 2008
Paradise in all its human forms is bound to be disturbed at some point in time owing to human nature. The free software community, a semblance of paradise in itself, has not been exempt from this. Linux, the kernel, which is often thought of as the flagship of free software has had versions which are partially non-free. The presence of binary-only programs in source files of Linux poses a question as to whether Linux binaries can be legally distributed at all.
Developments have given rise to differences in opinion as to whether being “technically better” is more important than freedom. The non-free “official” version of Linux promoted by the kernel’s original developer and a “completely free Linux” as promoted by the free software community cannot exactly be considered as singing the same tune. Eventually, it boils down as to which could better serve the users’ needs.
Financial Accounting for Linux Users
June 15, 2008
GnuCash is a personal and small business financial-accounting package that is freely licensed under the GNU GPL. It is available for GNU/Linux as well as BSD, Solaris, Mac OSX and Microsoft Windows. It supports about 29 different languages and has multi-currency support forming its fundamental design principles. Initially aimed at developing capabilities similar to Intuit’s Quicken application, it has recently been made to focus on adapting modern desktop support library requirements.
GnuCash is primarily an accounting software that implements a double-entry bookkeeping system. It has an interface that is structured around a chart of accounts with each account opening into an individual view called a register.
Setting up a new website has never been easier and building a professional looking online presence can now be accomplished in a matter of minutes. My favorite content management system is by far wordpress for its simple and light infrastructure while allowing extremely advanced website functionalities with the help of widgets and plugins. Most people associate wordpress with blogs (as the program was intended for) and in fact smokinlinux.com is powered by wordpress as well. But I find that WP is a great solution for any type of site, not only blogs.
What’s really great about WP is the fact that it has been embraced by such a wide user base and therefore so many themes have been created for it, many of them distributed free to use. You can find a huge selection of free wordpress themes at topwpthemes.com. Don’t assume that just because the themes at topwpthemes.com are free, they are of poor quality. In fact, you can find extremely professional looking themes on the site to match any type of blog or website. I especially recommend checking out their “widget ready” selection (currently at 122 themes) to make sure your site is future proof and ready for any enhancements you may wish to add.
