Hacking to make things Usable

I've noticed a disturbing trend occurring with software. Until recent months it was largely limited to closed source software such as iOS, but today we see it even in the FOSS world.Users hacking at locked down software just to get the functionality out of it they need.It amazes me that the faithful masses continue to do work for projects that try to undermine them at every turn. Apple users have been doing this for a long time. They buy iPhones,...

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Bodhi Linux - Swag Store, Affiliates and Memberships

Last month I did a post detailing Bodhi's desktop of the week contest. If you spent any time poking around the rest of our spiffy new website you will also notice that several other useful pages have appeared.The first is our "swag store". This is by user request - you can now purchase hats, mouse pads, t-shirts and stickers with the Bodhi Logo on them:Until June 30th you can get a 10% discount on everything you buy from the store with the coupon...

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Adobe: Thank you sir. May I have another?

If you use Linux on the desktop then odds are you know that getting support from big name companies that produce software is typically difficult at best. They tell us we don't have enough market share, they tell us we have too many different configurations, they tell us there is too much fragmentation to create software for us.Thats fine. Believe whatever lies you want and do as you will - it's your company and your software.You know what isn't fine...

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Anyone Can use the Linux Operating System

Today’s topic of conversation is something I feel fairly strongly about. It is something I have seen happen countless times, both in person and posted various places around the internet. Some semi-tech head (or Windows system admin) downloads this “Linux” thing and decides they are going to boot it up. They don’t look up their hardware online for compatibility, they just pop the disc in and expect everything to work. Now most modern Linux distributions...

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Enlightenment, DR17 and EFLs

If you have been by my blog here before then odds are you know I am a large fan of the Enlightenment desktop. If you have have never used Enlightenment before it is:"not just a window manager for Linux/X11 and others, but also a whole suite of libraries to help you create beautiful user interfaces with much less work than doing it the old fashioned way and fighting with traditional toolkits, not to mention a traditional window manager."Terminology...

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HOWTO: Easily Take Screenshots in the Enlightenment Desktop

Something I have had Enlightenment users ask about a few times now is how to take a screen shot. There are GUI tools such as Shutter or CLI tools such as emprint you can install, but you no longer have to! If you are using a current SVN revision of Enlightenment (built within the last week) you now have a super easy way to take and share screen shots of your Enlightenment desktop!Enlightenment now has a built in "Shot" module that allows you to quickly...

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BluSphere - Sleek Linux Pre-Installed Computers

I have been frequenting Linux message boards and chat rooms for several years now. During my time spent in these places I would estimate that 95% of the issues I have helped people with (and seen posted) are related to the installation and setup of the operating system. This comes largely from the fact that most of the computers you can buy come with Windows by default. The experienced Linux user knows that they need to research their hardware before...

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