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Zorin OS 8.0, released last month, is available in the free core and free education versions, as well as in a paid or ultimate version that provides support and a few other features. Though it is an interim upgrade, Zorin OS 8.0 has several very noteworthy changes and software improvements that make...

What if commercial software developers for popular Windows products sold Linux versions to a waiting market of open source users? Think in terms of paying a subscription fee to use a Linux version of Adobe's Photoshop image manipulation software, for starters. Is porting commercial products like P...

Quirky is a very interesting Linux distro that is a developmental sideline of the main Puppy Linux family. I expected some quirks in Quirky's design and performance, despite its mature growth to version 6.1 released on Jan. 1. However, the few quirks I found did not mar its performance. Quirky was e...

If you've had any technical support dealings recently, you may have experienced the wonders of a tech agent taking over your PC remotely -- with your permission -- and running ghostly commands and installs using remote-access software. I saw this first-hand recently when a Microsoft support engineer...

If you are looking for a really decent, snappy and lightweight KDE distro that installs easily onto a flash drive, check out ZevenOS' Neptune. Our Picks and Pans column has been devoting considerable time lately to playing with countless Linux distros. Rarely have I found truly bad distros -- after ...

Korora Linux has the potential to grow in popularity among users looking for a better, more user-friendly Linux distro that reaches beyond Fedora's enterprise appeal. Korora 19, released on July 2, is an interesting Linux OS based on Fedora, the community version of parent company Red Hat's Enterpri...

After a hiatus of more than two years, the developers of Debian last month released a major upgrade. That surely came as good news to fans of this granddaddy Linux OS, but the new Debian 7 "Wheezy" may not be worth the wait if you are happily using more popular Linux options. I feel somewhat like a ...

Graphs are everywhere. You find them on websites adding social capabilities. Telecommunications companies use graphs to personalize customer services. Innovative bioinformatics researchers, and other organizations are adopting graph databases to model and query connected data. Neo Technology has pio...

The latest release of Canonical's Ubuntu Linux distro, version 13.04, or Raring Ringtail, comes with a big yawn factor. I get a growing sense that the company's rejections of users' criticisms of Ubuntu's native Unity desktop portray Canonical as Microsoft in a penguin suit. Regular Ubuntu users of ...

Can tablets really perform as well as PCs in professional environments? I for one am still unpacking my laptop when it comes to power applications like imaging. Well, Adobe claims it now delivers its core Adobe Photoshop functionality in an app for Android tablets -- and looking at the feature specs...

Pencil is an advanced drawing and animation tool that creates traditional, hand-drawn 2D animations and static sketches. Think of this animation/drawing application as an Etch A Sketch with colored sand on steroids. Pencil creates bitmap and vector images. Finished animations can be exported as a PN...

If you are looking for a fast, reliable, trouble-free, lightweight PDF viewer, and you stumble upon xPDF in your distro's app listings -- keep stumbling. Chances are it will not run on your Linux configuration. In theory, xPDF is a promising alternative to PDF viewers available for the Linux deskto...