Handy Tips To Be More Productive Using GIMP

GIMP - also known as the GNU Image Manipulation Program - is well known as an excellent graphics editor. Many people even consider it as useful as Adobe Photoshop for creating images for the web. I have been using GIMP for a long time now and have used it for such tasks as screen capturing, optimizing images, retouching photos, scaling images, special effects and so on. GIMP is available for multiple platforms including Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. Why, GIMP is even available as a portable application  which allows you to run it directly from a USB pen drive.

The following are a few handy tips which will help you be more productive in GIMP.

Damn Small Linux - DSL

Damn Small Linux - also known as DSL - is a fully functional Desktop oriented Linux distribution which fits in a business card sized (50 MB) CD.

Is Linux kernel getting bloated ? Linus Torvalds says Yes!

A lot of bloat is creeping into the Linux kernel. This was the startling revelation made by none other than Linus Torvalds - Founder of the Linux kernel. He said this in his talk at LinuxCon - an event that brings together Linux gurus and open source leaders to provide collaboration and education space for all matters on Linux.

Haiku - A new Operating System inspired by BeOS

Haiku is an open source operating system that specifically targets personal computing. It is inspired by  the now defunct BeOS and reimplements both the BeOS technologies as well as the end user experience.  Recently the Haiku team unveiled the first release candidate RC1 by releasing a liveCD of Haiku R1 Alpha1.

The Haiku R1 Alpha1 live CD ISO is only 380MB in size. Succumbing to curiosity, and because of its tiny size, I downloaded Haiku live CD and took it for a run. Simply put, I was really impressed with the user interface and the stability of the OS. I found the Haiku Desktop interface to be unique providing a radical approach to desktop computing.

Netcat, nc command

Netcat - also known as nc is considered the Swiss army knife of system administrators. In its most basic usage, netcat acts as a simple utility which reads and writes data across network connections, using TCP or UDP transport protocols. But this simple tool finds diverse uses for system administrators (Unix & Linux alike). Hence the name Swiss army knife.

Scribus - Free Desktop Publishing Software

Scribus is an open source Free DTP software in the same league as Adobe Pagemaker. Scribus is the ideal free page layout program for business, education, and small- and home-office professionals who want to create high-quality publications such as brochures and newsletters.

Some of the notable features of Scribus are as follows :

Apple - Exploring the innards of a Mac Mini

I have always been allured by Apple products - more for their aesthetic beauty than for their function - be it iPhone, iMac,  iPod, iNano et al. Yes, Apple products usually cost the bomb to buy compared to similar products from contenders and we ordinary users may as well stay away from them if we do not want to splurge on gadgets. However, all things said and done, Apple products do appeal to most people's sense of beauty and they are getting popular as days go by.

Open Solaris vs Linux - A Comparison

OpenSolaris and Linux to a layperson can seem similar in many ways. They both use more or less the same end user applications, have similar desktops, and are open source. But scratch the surface and you find that they are entirely different products all together.
Some of the notable differences which an end user may encounter are as follows :

Tornado - An open source web server, courtesy of Facebook

Facebook has released one of its core piece of infrastructure called Tornado under an open source license.

From the Facebook announcement:

Tornado is a relatively simple, non-blocking Web server framework written in Python, designed to handle thousands of simultaneous connections, making it ideal for real-time Web services.

Apple Open Sources Snow Leopard's Grand Central Dispatch

Apple has again jumped on to the open source bandwagon by releasing the code for its Grand Central Dispatch technology.

Grand Central Dispatch takes full advantage by making all of Mac OS X multicore aware and optimizing it for allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors. Grand Central Dispatch also makes it much easier for developers to create programs that squeeze every last drop of power from multicore systems.

25 Linux Tips for Windows Users

Are you an exclusive Microsoft Windows user who wishes to switch to Linux? Perhaps you are looking forward to embracing Linux for the following reasons -

1. Microsoft Windows is closed source and you seek an open source alternative.
2. You want to check out what the hype on Linux is all about.
3. You are fascinated by the rock solid stability and security you will get in using Linux which is lacking in Windows.
4. You seek change just like the American President Obama, albeit at a much more subdued, personal level.
   

What ever your reason for ditching Windows, there is help at hand. Techradar has published 25 Linux tips for Windows switchers which makes an interesting read.

The article starts from the basics of choosing the right Linux distribution, package management basics, and rounds off with a few tips on troubleshooting in Linux when you hit a snag.

Full RSS feeds now enabled for this blog

I am happy to let you know that now you can read full posts directly in your RSS reader without visiting this blog. Till date, when anyone subscribed to this blog, they were provided only a teaser of the post, and to read the full post, they had to click the link and visit this blog. Now no more. You can read the full articles right in your RSS reader itself. Hope you find this new change useful.

Please let me know if you are unable to access the full posts of this blog in your RSS feeds.

Blogger finally gets the 'Read More' link as in Wordpress

It is good news for all Blogger fans out there. Your favourite blogging platform finally gets the "Read more" link.

It had been a sticking point that a blogging platform as versatile as Blogger didn't have such a basic functionality as "Read more" which most other blogging software considered passe. But not any longer. Now you can stop using code hacks to get what you want.