Linux is much like the stock market. Moments of happiness broken by crises. Or is the other way around? Never mind. Today shall hopefully be a day of joy, for I am about to test Plasma 5.14, the latest version of this neat desktop environment. Recently, I’ve had a nice streak of good energy with Linux, mostly thanks to my experience with Slimbook Pro2, which I configured with Kubuntu Beaver. Let’s see if we can keep the momentum.

Now, before we begin, there are more good news woven into this announcement. As you can imagine, you do need some kind of demonstrator to test the new desktop. Usually, it’s KDE neon, which offers a clean, lean, mean KDE-focused testing environment. You can boot into the live session, try the desktop, and if you like it, you can even install it. Indeed, neon is an integral part of my eight-boot setup on the Lenovo G50 machine. But what makes things really interesting is that neon has also switched to the latest Ubuntu LTS base. It now comes aligned to the 18.04 family, adorned with this brand new Plasma. Proceed.

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The issue you facing is as follows: you are trying to mount a partition on the command line. You've done this a thousand times before. Only now, for some odd reason, the system informs you that the particular partition you're trying to use is already mounted or mount point busy. This is an annoying and unexpected error.

I've encountered this issue while merrily testing OpenSUSE Leap 15. I wanted to check the contents of two specific partitions, in order to figure out which one was which - two different distros, and one had to be sacrificed for the upcoming openSUSE installation. But the installation wizard didn't have any labels, so I had to manually mount. Except I could not do this. I decided to explore the issue in more detail, and so this tutorial was born. After me.

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I was thinking, BIMP My GIMP, but then, the article title would have been too much like my PIMP My GIMP review, and we don't want that. All right, so GIMP is a very neat, powerful image processing program, with tons of options, filters and plugins. But there's one thing it does not do well - and that's automated operations. You can't really record a set of image processing actions and then repeat them at will.

Or rather, this is doable, but it takes expertise, command line and tears. Instead, in this little guide, I'm going to show you a superior way of performing repetitive bulk actions on your images, which should help shave off a fair amount of time, reduce errors and eliminate tears. The name of the game: BIMP, and so we commence.

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Here we go again. Third time lucky. I've already gently bored you with half a dozen articles on Cities Skylines traffic management, offering ideas and solutions to make the game's engine and somewhat incomplete pathfinding algorithms work with you, rather than against you. After all, urban simulation is meant to be fun!

All my previous guides so far had one problem - they were expensive. The recent ones focused more on making the monetary side of things tick, too, but proposed infrastructure still came with a hefty bill, making my cities less profitable. So I got me thinking. Can I be cheap - but also make kickass 100K+ cities with high demand, stunning layout and efficient roads? The answer is, yes.

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The Plasma desktop has many virtues. It's elegant, stylish, and you can customize the living daylights out of it, if such a need grabbeth thy heart. But then, side by side with this modern, sleek look, you get some rather odd ergonomic choices. Like the fact that Plasma does not have a simple toggle to allow you to save window positions for your applications. Start a program, and it's always placed in the top left corner.

In this tutorial, I will show you how you can work around this issue. And that way, you will achieve the expected functionality, which exists elsewhere, of being able to have your programs start with the size and position that you want, every time, whether you choose to save the desktop session or not. After me.

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The Windows Update functionality has changed a lot over the years. I remember you needed the Internet Explorer and ActiveX to download stuff in XP. Then, come Windows 7 and 8.1, we got a dedicated browser-less utility that would - will - do this for you, relatively quickly and elegantly. Windows 10 introduced yet another change - the updates are nestled inside the immersive control panel (the new settings), and you get them in a cumulative fashion, and with less tweaking than before. Oh, they also got much, much longer. And also far less stable than they used to be.

In this article, I want to talk about these changes - and what they are harmful to the user. And then, talk about what Microsoft plans to do to address user complaints (partially). And then, there's the overarching story, and this is one of the regressive nature of agile development that has taken the Internet by storm, and not in a good way. Follow me.

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Nine years ago, I reviewed Abiword and loved it. Small, fierce, full of goodies. This frugal, elegant and powerful word processor offered a staggering range of tools and options from a very modest footprint of only about 25 MB, with things like cross-platform support, portable version, Computer Modern fonts, and many other highlights. I've kept using it ever since, especially on my less-capable devices like the Asus eeePC netbook.

It is time for another review. A lot of summers have passed since, LibreOffice was born and became the de-facto workhorse of the open-source office world, with significant improvements in performance and memory footprint, especially in version 5.x onwards. Now, AbiWord had the last stable release two years ago, and it might actually be on its way to retirement, but I still felt I ought to write a fresh review. Let's see what gives.

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Recently, Google started enforcing its new looks onto Gmail users, without the ability to switch back to old (classic) Gmail. Until a few days ago, you could go back to the older version. Not anymore. The problem is, the new interface is designed primarily for mobile use. It is aesthetically pleasing but ergonomically inferior.

Like any mobile product, everywhere, throughout the galaxy, once it's applied to the desktop, it does not work or look as well as it should. Here, the main reason is - the use of the Roboto fonts. In this guide, I will show you several tricks you can use to recreate the classic looks and enjoy improved visual clarity on the desktop.

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You may have heard about this. Google is considering an idea of changing how people interact with websites. More specifically, how people interact with URLs, the human-readable Web addresses by which we largely identify and remember websites we go to. The ripple effect around this proposal has been quite interesting, to say the least. And it got me thinking.

One, the actual backlash against the change is more revealing than the change itself. Two, is there really any real merit in trying to make URLs somehow more meaningful and/or useful than their current form? To that end, you are reading this article.

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Once upon a time, visual HTML editors were all the rage. You would open a browser-like program and just type your pages, without thinking too much about the source code, the scripts, or even the looks. The magic happened somewhere behind the scenes. Then, slowly but surely, online CMS started showing up, and eventually became the modern norm. But what if you still want to write Web stuff offline?

It does sound a bit like a paradox - after all, you WILL be uploading your material one day. Still, being able to write in an offline manner has its perks and convenience. Moreover, if you do not use any CMS, writing pure HTML can be tedious. Having a nice frontend helps you focus on what you want people to read, not necessarily what machines ought to be interpretting and displaying. The question is, how difficult is this to achieve in the year 2018?

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More awesome coming your way. In the age of the bland and the superficial, Dedoimedo provideth thee with the bestest of the best, the pure and true that the Internet has to offer. One, Atomic Rockets, a website dedicated to Robert A. Heinlein and Sir Arthur C. Clarke. What that means, in tech parlance, is that aims to be scientifically accurate. If you've never read these two authors, then you should be made aware of the fact they always tried to make their sci-fi plausible, i.e. more science less technobabble.

Two, Sergio Bonelli Editore. If you do not speak Italian, now is a good time to learn, because some of the finest comic strips ever to grace the paper are of the Italian persuasion. No rush, as the publishing house has been around since 1940, and its colorful characters have stirred many a heart over the decades. Zagor, Martin Mystere, Dylan Dog, Tex Willer, Commandante Mark, you name it.

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With the release of Windows 10, Microsoft has introduced a number of changes into the Windows Update functionality. Mandatory updates for home users plus reboots (which you can work around), cumulative updates that should save space over time, while also reducing management flexibility, and also, no visible way to hide specific updates.

Such a move makes (some) sense for "ordinary" users, but it does not make any sense for advanced users who want to control what they install, specifically drivers but also certain other components. Well, in this guide, I will show you a simple, non-intrusive and official way of handling updates, so you can hide them just like in earlier releases of Windows.

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You like fonts, don’t you? Well, we all do. So what happens if you want to install a fresh new font in your Linux distribution, and that distribution happens to be running, say, a Gnome desktop environment? You will have probably noticed that the font management facility available in the system settings tool is rather limited.

First, there’s the actual issue of how to handle fonts in the first place – Gnome Tweak Tool – and then, you only have the ability to select from the existing range of fonts, but not really install any new ones. At the moment, it would seem, your one option is to manually copy font files into either the system or home directory fonts folder. Well, there’s a better way. Meet GTK+ Font Manager. Manager, meet your new user.

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Dear Developer,

I'm writing to you because I need you help.

No, this is not one of those ex-general's ex-wife offshore fund letters. I am not asking for any money.

Just recently, I have learned a very interesting, very unusual piece of trivia. It has come to my attention that while growing up, most developers have had a rather unusual diet. Unlike the rest of the population, they were quite vigorously fed carrots by their parents, which would explain excellent eyesight. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain what I am about to write next.

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From what I've been able to discern these past few weeks, there's been a big drama over at the Linux Kernel mailing list. Long story short, following a series of expletive-drenched outbursts, bickering and other misunderstanding, Linus Torvalds has come forward with an apology, and has decided to temporarily step away from the leadership position as the benevolent dictator for life, to rest, reflect on his (rude) behavior, and seek help. In other words, this is a monumental moment in history.

Most people (will) focus on the expletives part of this incident and the subsequent apology, but they are actually missing the bigger picture. It's not about the use of the English language, it is what will happen because of the use of that language. It's about the future of the Linux kernel. Hear me out.

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Over the years, my experience with Fedora has been an unpredictable rollercoaster. Some of the releases were really splendid, some rather bad. The thing is, you can't really know until you try. The one thing that can be established with a moderate level of certainty is that Fedora's overall quality has gone up. It's transformed from a purely beta-quality tester thing into an almost reasonable home usage distro, although short-lived and with a heavy dev focus.

As such, it does need changes to make accessible to the ordinary users. Since I do derive joy from writing guides and tutorials that help people use their systems more effectively, I've written numerous tweaking articles for Fedora (and other distros), which show how to obtain codecs, extra software, and such. Today, we shall take this up another notch. Follow me.

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This sounds like a rather obscure title, don't you think? Well, picture this. You have an Ubuntu distro flavor installed, in my case Kubuntu 18.04 Beaver or KDE neon, and you want to reboot. For some odd reason, clicking the right button through the system menu does not do anything. There's no restart happening. OK, so you go for a command line trick.

You open a console window and you type sudo reboot. Only you receive the following error message: Failed to start reboot.target: Transaction is destructive. See system logs and 'systemctl status reboot.target' for details. What. At this point, it seems like a hard boot is the only option. But then, that's not really a solution. Let's investigate.

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Say you have a small form-factor device with a high-resolution display. Case in point, my Slimbook Pro2 laptop, which comes with fourteen inches of equity and 1920x1080 pixel grid. This means things are rendered rather small, and if you wish to read or interact with the desktop environment and the applications in a meaningful way, you will strain your eyes - unless you're twenty and a developer, in which case you have bionic eyes.

Prompted by this serious ergonomic need, I started fiddling with different options and settings, to see if I could adjust the viewability in KDE, and make the small screen shows things in a slightly enlarged manner. This turned out to be a rather long and non-trivial exercise. In this guide, I will show you how to properly and elegantly scale the KDE desktop, GTK applications (both 2.0 and 3.0 editions), Firefox and Chrome browsers with tips that also apply to all operating systems and use cases, and then some. After me.

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Say what you will about Chrome, but over the years, it has maintained a rather consistent look & feel. The changes are mostly done under the hood and they do not interfere with how the user interacts with the browser. But occasionally, mostly guided by their wider influence in the OS space, especially the mobile world, Google has made some stylistic changes. Most notably, they introduced Material Design to the Chrome UI, and now, there's another facelift.

I noticed the new looks in the freshly updated Chrome 69 in Kubuntu Beaver, and I wasn't too happy. The font is gray and pale, ergo contrast isn't as good as it should be, and the new round design feels odd. So I decided to change this back to the older style. Let me show you how you can do this.

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File system conversion is not an everyday thing. For that matter, it’s not even an every year thing. But when you do need to convert from one format to another, the operation is usually long, tedious and sometimes destructive. Most often, you would copy files to a backup location, re-format the partition, then copy the data back. The notion of being able to do a seamless, live conversion sounds like a cool thing.

Fstranform is a tool designed to offer in-place file system conversions without a need for a backup. This program does its magic by mounting several loopback devices and uses them to shuffle bytes to and fro while it restructures the file system layout. The advantages – if proven successful, of course – are in that you do not need to worry about backup devices (could be many terabytes), and you could potentially save time. Sold! Let’s see how it works.

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Several days ago, I happily posted an article showcasing my first impressions with a recently purchased Slimbook Pro2 laptop. I was extremely pleased with how the experience went. The laptop looks the part, behaves the part. I installed Kubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver LTS on it, and things only got better from there.

I didn't elaborate much on the actual operating system experience. But this is why we're here. I want to give a detailed overview - and yet another Kubuntu 18.04 review - of the actual setup, the hardware part, speed, performance, battery, all the important bits and pieces. After all, I intend to use this machine for serious work, and everything has to be super green. So let's see.

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WordPress is the most popular Content Management System (CMS) and blogging platform in the world. There are a lot of good reasons for that. It is accessible, simple and intuitive to use, and highly flexible, with a bewildering range of professional plugins and themes. Over the years, it has asserted itself as the dominant choice for those looking to create dynamic, responsive websites. I am a happy user, too. I've been using it myself since 2012, on my book writing blog. Unfortunately, all this goodness is poised to go down the drain.

WordPress 5.0, the next major release, is going to feature a revised UI (the backend) using a framework called Gutenberg. This new UI looks like it's going to take away all the good things that made WordPress so cool, and destroy the beautiful elegance, efficiency and simplicity with something that feels like an abstract, touch-optimized experiment. Let's discuss.

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Here we go. My Slimbook Pro2 has arrived! About two weeks ago, I decided to try something new: see if I can use Linux - Kubuntu in particular - for serious desktop work. While I've used Linux professionally for more than a decade, on the desktop side, Windows remains the favorite son. But we might have a credence revival here, so to speak, proverbially. Thus, it beginneth. Forgive the pun, if you can.

Strangely, most of the feedback from readers was negative, pessimistic or both. People shared their experiences with Linux-carrying hardware vendors, and the impressions were not good. Some people warned me that my Wireless was going to suck. Others expressed dismay or dismissal for the Slimbook website. Now that the laptop has arrived, it is time to put the rumors, gossip, expectations, and desires to a test.

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Sometimes, seemingly trivial things can be daunting. Say you're writing a document in Microsoft Word. Say you're using headings (title, headings 1, headings 2, etc.), and then you want to create a table of contents, too. But then you realize you haven't really numbered your headings. You want to do this retrospectively, and you realize it's not an easy task.

In this guide, I'd like to show you how you can create smart, flexible multilevel lists with numbering and bullets, so that you can style your document headings with precision. This will also help you create more professional papers and your tables of contents will be better looking, too. Let's do it.

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Several weeks ago, we tested VMware Player 14. It was simple, versatile, robust - and not quite as rich in features as I had expected. Which is why I'm going to test the Workstation today. Indeed, the free Player is a tech demonstrator for the much more powerful and ultimately more expensive VMware Workstation Pro.

If you're on a hunt for a useful, Jack-o'-all-Trades virtualization product, you will normally be told about two principal products: Oracle VirtualBox and VMware Workstation. Years back, I bought the Workstation on several occasions, and it proved to be a valuable piece of software: Unity mode, reasonable 3D support, and it worked seamlessly both in Windows and Linux. But then, upgrades to new versions were quite expensive, and in the end, I opted for freeware solutions. Maybe this one will rekindle my shopping spree mood. Let's see what version 14 can offer us.

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As time goes by, the Gnome 3 desktop is becoming more and more restrictive in what it allows its users to do, fundamentally mistaking visual and functional minimalism, further complicating things by using a pseudo-touch interface that makes little sense on the desktop. Shame, because it doesn't make much to have Gnome look and behave the part. I've written a whole bunch of guides explaining how you can regain some of the functionality (and sanity) back, and it's time for another such article.

First, please read the basics as I've outlined many months ago. Now, we will explore additional themes and options, additional extensions, and some other settings. Not all of this will bear fruit, but it's an exercise that should ultimately give you the right pointers to using Gnome 3 effectively. Let's roll.

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Now, this is an article you probably did not expect. You all know I'm not fond of Gnome 3, because it comes with an inefficient default UI that mandates the use of numerous extensions and tweaks before it can be enjoyed. And as such, it's hardly a bundle of software one gets excited about casually, or willingly.

And yet, I did find it to be reasonable (after tweaks), and even enjoyed it to a moderately high degree in several editions of Fedora, well, for the brief time Fedora 24 and Fedora 25 were around - I am not really happy with the latest version, alas. Recently, having spent some time playing with CentOS, I decided to invest energy in using Gnome to the fullest, and that means exploring the repertoire of its available extensions. Hence this article really. Let's see what I've discovered.

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I decided to bite the bullet and try something rather audacious. Well, not that audacious. I decided to see whether it's possible to actually use a Linux machine for everyday productivity work. To that end, I have purchased a 14-inch Slimbook Pro2, and it's currently making its merry way to my home.

Now, this is not a reactionary decision. It is one based on curiosity. I am not trying to wean myself off the evil corporations or anything of that sort. I am quite happy using Windows and Linux in parallel, but then, I also want to see the Linux desktop succeed, in a real-life, pragmatic sort of way, without compromising or any sweet illusions. So I am now going to take my Linux experience to another level, and that means using a Linux machine for some really really serious stuff. After me.

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Linux gaming news are always a good thing. An exciting and important thing. The more legitimacy, popularity and quality the Linux world gets, the higher the chances of the Linux operating system, desktop in particular, making it big with the crowds. Even for myself, one of the primary reasons for using Windows is the ability to play various games.

Now, there’s a brand new and rather ambitious attempt by Steam to take the Linux gaming scene up a few notches. Several years ago, Steam really made the huge difference by creating an official version of their client software for Linux, and since there’s been a healthy influx of new titles to the Steam platform, all capable of running natively on the penguin-powered systems. This is still a drop in the sea compared to what Windows has to offer, and so there’s a new effort now. Improved Steam Play for Linux that can run Windows games through a compatibility layer.

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Judged by the value of its potential, openSUSE has everything it takes to be the perfect distro. Solid company backing, commercial roots, the awesome YaST, build service, and lots of other cool things that should make it the ideal choice for a Linux desktop. However, since 2012 or so, it's just not delivering.

This used to be my favorite, but something's gone wrong on the way to the forum. Worry not, enter GeckoLinux. It's unto SUSE what Fuduntu was unto Fedora and what Mint is supposed to be unto Ubuntu. This distro started as a one-man show, and today, it offers a very impressive list of editions - static, rolling and next, with some seven different desktop environments. More importantly, it's designed to make SUSE accessible out of the box, fixing all those issues that make openSUSE not quite as good as it should be - enter my Leap 15 review. So let's see if GeckoLinux 150 can deliver. After me.

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My Windows 10 test box has come to life through an upgrade - from Windows 8 to its current form. As such, it was never really installed per se, and the configurations are years old, a mix of Windows 8 and Windows 10 data. This is why, whenever I test a new build of Windows 10, like say Build 1804, I get emails from readers telling me that I should check what happens with a clean, fresh install.

Prompted by the SMBv1 question, I did exactly that. Along the way, I had the opportunity to see how much Windows 10 has changed when it comes to initial configuration, the whole offline/online integration, privacy settings, and other desktop tweaks. Indeed, let me show you what happens if you go for a clean Windows 10 installation, and what kind of work and changes you'll need to exercise to setup and tame this operating system into a quiet, efficient and smart desktop. The one people not too keen on the whole touch frenzy want and expect. Follow me.

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Several months ago, I wrote my Good Traffic Guide, explaining the virtues of correct urban planning, and how to manage your traffic network flow efficiently. The article focused primarily on the roads and the use of roundabouts, as well as proper trains timetable. But it was also idealistic and expensive.

Since, I've spent a lot of time playing new scenarios in Cities Skylines, and consequently, developed an even deeper understanding for the game's mechanics and pathfinding algorithms. I also decided to experiment, with one main goal: reduce expenditure. I wanted to make sure, infinite money or not, that I had cities with a positive monthly budget, and the higher in the green, the better. Hence, this improved Better Traffic Guide.

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I have been hearing about Robolinux for a long time, and getting requests to review it, probably more than most other distros. But then, there isn't that much information about it out there, except an odd article or two, no more. Intrigued, I set about exploring and testing.

Today, I will commit Robolinux 9.3 Raptor MATE edition into a dual-boot setup on my oldie but goldie LG machine, which is approaching its tenth anniversary, but still runs fair and true, thanks to its 4 GB of RAM and an Nvidia graphics card. Should be interesting. Follow me.

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I would like to brag for a moment, if I may. As it happens, bless me mom and dad, they have bestowed upon me the best bullshit detector in the world. It's an uncanny thing. Sometimes I am reading something online, and all of a sudden my eyes start to twitch and water. I begin sweating, and my lips are forming juicy swearwords in five different languages. It's happening. My bullshit detector is firing.

The klaxon usually goes to nine every time I read an article telling us why the old, proven network utilities like netstat and ifconfig need to be deprecated and replaced by some new tools that do exactly the same thing except they happen to have been re-written by some hot object-oriented jockey enamored with Python or GOLANG. This is among the biggest pieces of digital turd ever conceived, and I need an entire article to express myself. Please join me for an expletive-saddled ride.

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Smart machines are not a new thing. The concept has been around, the way we associate it with the term Artificial Intelligence (AI), for at least 50 years. However, it has recently become popular, a buzzword really, with data companies doing "deep learning" to indicate a higher level of machine intelligence as opposed to ordinary database queries.

But in essence, the machine intelligence remains pretty dumb. The aforementioned companies are hiring thousands of real people to monitor video and chat, because algorithms can't do that effectively. Captcha is another example. Translations are woefully bad. All of it actually begs a question, why is AI not really intelligent?

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This is a collection of short dashcam video clips from my roadtrip across Germany and Belgium in a BMW M4 (F82 model). The car comes with a 3.0-liter inline-six twin-turbo petrol engine developing 425 HP and 550 Nm torque, 7-speed DCT, rear-wheel drive, and lots and lots of fun (fuhn, one might say).

The video shows a variety of conditions: pure engine growl, hard acceleration, hard braking, rural roads, narrow village roads, some proper speed on unrestricted autobahn sections (I reached about 230 km/h or so), and other cool moments. There's a lot of nice engine music in the video - as good as the dashcam recorder allows - and also some muted parts, otherwise consisting of boring conversation and maybe an expletive or two.

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Back in the day, and we're talking almost a decade, TeenPup was one of those small big distros that impressed me. Based on the clever Puppy Linux, designed to run from live CD/USB on ancient hardware, this little system proved to be a gem. It was elegant, loaded with goodies, and it came with some smart, original features like the Magic Scripts, which I've mentioned in The Magnificent Seven article on ocsmag.com.

Well, TeenPup came and went, and I thought the project dead. But then, both the developer as well as community fans notified me that TeenPup still lives, albeit under a different name - Legacy OS. With a new version released last year, I set about testing.

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Long long time ago, I started my virtualization journey with VMware Player. Back in the day, it was one of the few GUI-based virtualization solutions for the desktop, allowing you to test and use guest operating systems with relative ease. Since, virtualization has become more common and more accessible if not outright decadent, and you have a lot of programs to choose, should you decide to explore complete software stacks in a contained, isolated environment.

VMware Player is currently at its 14th major increment, and this calls for a review. The program is now called Workstation Player, a not so subtle hint to the fact it's a freeware version and tech demonstrator of the fully fledged work [sic] horse. Again, another great tool, which I paid and used for many years, but the focus here is on the free utility. Let's roll.

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Several weeks ago, a reader asked me to write a new "why I use" article, based on my original 2010 report, and share a story on my current (2018) setup of operating system and application choices. I thought this could be a cool idea, although essentially, it's pure bragging. But still, it might shed some light on how I perceive and utilize software, and some of you may find this useful.

On a personal level, I like reading my own articles sometimes, as it gives me a glimpse into a written evidence of my own past. It gives me a perspective on my own past motivations and reasoning, and that's always a valuable lesson. Of course, the test of time is always a valuable one. So let's. The software what I use, year 2018 edition.

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