[141000430010] |<title>gLabels Review</title>
[141000430020] |<img/>gLabels is a lightweight program for creating labels and business cards.
[141000430030] |It was specially designed for the GNOME desktop environment.
[141000430040] |This software is easy to use and after spending an hour or so with it will make you an expert.
[141000430050] |It has some basic features that most of the time are enough for creating business cards and labels.
[141000430060] |<b>The Interface</b>
[141000430070] |The interface is simple, making it easy for everyone to use the program.
[141000430080] |All the buttons are self explanatory, even small kids who don't know how to read would understand what they do.
[141000430090] |When you click the "new" button, a window will appear, asking you to choose one of the templates.
[141000430100] |Be aware that changing the type of media on which you want to print, also changes the templates.
[141000430110] |I am mentioning this because the default media selected is US Letter and it is very likely you will want to print on A4.
[141000430120] |Unfortunately, labels for mini-CD are available only for the US Letter.
[141000430130] |Going in the preferences window will let you set to work by default with A4 by and also to set how the program measures distances.
[141000430140] |A bunch of templates are available and if something that suits your needs is not available, it can be easily created using the template designer wizard.
[141000430150] |After selecting a template, a workspace is generated.
[141000430160] |It is an area that is shaped according to the template, where you can start inserting text, pictures, barcodes or draw some simple shapes.
[141000430170] |The fact that this program supports adding barcodes makes it more usable for creating labels.
[141000430180] |Please note, however, that sometimes the program crashes, especially when you work with barcodes.
[141000430190] |Try to save from time to time.
[141000430200] |With gLabels you can also create CD/DVD labels.
[141000430210] |This also interests me; I was pretty enthusiast when I saw that it has a template for mini-CD.
[141000430220] |Then I realized it is only for US Letter.
[141000430230] |Anyway, I designed my own template and I began designing a label.
[141000430240] |Right away I noticed gLabels doesn't have support for writing text on circular shapes.
[141000430250] |It can only write on a straight line and this is a little disappointing when you want to create CD/DVD labels because you can't really type much in a straight line on such a small disc.
[141000430260] |<b>Template Designer</b>
[141000430270] |This is a wizard that lets you easily create a new template that fits your needs.
[141000430280] |First you have to fill in some general information about the brand, the part number and a description.
[141000430290] |Then you select the stationary you want to use.
[141000430300] |If it is something non-standard, the program allows you to set the dimension.
[141000430310] |Generally, people go with A4 or A3 on this one.
[141000430320] |Next, you must choose the shape of your label - options include rectangular, round or CD/DVD.
[141000430330] |After this, you will be taken to a step where you need to configure the size parameters.
[141000430340] |In the next dialog the program asks how many layouts you need and it also explains whether you need one or two.
[141000430350] |The last step is about configuring the layout(s).
[141000430360] |Most often, this step requires just a click or two.
[141000430370] |In this stage you may print a test sheet, to see if the template looks right before the program saves it.
[141000430380] |The printing part is very interesting.
[141000430390] |It allows you to print just the number of labels you want and this happens in a nice graphical manner.
[141000430400] |I tested this feature and it works great.
[141000430410] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000430420] |This program is excellent for creating labels mostly due to the ease of use and the barcode feature that supports a lot of formats.
[141000430430] |Creating business cards is also simple and if you have creativity, nice results can be achieved.
[141000430440] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000430450] |When creating round labels, the fact that you can't write text in circle is a big minus, especially in the case of CDs and DVDs.
[141000430460] |Regarding business cards, it would have been nice if we had some editable templates/examples so we could inspire from there.
[141000430470] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000430480] |This program does the job it was designed for, but still needs some additional features.
[141000430490] |I think it is a great piece of software that can be used by anyone, both in a professional environment and also at home.
[141000430500] |Screenshots of the interface:
[141000430510] |Screenshots of the template designer:
[141000440010] |<title>RealPlayer Review</title>
[141000440020] |<img/>You have probably heard of RealPlayer.
[141000440030] |It is a popular video player that's been around for many years.
[141000440040] |Actually, RealOne Player is the standard player for every Symbian mobile phone.
[141000440050] |The format they use is very good for streaming media over the Internet.
[141000440060] |RealPlayer and RealOne player are founded on Helix DNA technology that is designed specifically for the purpose of streaming.
[141000440070] |On Windows, RealPlayer is a good product, but unfortunately its Linux version is flawed.
[141000440080] |This is the first time I installed it and I was very disappointed.
[141000440090] |Installing RealPlayer 10 GOLD appears to be a very simple task, because everything is packed in a binary file and executing it in the console is enough for installing.
[141000440100] |I fired up RealPlayer 10 and the first thing I noticed is that the interface is very clean, with just the basic controls needed for viewing video files.
[141000440110] |I took a little time to see what features are available in this player, because the suffix in the product name (GOLD) suggests it should be a little more than just some basic stuff.
[141000440120] |However, there is nothing GOLD-ish about this version.
[141000440130] |It feels more like a lite edition.
[141000440140] |I remembered there is something very similar to this one and it was the Helix player.
[141000440150] |I opened it and I noticed it is quite the same thing as the RealPlayer.
[141000440160] |The player is basic and some people like it this way.
[141000440170] |Still, let me tell you what nobody likes: a video player that can't even open the formats for which it was designed.
[141000440180] |That's right, on my Fedora Core 5 distribution, RealPlayer 10 GOLD wasn't able to play most of the media I tested.
[141000440190] |In the case of Real Media files, sound was playing but no video was displayed.
[141000440200] |In the case of Real Audio, the player complained that this audio codec is obsolete and therefore no longer supported.
[141000440210] |Fortunately, I played Real Audio just fine in mplayer. 
[141000440220] |The only proprietary media that played was "ram" (real audio media).
[141000440230] |I also tried to open a 3gp video file because RealOne player on my mobile phone opens them and I assumed that RealPlayer 10 GOLD will open at least this one.
[141000440240] |At some point, I suspected there's something wrong with the content I was trying to play, but I went on the NASA and ChannelOne websites to be sure the streams are fine.
[141000440250] |If you are wondering, avi and mpeg files don't work either.
[141000440260] |A codec error appears almost every time you try to open a media file and a message box pops up and tells you to check for updates.
[141000440270] |Believe it or not, even this feature doesn't work every time.
[141000440280] |When I started this review, I was very enthusiastic and curious about RealPlayer.
[141000440290] |I knew it has a tradition regarding the nice and clean interface and I also knew that streaming real media is very popular and that thanks to the Helix technology it can be implemented on a wide range of devices.
[141000440300] |I still have faith in Helix technology, but RealPlayer 10 GOLD for Linux only managed to make me feel frustrated.
[141000440310] |I think that for a year, or maybe two, I will not be getting close to this player again.
[141000440320] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000440330] |The only good thing that I can squeeze out of my mind is that it managed to play one format.
[141000440340] |That format was ram (real audio media) and I wasn't able to play it with mplayer.
[141000440350] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000440360] |Considering that it managed to play only real audio media and that the interesting stuff with video (real media) wasn't viewable I can say this program is pretty bad.
[141000440370] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000440380] |The truth is that RealPlayer 10 GOLD is actually the open source Helix player for Linux.
[141000440390] |For whatever reason, it doesn't work on some distros.
[141000440400] |RealOne Player from my mobile phone, which is based on the Helix DNA client for Symbian, manages to open all the files that RealPlayer should open.
[141000440410] |One of the biggest differences is that RealOne Player is 5 times smaller. 
[141000440420] |Check out some screenshots:
[141000460010] |<title>QtParted Review</title>
[141000460020] |<img/>I will always have fdisk, but, for most new users, it is just too complicated to use.
[141000460030] |In Windows there's Partition Magic that facilitates a lot all the tasks related to creation and alteration of partitions.
[141000460040] |Because the people from PowerQuest found the best way to do this, Vanni Brutto decided to make a clone that is freely available in Linux.
[141000460050] |Because it uses the Qt toolkit for the graphical interface and GNU parted as a base, the program was named simply QtParted.
[141000460060] |<b>The Filesystems</b>
[141000460070] |As I said before, the base of this program is parted , from which QtParted inherited the support for some filesystems such as fat32 and linux-swap.
[141000460080] |Parted supports a lot more, but in the current version of the program some file systems are handled by other software packages, which are better than parted.
[141000460090] |Parted can only detect NTFS but can't alter it.
[141000460100] |QtParted can both create and resize NTFS partitions because it uses software from the Linux-NTFS project.
[141000460110] |On the other hand, QtPparted can only create and destroy ext2 and ext3 partitions while parted can also resize and move them.
[141000460120] |For a reason that is a total mystery to me, the developers of QtParted preferred to use e2fsprogs instead of parted for ext2 and ext3 filesystems.
[141000460130] |Other filesystems like JFS and XFS are supported through jfsutils and xfsprogs.
[141000460140] |A good support for Macintosh HFS is inherited from parted.
[141000460150] |<b>The Interface</b>
[141000460160] |QtParted instantly reminds people of Partition Magic, which is actually a good thing.
[141000460170] |QtParted is far from being identical to PM but it retains the basic concept of the user interface.
[141000460180] |It shows the way partitions are arranged on the hard drive in a colored and scaled chart-like view.
[141000460190] |The chart is located in the upper right part of the interface.
[141000460200] |For partition types that are writable, the program can detect how much data is written on it and it fills that amount with a yellow color.
[141000460210] |The remaining space is shown in white.
[141000460220] |The rectangle associated with each partition displays in the upper left corner a small icon which indicates what type of operating system uses that filesystem.
[141000460230] |Because writing on NTFS partitions is hardly supported in Linux, QtParted paints this type of partition in red.
[141000460240] |The swap partitions are painted in blue.
[141000460250] |Right clicking a partition shows the available actions that can be performed on it.
[141000460260] |Below the chart is a list-box that displays all the partitions and some information related to them.
[141000460270] |When selecting an item in the list-box the corresponding rectangle is automatically selected and vice versa.
[141000460280] |This way you can better understand what partition you are about to alter and minimizes the probability for mistakes.
[141000460290] |The list-box displays the number, partition, type, status, size, the used space if it's possible, where it starts, where it ends and the label that is assigned to it.
[141000460300] |Partitions can be arranged in this list, clicking on the criteria you want to use.
[141000460310] |All the devices detected are shown in the upper left part of the program.
[141000460320] |If you have more than one device you will also use this to select the one you want to work with.
[141000460330] |In the lower left corner additional drive information is shown for the selected drive: model, capacity (shown in MB) and whether the drive is busy or not.
[141000460340] |To be able to work with a partition it should be unmounted.
[141000460350] |Currently QtParted has no help available.
[141000460360] |It is not hard at all to figure out on your own what you have to do, but some well documented error messages would be really nice to have.
[141000460370] |In Partition Magic those where really useful.
[141000460380] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000460390] |The resemblance with Partition Magic is a big plus.
[141000460400] |Support for almost all filesystems out there makes it a very powerful tool.
[141000460410] |The ease of use of the graphical interface and its power are well combined to allow less experienced users to do more complex tasks.
[141000460420] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000460430] |This program doesn't even have an attempt of a manual and at least a basic one would be nice.
[141000460440] |There isn't an easy way to unmount the partitions from this program and some users might just get stuck at this point. 
[141000460450] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000460460] |QtParted opens new possibilities to Linux newbies, but the lack of documentation might turn out to be very bad in case of unexpected errors.
[141000460470] |At the moment, the software is maintained by the Ark Linux team and hopefully at some point it will be as good as the notorious Partition Magic.
[141000460480] |Check out the screenshots below:
[141000470010] |<title>emelFM2 Review</title>
[141000470020] |<img/>A couple of months ago I wrote a review for the best twin panel file manager on the market, namely <a>Krusader</a>.
[141000470030] |Today I will review the second best twin panel file manager, which can actually be the best where very few system resources are available: emelFM2.
[141000470040] |This file manager is both light and versatile.
[141000470050] |This combination makes it ideal for the use on older computers or where users just prefer to focus their resources to other tasks.
[141000470060] |The interface is simple and, in the same time, retains an amazing efficiency that still drives people to use twin panel file managers. 
[141000470070] |First of all, when you fire up the program you notice a clean interface that blends very well in the desktop environment.
[141000470080] |This happens because the program uses Gtk+ 2.6 or newer for the GUI.
[141000470090] |Despite the fact that is very easy to use, I feel that will be liked more by users that have previously worked with a twin panel file manager.
[141000470100] |Why?
[141000470110] |Well, the bottom buttons that usually show what shortcuts are assigned to the function keys are missing and this destroys all the spirit that Norton Commander brought to PC users, back in the 80's. Using a twin panel file manager with the mouse is lame.
[141000470120] |All the function keys are usable so the people that are used to them have no reason to be worried.
[141000470130] |The main window is divided into three panels.
[141000470140] |The first two show the contents of the selected directory on the filesystem.
[141000470150] |The third panel can show the output of the commands executed in the command line of the program.
[141000470160] |Any two of the three panels can be resized or even hidden to allow more working space when needed.
[141000470170] |Each of the twin panels display the names of the filenames or directories, followed by their size, permissions and other related information.
[141000470180] |The order of these columns can be changed by simply dragging and drooping them in place.
[141000470190] |Files can be arranged with a simple click.
[141000470200] |If you want to arrange them by size, just click the size tab.
[141000470210] |In the middle of the two panes are several buttons useful for most common task you can perform in this program.
[141000470220] |The icons used for this buttons are very suggestive but if you are not sure just hover with the cursor over them and tooltips will explain everything there is to know. <img/>
[141000470230] |<img/>In emelFM2, you can set rules for the items that will be displayed in any of the panels.
[141000470240] |These rules are set using various filters witch are shown with the third button from the upper margin.
[141000470250] |With them you can easily filter by name, size, dates, or any of these combined. <img/>
[141000470260] |<img/>The second button from the margin can be used to display hidden files and directories.
[141000470270] |In Linux, a hidden file or directory generally gets a dot in front of the name and this way the system knows not to display it.
[141000470280] |In this files are mostly written settings for various programs.
[141000470290] |For people that often work with hidden files this small feature is really useful. <img/>
[141000470300] |<img/>The first button from the margin can be used to hide the other panel(s).
[141000470310] |It is a faster method to drag a panel all the way to the margin to be able to see more information in the other one.
[141000470320] |This button is also available for the output panel, making it easier to work in the command line because the command line gets maximized, thus showing more output.
[141000470330] |The output panel can be also hidden with a single click, making the best of the space available in the interface.
[141000470340] |Most of the buttons available in the toolbar built-in for the command line are just a good implementation of several basic commands.
[141000470350] |These buttons are actually handy, because using them can sometimes turn out to be faster than the use of the commands in the console.
[141000470360] |A simple umount and mount implementation is also available.
[141000470370] |Unfortunately, it can't detect the partitions that are also available but are not mounted via fstab.
[141000470380] |Because of this, the usability of this feature is decreased. <img/>
[141000470390] |<img/>The versatility of emelFM2 comes from its configuration interface.
[141000470400] |At first, you might think that it provides a fair amount of interesting settings, but if you take a closer look and click the button which says “Advanced”, you will be stunned.
[141000470410] |You can set virtually anything from here.
[141000470420] |You can make the program look and behave just the way you want.
[141000470430] |Any icon, font, highlighting color, key binding, command associated to a filetype and more can be fully customized. 
[141000470440] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000470450] |Because this program is simple, light and very customizable, it is excellent for using on old computers, in embedded systems or where a fancy file manager like krusader is perhaps too much.
[141000470460] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000470470] |The lack of a simple visual “explanation” of what the function keys do might be confusing to newbies.
[141000470480] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000470490] |This is an excellent piece of software that makes the life of many users a little easier, but I still like more to work with Midnight Commander. 
[141000470500] |Check out the screenshots below:
[141000470510] |Screenshots of the configuration window:
[141000480010] |<title>GParted Review</title>
[141000480020] |<img/>A few days back, we talked about QtParted, which is a Partition Magic clone built for Linux.
[141000480030] |Today I'll review GParted, which I believe is the best in this area.
[141000480040] |The concept behind these two is the same, but I think GParted looks nicer than QtParted and sometimes even gets the job done easier.
[141000480050] |Like QtParted, GParted also uses libparted as a foundation and several other tools for extended file system support.
[141000480060] |For this reason, you can do almost the same thing with both programs.
[141000480070] |The difference is in the ease of use, which is where GParted wins. <img/>
[141000480080] |<img/>GParted has a cool feature that shows what actions and filesystems are supported.
[141000480090] |To see it, you have to go in the GParted menu (Alt+G) and then click on the Filesystems button.
[141000480100] |The window shows what filesystem tools are available and if you need to install more for some extra functionality you don't have to restart the program.
[141000480110] |A refresh would do the trick.
[141000480120] |I couldn't do anything with NTFS partitions, except delete them, so I installed ntfsprogs 1.13 and after refreshing all the new options where available.
[141000480130] |I got a little carried away and I also installed hfsutils and hfsplus, even though I'm 100% sure I will not use them any time soon.
[141000480140] |This generated view is excellent for seeing what you can do with GParted.
[141000480150] |I have only one wish for this; a link for each filesystem type that opens a webpage to the related project.
[141000480160] |This would be good because most people don't know what project is associated with each filesystem type. 
[141000480170] |The only bad news this program brings is when you want to set the disklabel.
[141000480180] |It says that all the data on that storage device will be lost.
[141000480190] |I think this shouldn't really happen but I haven't tested it, so I believe the developer, Bart Hakvoort, because I'm sure he had a reason for putting the warning there.
[141000480200] |<b>The Interface</b>
[141000480210] |The interface looks good.
[141000480220] |It is clean and, at the same time, functional.
[141000480230] |It doesn't use flashing colors and all the info that is not needed is hidden from sight at first.
[141000480240] |In the case of the availability of several hard drives, you have to select the drive you want to work with from the dropdown menu located in the upper right corner.
[141000480250] |A proportional diagram of the available partitions is then shown in the program's window.
[141000480260] |Underneath it is a list with all the partitions and also some other details available.
[141000480270] |You can unmount a partition from within GParted, making it easy for inexperienced users to partition the hard drive.
[141000480280] |If a partition is locked, the program displays a suggestive lock icon in the list.
[141000480290] |Right after you perform the first action that is supposed to change the partition table a new pane pops up at the bottom of the program and shows a list of operations and the order of their occurrence.
[141000480300] |If at some point you don't like what's happening, an undo feature is available or you can also clear all the operation list.
[141000480310] |This software is pretty smart, so if you have some spare space and decide to create a partition and then you realize it's to small and decide to resize it and maybe then (re)format it, GParted knows that it should just make one operation to get the desired result, and not three.
[141000480320] |After you have decided how the partition table should look like, clicking the apply button will start executing all the operations and from that point there's no going back.
[141000480330] |If you want to be informed in detail about stuff you don't really need to know, you can go in the View menu and click the Harddisk Information button.
[141000480340] |Detailed information about individual partitions can also be viewed.
[141000480350] |All you have to do is right-click a partition and then choose the option that strikes you as the information button.
[141000480360] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000480370] |Everything is just fine about GParted.
[141000480380] |The interface is just the way I like it.
[141000480390] |The program works as a charm.
[141000480400] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000480410] |Saying something bad about it is difficult.
[141000480420] |The only thing I can think of right now is the lack of links to related projects that would help non-experienced users know what they need for more functionality.
[141000480430] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000480440] |GParted is a great tool.
[141000480450] |It's actually the best tool of its kind.
[141000480460] |Good news: GParted is now available also in an official small LiveCD.
[141000480470] |If you wish you can download it from <a>Softpedia</a> and burn it on a small bizcard CD.
[141000480480] |Check out the screenshots below:
[141000490010] |<title>GnomeBaker Review</title>
[141000490020] |<img/>Yesterday I was surfing the Internet and I found something that seemed to be interesting.
[141000490030] |It is called GnomeBaker, an application for burning CDs and DVDs in the GNOME desktop.
[141000490040] |This is supposed to be the best one for burning CDs and DVDs in GNOME.
[141000490050] |Because I can't decide which I like more I sometimes alternate GNOME with KDE.
[141000490060] |Lately I've been using GNOME and for this reason I try to use the applications designed for GNOME sometimes.
[141000490070] |There are some things I liked about GnomeBaker and some that I didn't.
[141000490080] |I try to combine good stuff with bad stuff and I hope I will not be too harsh, because it's not a bad application.
[141000490090] |<b>What's GnomeBaker about?</b>
[141000490100] |The first interesting thing is that for basic Data CD functionality it only needs cdrecord.
[141000490110] |This program seems to be an advanced frontend for cdrecord and I like this thing.
[141000490120] |The best burning tool in Linux, K3B, needs a lot more but it's the best.
[141000490130] |For additional functionality regarding Audio CD burning it requires encoders, which is normal, but it's not normal to have to do some extra works to make the program use them.
[141000490140] |The interface is nice, intuitive and it tries to be easy to use.
[141000490150] |The first toolbar contains buttons for performing the most common tasks.
[141000490160] |Available actions for CDs and DVDs regard operations like erasing and copying disks and also burning images.
[141000490170] |For creating custom Data and Audio disks we have the rest of the interface.
[141000490180] |It is split in three panes.
[141000490190] |In the left is the pane for navigating through directories. 
[141000490200] |If you want to burn a whole directory on a disk you just have to drag and drop it in the bottom pane, in the data disk tab area.
[141000490210] |The left pane is for navigating through directories and for selecting fies and dirs to add in the compilation pane.
[141000490220] |Here I'm used to select several files by dragging the rectangular over them and then just drag and drop them in the compilation pane.
[141000490230] |This actually doesn't work.
[141000490240] |I am also used, like many other people to select files by holding the CTRL key and then drop them in the compilation pane also with drag and drop.
[141000490250] |This also doesn't work.
[141000490260] |You'll have to right click the selection and then use the "Add file(s)" context menu that appears.
[141000490270] |At first this can be very frustrating but I guess anyone can get used to it.
[141000490280] |The compilation pane is located at the bottom of the program.
[141000490290] |It has two tabs.
[141000490300] |One is for data disks and the other is for audio disks.
[141000490310] |A nice feature is the progress bar that shows how much space is used from the disk.
[141000490320] |At the right of the progress is a dropdown button for selecting the size of the disk you'll use.
[141000490330] |When that size is exceeded GnomeBaker will warn you that the file or directory can't be added in the compilation.
[141000490340] |So I guess overburning is out of discussion.
[141000490350] |A frustrating thing about this pane is that you can't remove a file from a directory.
[141000490360] |You also can't create a new dir in the compilation so I guess there isn't a easy way to make it nicely organized.
[141000490370] |The only way I can think of for making a nicely organized compilation is to put all the files and folders on a directory on the hdd just like you want them on the disk and then burn the contents of that folder.
[141000490380] |Creating audio CDs at this stage is tricky.
[141000490390] |This is unfortunate because the program is nice.
[141000490400] |Every time I try to add an audio file in the compilation pane the program tells me that I don't have the required plugins.
[141000490410] |As far as I know I have them, but I didn't dig more into this to see what's wrong.
[141000490420] |I suspect GnomeBaker was built on a different distro than the one I use and the path to the encoders is different.
[141000490430] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000490440] |GnomeBaker has a lot of potential for a future development.
[141000490450] |The interface is nice and user friendly.
[141000490460] |For basic functionality it only requires cdrecord.
[141000490470] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000490480] |Organizing a compilation is trivial task.
[141000490490] |Some functionality is missing and people need it badly.
[141000490500] |Making audio CDs might not be possible.
[141000490510] |Fortunately, audio CDs are not that popular these days. 
[141000490520] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000490530] |Even though GnomeBaker might be the best disk burner for GNOME, it's definitely way behind K3B. Some important things are not working, but I will not say the program is bad.
[141000490540] |I'll say it has a lot of potential and this is the truth.
[141000490550] |I hope development will still continue at a high rate and if in the future I'll see something more functional with a bit more features a new review will be published.
[141000490560] |Check out the screenshots below:
[141000500010] |<title>gThumb Review</title>
[141000500020] |<img/>Today I used gThumb for the first time.
[141000500030] |At first sight I though this is just another simple image viewing application.
[141000500040] |I'm ashamed that I considered it at the same level with KuickShow. gThumb turns out to be much more than I ever expected it to be.
[141000500050] |In this review I'll try to explain most of its features and what they can do for us on a daily basis.
[141000500060] |This application is made from several components glued together in a seamless way.
[141000500070] |To keep things organized I'll review each component separately even though they blend in a wonderful way.
[141000500080] |<b>The Image Browser</b>
[141000500090] |The image browser is the first thing that you see when the program starts.
[141000500100] |It has a clean interface that allows you to easily browse the hard drive.
[141000500110] |In the left side we have a navigation pane and in the right side a pane that displays thumbnails for images available in the current directory.
[141000500120] |Here the program has a small problem.
[141000500130] |Its mechanism for recognizing images looks at the pictures extension and in case of iso images it also tries to generate thumbnails.
[141000500140] |This can be a problem sometimes because iso is a very common format for CD images and when it tries to retrieve information on a 700 MB file that is not a picture your computer can get a little slow.
[141000500150] |Don't worry, this software is not slow.
[141000500160] |It is actually very fast.
[141000500170] |This is only a small issue that can be eliminated by removing the association with the .iso extension, which can't be interpreted by this software anyways.
[141000500180] |Supported formats are BMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, ICO and XPM.
[141000500190] |They are not many, but for the average users that manage the wallpapers, the funny pictures and some vacation photos it should be enough.
[141000500200] |Support for the psd format (Photoshop) would have been nice and I think in the future this will be present, because gThumb is heavily maintained and currently the image browser tries to associate a thumbnail also to the psd files.
[141000500210] |A cool feature of the image browser is that the thumbnails are saved in the same database Nautilus uses for storing thumbnails.
[141000500220] |This way the program integrates good in GNOME and in the same time it doesn't waste valuable space on the hard drive.
[141000500230] |Both Nautilus and gThumb can benefit from this one because if a program generates a thumbnail the other one doesn't have to do that again, this way also saving some time.
[141000500240] |The image browser can also be used for creating bookmarks and catalogs.
[141000500250] |Both tasks are very simple to use and adding bookmarks is actually a very common one, so I guess it can be considered trivial.
[141000500260] |<b>The Image Viewer</b>
[141000500270] |The reason for starting this program in the first place is for viewing images.
[141000500280] |There are several ways for getting in the view image mode.
[141000500290] |You can do this either by double-clicking a thumb or by clicking the image button from the toolbar.
[141000500300] |There is also a full screen mode and a slide show mode.
[141000500310] |I like to consider those two as complementary to the image mode.
[141000500320] |Technically they are separated, but from a user's point of view they do the same thing.
[141000500330] |Unfortunately, you can't go in the slide show mode from image mode and from full screen mode.
[141000500340] |There are actually more unimportant bugs here.
[141000500350] |When you select several pictures in the image browser, the slide show plays only the selected ones, starting from the last you selected, continuing with the first one and then playing them alphabetically.
[141000500360] |After all of them are played, the slide show ends.
[141000500370] |If you have only one picture selected, the slide show starts playing from that one in an alphabetical order.
[141000500380] |This last behavior should also be present for image and full screen mode. 
[141000500390] |In slide show mode the program uses a nice fade when switching to the next image and I think this is pretty cool.
[141000500400] |Preferences related to slide show can make it play pictures forwards, backwards, in reverse and also to restart the slide when it is finished.
[141000500410] |The delay is fully customizable, allowing choosing the number of seconds a picture is displayed.
[141000500420] |All the controls available in full screen mode are also available in slide show mode.
[141000500430] |If you want to advance to the next picture faster, just press the spacebar, and if you want to go to the previous, hit backspace.
[141000500440] |This reminds me of the popular Windows program ACDSee, that I used several years ago, but also of presentation software.
[141000500450] |I would also like to be able to use the cursor keys for this purpose.
[141000500460] |A cool thing about Linux and about this software is that it deals with high resolution pictures a lot better than Windows.
[141000500470] |For testing this I used a picture that has the resolution 11448 x 16624.
[141000500480] |In Windows it's excruciating to load a picture this size.
[141000500490] |It takes much longer for it lo load and when you scroll it, everything happens at an extremely low speed.
[141000500500] |In some Linux programs, and gThumb is also counted, my Desktop PC feels like a supercomputer when working with high resolution pictures.
[141000500510] |While you are viewing an image, the program lets you use some <b>editing and enhancing tools</b>.
[141000500520] |Use the Alt+I combo and you'll see what I'm talking about.
[141000500530] |The coolest filter in there is Enhance.
[141000500540] |You can get fantastic results sometimes while in other cases it can really mess up the picture.
[141000500550] |Undo (Ctrl+Z) is available and for this reason no harm can be done while editing.
[141000500560] |Resize, crop and transform tools are also available.
[141000500570] |Other things that can be adjusted to an image are mostly related to the colors.
[141000500580] |The most important are hue and saturation, brightness and contrast and the color balance.
[141000500590] |I like that this small bundle of filters should be enough for most novice users that just want to do minor adjustments to images.
[141000500600] |I think we don't need the extra powerful Gimp when you are just scaling, cropping or adjusting the colors.
[141000500610] |Edited pictures can be exported as JPG, PNG, TGA and TIFF.
[141000500620] |No picture will get automatically overwritten so you will be on the safe side. 
[141000500630] |<b>Other Cool Features</b>
[141000500640] |Some of the coolest features of this program are Create Web Album and Create an Index Image.
[141000500650] |Creating a <b>web album</b> is a very easy way to begin sharing pictures online.
[141000500660] |Several templates can be chosen and the output looks really good. gThumb lets you configure easily the layout, the header, the footer and also lets you make some customizations to the themes.
[141000500670] |<b>The index image</b> is also customizable and most certainly you will be able to generate something that you'll like.
[141000500680] |This is useful especially when you want to print a photo album.
[141000500690] |An index image is nice to have in a yearbook or something similar.
[141000500700] |Pictures can be easily written to a CD, because after selecting the ones you want to burn, gThumb exports them in Nautilus and the next thing you have to do is just a click away.
[141000500710] |A big advantage of this is that before you burn the CD you can also drag and drop other files.
[141000500720] |It is interesting to know that you can also easily change the date and time.
[141000500730] |This can also be done from the command line, but gThumb does a little more, being able to add the date and time to the comment field.
[141000500740] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000500750] |All the features of this program are great and considering this is the first time I used it I must say that it definitely convinced me to use it as default for viewing and browsing pictures.
[141000500760] |The web album and index image are very nice features along with all the editing tools. 
[141000500770] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000500780] |Here and there you can notice a bug or two, but it is nothing to worry about.
[141000500790] |A better implementation of the slide show is needed badly though.
[141000500800] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000500810] |This might be the best image viewer and browser for Linux.
[141000500820] |It is great, but not perfect.
[141000500830] |Nothing is perfect but the fact that it is under heavily development is a factor that drives me to use it with the confidence that it will get better and better.
[141000500840] |The screenshots below show the program in action:
[141000510010] |<title>Grip Review</title>
[141000510020] |<img/>These days it's a very common practice to keep the music files stored on the computer.
[141000510030] |This way you can organize your music files better and they can be easily transferred on the portable audio player or on another computer.
[141000510040] |But what about the music that is stored on Audio CD?
[141000510050] |We might want to store it on the hard disk because it is easier to manipulate.
[141000510060] |For this we should use a ripper and an encoder.
[141000510070] |A good example of one is Grip.
[141000510080] |Grip is both a CD player and also a CD ripper.
[141000510090] |As a ripping engine it uses cdparanoia by default.
[141000510100] |This is a good thing because cdparanoia is a very mature program.
[141000510110] |It’s been around since 1994 but in the last five years no progress was made because the developers focused on the open source ogg vorbis revolution.
[141000510120] |The audio is extracted with cdparanoia as data and then it is written in a file as WAV, AIFC or raw 16 bit PCM.
[141000510130] |The next step is to encode the outputted WAV data.
[141000510140] |Supported formats are OGG, FLAC and MP3, but with some skills other encoders can be used. 
[141000510150] |The conversion from Audio CD to an encoded file is done seamlessly by just clicking the Rip+Encode button.
[141000510160] |The program is set to encode in OGG as default and to be honest this satisfies me more than Mp3 since Fraunhofer only cares about royalties.
[141000510170] |The interface of the program is not very nice but it is easy to use and gets the job done. 
[141000510180] |The first tab displays the tracks and the CD player buttons.
[141000510190] |If only some tracks are to be encoded they can easily be selected from here.
[141000510200] |In case the program will be used as a CD player you can click a button and hide all the unnecessary stuff.
[141000510210] |The program will be switched to a condensed mode and all that will be displayed are the CD player controls.
[141000510220] |The next tab is about ripping.
[141000510230] |Most certainly here you will use the Rip+Encode button.
[141000510240] |An interesting feature is that you can encode partial tracks and before doing that you can preview what is to be encoded so that you won’t have to cut the encoded file later.
[141000510250] |Next is the tab that handles all the configuration options.
[141000510260] |There are enough configuration options to satisfy even the most advanced user.
[141000510270] |The most useful here is that you can add custom command line parameters for rippers and for encoders.
[141000510280] |Because it also allows adding others, you can use virtually any ripper and any encoder.
[141000510290] |Freedb is supported for DiskDB by default, but you can also add a secondary server.
[141000510300] |The forth tab is the status and this one shows another tab within, which then shows a terminal output of what grip does.
[141000510310] |This is good for debugging but a tab in another tab makes no sense in this case, it only turns the interface a little uglier.
[141000510320] |Moreover, Grip can do multiple encodings at the same time, in the case of SMP machines.
[141000510330] |This is cool because it can greatly improve the speed of encoding in this case. 
[141000510340] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000510350] |This program is easy to use and highly customizable.
[141000510360] |It can use virtually any encoder you are willing to setup.
[141000510370] |Condensed CD Player mode is nice.
[141000510380] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000510390] |The interface doesn't look good enough for the average user.
[141000510400] |You don't have a button for encoding in the main window.
[141000510410] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000510420] |Even though it is not impressive the program does the job.
[141000510430] |Useful both for average users and also for experienced ones.
[141000510440] |Features are more than enough for a CD-ripper but are not very well organized.
[141000510450] |If I'll need it I'll use it again though.
[141000510460] |Check out the screenshots:
[141000530010] |<title>Guarddog Review</title>
[141000530020] |<img/>There is a general belief that when you are using Linux you are automatically protected from the threats that are on the Internet. 
[141000530030] |This is somehow true, but not entirely.
[141000530040] |You are indeed protected from viruses and worms and this is very cool because most of the problems come from here.
[141000530050] |Other problems can come from intruders.
[141000530060] |Your computer stores a lot of data that would be helpful to some people.
[141000530070] |There are the popular credit card data and a lot more that some computers have to offer.
[141000530080] |There are also e-mail addresses, passwords and who knows what other valuable data.
[141000530090] |For this type of threats we have firewalls.
[141000530100] |The subject of this review is Guarddog, a simple and efficient firewall.
[141000530110] |<b>What do I like about Guarddog?</b>
[141000530120] |First of all I like that it uses ipchains or iptables to set the rules.
[141000530130] |Guarddog actually generates a rc.firewall file that is somehow standard in Linux.
[141000530140] |I encountered a problem because the script that chooses whether to use ipchains or iptables chose ipchains for me and it wasn't installed.
[141000530150] |I fixed this problem easily by installing ipchains too.
[141000530160] |Guarddog is a perfect application that can allow a newbie to do the job of an experienced network administrator with just a few clicks.
[141000530170] |I used iptables and ipchains to block the access to some ports and I'm pretty sure I will not use the manual approach unless I have to.
[141000530180] |Guarddog does everything easily and when I use it there is no need to know what port uses ICQ or Squid or whatever.
[141000530190] |Actually you don't even need to know what is a port.
[141000530200] |You just have to click in a check button if you want to allow a protocol.
[141000530210] |This philosophy is excellent because everything that you don't need will be automatically denied.
[141000530220] |<b>The Interface</b> <img/>
[141000530230] |<img/>The interface is made of four tabs.
[141000530240] |The first one has the defined network zones.
[141000530250] |By default Guarddog has two zones defined: one for the Internet and one for the local machine.
[141000530260] |In most cases those two are enough but in some cases, where several NICs are available, we have to add more zones.
[141000530270] |Adding a new zone is a snap. <img/>
[141000530280] |<img/>I said before that you don't need to know any port number.
[141000530290] |Guarddog has a comprehensive list with protocols and what ports are used for each one of them.
[141000530300] |It also gives a short description and the security risk they present.
[141000530310] |The list with the protocols is grouped in several categories so users can easily find the ones they want to unblock. <img/>
[141000530320] |<img/>Logging is supported through syslog.
[141000530330] |When a packet is blocked or rejected an entry it's written in the system log.
[141000530340] |A cool feature is that you can set a rate limiting.
[141000530350] |Without this feature it wouldn't be hard to get attacked with a DOS (Denial Of Service).
[141000530360] |Several logging options are set by default and I advice that you leave it that way because without them the logs would become useless.
[141000530370] |In the end of the discussion about logging I also feel obliged to advice you not to log the aborted TCP connections because usually they have noting to do with the attackers and just mess up the log file. <img/>
[141000530380] |<img/>The last tab is named "Advanced".
[141000530390] |I would call this one "Extra" but this is not my shot.
[141000530400] |The most interesting features include support for defining a new protocol and for importing and exporting the configuration file.
[141000530410] |Those two features are a must have in a firewall program.
[141000530420] |Defining a new protocol is very important in a firewall because sometimes you might be accessing a service on a different port than the standard one.
[141000530430] |For example, a SQL server uses port 3306 but some people decide to make it run on 3307 or maybe something else.
[141000530440] |This is also true for custom applications or some that are not popular.
[141000530450] |Importing and exporting is very good when you want to use the same firewall configuration for several computers.
[141000530460] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000530470] |The easy to use GUI is the best thing about this program.
[141000530480] |A complete newbie should be able to set its own firewall in just a few clicks.
[141000530490] |The firewall script generated is very clean and can easily be converted in a skeleton for the use with future firewall scripts.
[141000530500] |Where a graphical interface is missing the skeleton would really come in handy.
[141000530510] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000530520] |I would have liked to be able to choose between iptables and ipchains.
[141000530530] |The program chooses for me and it does it bad.
[141000530540] |An Internet connection sharing would have been a great addition to this program.
[141000530550] |I think that some bugs regarding logging are available.
[141000530560] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000530570] |At the moment I think Guarddog it's the best firewall configuration utility.
[141000530580] |It is not the best because of its features.
[141000530590] |It's the best because of its simple and efficient interface and because it depends on very few programs to work.
[141000530600] |Firestarter is another firewall that has more features and maybe a nicer interface but it's harder to get it running.
[141000530610] |Now I'll definitely go with Guarddog.
[141000530620] |Check out the screenshots below:
[141000550010] |<title>digiKam Review</title>
[141000550020] |<img/>Do you have a lot of pictures stored on your hard drive?
[141000550030] |Do you sometimes find it too hard to organize them?
[141000550040] |If so, you'll need a photo management application.
[141000550050] |One of the best applications of this type is digiKam.
[141000550060] |With this application, importing and managing photos is a snap.
[141000550070] |It is very advanced and its functionality will satisfy the needs of most users. digiKam can organize photos in albums, sort them by directory layout or by custom collections that you can define in digiKam or chronologically.
[141000550080] |An interesting feature is tagging.
[141000550090] |An image can be tagged and then it can spread out across multiple folders.
[141000550100] |This feature is very useful for professionals.
[141000550110] |Another useful thing is that you can add comments for each picture.
[141000550120] |This is a very common feature but the way digiKam stores this info is somehow unique.
[141000550130] |Tags and comments are stored in a SQLite database and this makes it robust enough to be used even in professional environments.
[141000550140] |I also noticed that for each picture you can assign a rating which I think is stored in the same database, but I'm not sure. <img/>
[141000550150] |<img/>digiKam features an easy to use camera interface from which you can preview, download and delete your images.
[141000550160] |It connects to digital cameras using gphoto2 and because of it supports serial, USB and IEEE connections.
[141000550170] |Other import capabilities include the possibility to scan images, to make screenshots and of course to import from a folder.
[141000550180] |Well, digiKam surprised me when I saw how nice it behaves with importing pictures and also managed to be cool when it comes to exporting them. digiKam uses some Kipi plugins and they add a lot of functionality to this program.
[141000550190] |In case of exporting, it allows generating a nice HTML gallery.
[141000550200] |Other exporting capabilities include archiving to CD/DVD, exporting to remote gallery and exporting to a nice printing wizard.
[141000550210] |I don't quite like to export to CD/DVD because it can only export the HTML generated gallery and this way I loose some quality.
[141000550220] |I think that Kipi (KDE Image Plugin Interface) deserves a little more attention.
[141000550230] |First of all, you should know that it is developed by the same people that created digiKam.
[141000550240] |This is good for digiKam, because all the new features that will be available in Kipi will also be available in digiKam.
[141000550250] |It is also great for the Linux community because there are several programs already that use Kipi to add powerful features to their programs. 
[141000550260] |This software supports several simple themes and I think Dreary looks pretty good.
[141000550270] |In my opinion it's much better than the default one.
[141000550280] |Now it's time to say a few words about <b>the interface</b>.
[141000550290] |Mainly, it has two panes one for navigation and another one for displaying images.
[141000550300] |In the left of the program's window there are four tabs.
[141000550310] |They allow the selection of a navigation method.
[141000550320] |The first one is using albums.
[141000550330] |Albums can be sorted by folders, by name and by date.
[141000550340] |Creating an album is a very simple task and then you'll just have to import some pictures in it, which is also very simple.
[141000550350] |The second method is by date.
[141000550360] |The program looks at the date the picture was modified and it assumes that's its date.
[141000550370] |This works well most of the time, but I encountered a situation where some pictures were dated year 2036.
[141000550380] |This is because the camera had the date set up wrong.
[141000550390] |This can be fixed easily because digiKam supports editing several things, including the date and time.
[141000550400] |The next method of navigation is with the use of tags.
[141000550410] |They are particular useful to break the boundaries of folders.
[141000550420] |Three tags are available by default but new ones can be created very easy to fit your needs.
[141000550430] |The last navigation method is by searches.
[141000550440] |Searches are very powerful mostly when comments are available for pictures.
[141000550450] |I advise the use of comments but because time is more and more important and the volume of picture is bigger and bigger most people will ignore this advice.
[141000550460] |In this case, browsing by searches is not very useful.
[141000550470] |Maybe some other search criteria should be taken into consideration.
[141000550480] |In the right part of the GUI, pictures are displayed in thumbnails. digiKam supports four different thumbnail sizes.
[141000550490] |The thumbnails are nicely framed and in each frame several other pieces of information are shown, such as the modification date, the size, comments, the rating.
[141000550500] |What gets displayed here is easily customizable from the configuration dialog.
[141000550510] |Hovering the mouse over a picture shows a tooltip with detailed information.
[141000550520] |digiKam has some interesting tools and I liked the most the possibility to create a calendar.
[141000550530] |It is very easy to make your own calendar and I think this is pretty cool.
[141000550540] |The most useful tool is definitely the batch processes.
[141000550550] |They allow you to perform a certain task on several images from the albums.
[141000550560] |Resizing, renaming and others can be done now with the smallest effort ever.
[141000550570] |Double clicking an image opens it in an image viewer/editor.
[141000550580] |It makes use of some plugins to allow easy fixing of pictures.
[141000550590] |For this I prefer to use GIMP because it's more powerful.
[141000550600] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000550610] |Using digiKam is a snap and its features make it a really good application.
[141000550620] |Kipi plugins are of a great value for the Linux world and also for digiKam, as it tries to make the best of them.
[141000550630] |Writing the meta-data in a SQLite database makes this software very reliable.
[141000550640] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000550650] |There isn't an easy way to export the SQLite database.
[141000550660] |You can't configure the footer for the web album.
[141000550670] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000550680] |The truth is that digiKam is a great application and there are many reasons to give it a try if you aren't already using it.
[141000550690] |Both digiKam and Kipi are in active development so I am expecting to see interesting new eatures pretty often.
[141000550700] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141000550710] |And the configuration dialog...
[141000580010] |<title>Qalculate! Review</title>
[141000580020] |<img/>I was browsing the Internet, looking for an advanced scientific calculator in Linux.
[141000580030] |At some point I stopped over one named Qalculate!
[141000580040] |The Q is pink, but the boys won't mind because this one might be the most advanced tool useful for science.
[141000580050] |Girls will definitely like the pink too.
[141000580060] |Qalculate has a simple interface and its purpose it to be easy to use and in the same time very powerful and versatile.
[141000580070] |I loved it right away because its purpose was easily achieved.
[141000580080] |I'm far from being good at math but now I don't really have to be.
[141000580090] |Qalculate is good for me.
[141000580100] |However, that some basic knowledge is required because you need to know at least what you want to do with it.
[141000580110] |I remember that I did once a calculator in the Basic programming language.
[141000580120] |It was something similar to the one you can find in Windows.
[141000580130] |This one is far more advanced than those cheap ones you can find everywhere.
[141000580140] |Is actually much more advanced than my "hardware" CASIO fx calculator that I use for school.
[141000580150] |The difference is that my CASIO calculator uses a very cheap microprocessor and a very cheap display and this one uses some of the power and flexibility of the modern PCs that are generally designed to do very complicated computations when they are running 3D games.
[141000580160] |What I was actually looking for was a piece of software that supports expressions.
[141000580170] |This is actually essential for modern calculators, both software and hardware.
[141000580180] |This means that in those you can input an expression just as you would write it on the paper but with the obvious advantage of being able to make modifications in the expression at all times.
[141000580190] |This is actually in the center of attention in Qalculate.
[141000580200] |Entering expressions in Qalculate is very easy and fault tolerant.
[141000580210] |It supports completion so as you enter the expression a list of possible functions, variables and units will be shown.
[141000580220] |If you don't know how to enter a function you can use the appropriate menu and there you'll find a very comprehensive list.
[141000580230] |The list is also useful to see which the available functions are.
[141000580240] |You'll see that a very wide area is covered.
[141000580250] |After executing an expression you'll see that it will be marked.
[141000580260] |If the syntax is not correctly written an error box will be displayed and it tells you what's wrong.
[141000580270] |If everything was ok the result will be shown in an area below the expression entry.
[141000580280] |It's amazing what a great output Qalculate has.
[141000580290] |Actually this gets even better because the output of the mathematical result is customizable.
[141000580300] |You should go in the mode menu and see the possibilities there.
[141000580310] |Configuring it here can really make a difference in the usability of the program.
[141000580320] |I was absolutely pleased with the results outputted by Qalculate.
[141000580330] |Equations that perhaps would take me forever to deal with were solved by this software in a split second.
[141000580340] |At the bottom left corner in the main window there are two buttons.
[141000580350] |One is History and the other is Keypad.
[141000580360] |Even though these two are not something spectacular, they can turn out to be very useful.
[141000580370] |History is good to go through the previous calculations.
[141000580380] |You can copy the text from the history and paste it somewhere so later you can print it. 
[141000580390] |Two additional features would be great for Qalculate; to be able to print the history to look like the solution of a problem and to be able to export the result as a picture so it can be pasted in a document.
[141000580400] |The second button makes Qalculate start resembling a calculator.
[141000580410] |This one is useful mostly for users that want to have the calculator view in front of their eyes.
[141000580420] |I use the button that switches to fraction from this keypad.
[141000580430] |Other buttons I really don't use because I like the power of the expression interpreter.
[141000580440] |One of the coolest features of Qalculate is that it can import and export CSV files.
[141000580450] |These are somehow popular in scientific applications because formatying them is a pretty easy task and adapting is not hard.
[141000580460] |For example, spreadsheet software can export in CSV but also custom applications used in data acquisition do this.
[141000580470] |Other cool tools that will be very helpful in some situations are dialogs for creating vectors and matrices and also for creating variables.
[141000580480] |How you use all these tools together will decide how effective you can work with Qalculate.
[141000580490] |For example, you can easily create a matrix and then store it as a variable for using it in a simplified equation.
[141000580500] |Possibilities are huge with this software and the more you use it the more you'll realize this.
[141000580510] |It even has an online update for exchange rates, a periodic table and a dialog for plotting expressions.
[141000580520] |All I have to say is that I appreciate this fine release of Niklas Knutsson and I hope he will continue developing this software.
[141000580530] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000580540] |The interface of this software is very simple and in the same time powerful.
[141000580550] |Perhaps the best thing is the interpreter of expressions.
[141000580560] |The fact that all the power is stored in libqalculate allows developers to create different frontends so in the future we can expect other powerful applications.
[141000580570] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000580580] |It's hard to say I didn't like something about this software.
[141000580590] |Perhaps the only thing I want to see in a future release is a better history function.
[141000580600] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000580610] |Engineers can really benefit a lot from it.
[141000580620] |If you are not in engineering but you do some kind of computations you should give it a try.
[141000580630] |I saw some economics functions there but who knows what other stuff you might find useful.
[141000580640] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141000590010] |<title>Avidemux Review</title>
[141000590020] |<img/>In case you need to do some very basic video editing and encoding you'll definitely need a simple piece of software and perhaps a fast one.
[141000590030] |For the purpose of cutting, resizing and cropping a video file I've chosen Avidemux today.
[141000590040] |Was I satisfied with its performances?
[141000590050] |Well, let's see.
[141000590060] |First of all, you should know what I wanted from the software.
[141000590070] |I wanted to take some video files and convert them to a resolution of approximately 640x240, to reduce the framerate to about 24 fps and to compress the files to a format that is playable by a 200MHz ARM processor.
[141000590080] |After playing a little with the program, I managed to do all these things.
[141000590090] |The software has a lot of nice features, but not the very intuitive interface I was expecting.
[141000590100] |However, Avidemux2 is a popular interface and it has versions available for all the common operating systems.
[141000590110] |Installing it may present some problems at satisfying dependencies, but after the requirements are met you know that most of the functionality will be available so I guess it's not such a bad thing.
[141000590120] |Dependencies mostly require some libraries for encoding and Avidemux2 uses some of the best available out there.
[141000590130] |The main video codec used by Avidemux is LavCodec and this is a good thing because this is fast and the output is pretty good.
[141000590140] |Actually, Avidemux gets most of its functionality from LavCodec.
[141000590150] |<b>The Interface</b>
[141000590160] |The interface of this software is pretty intuitive, but I feel that a newbie wouldn't handle it very well.
[141000590170] |It has 3 toolbars that can be moved and a central area where you can see the movie.
[141000590180] |The toolbar located in the upper part of the interface is used to do some basic actions like opening a movie and saving it.
[141000590190] |Other buttons can display some info about the video file and can also show the output of what's about to be displayed.
[141000590200] |The info function is good, but the output function is not that great.
[141000590210] |It doesn't show the effects of the compression, it only shows how filters will modify the movie.
[141000590220] |The output function works when playing the movie and the preview function is useful when the movie is stopped. 
[141000590230] |In the left side of the video you have the toolbar for setting what codec is used for video and which one is used for audio.
[141000590240] |For both video and audio you can configure different settings related to the codec.
[141000590250] |One of the best things about this software is the video filters function.
[141000590260] |You can use several filters in the same time and the list of filters is very comprehensive.
[141000590270] |These filters are great and they can do a lot of things.
[141000590280] |A small bug is present here but it will not be very annoying.
[141000590290] |If you want to get a file to a certain size, you should know that a very useful bitrate calculator is available.
[141000590300] |Don't forget to press the V Process and the A Process buttons if you want any results.
[141000590310] |If you don't press them, the software doesn't encode.
[141000590320] |Under the video you have the toolbar for playback.
[141000590330] |The controls are a little more advanced than what you have on the average player and this is how they should be.
[141000590340] |From this toolbar you can select a start point and a stop one for your video file.
[141000590350] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000590360] |After getting used to it, this software can do a really good job without too much hassle.
[141000590370] |Getting used to it is pretty straight forward and doing one encoding should be enough.
[141000590380] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000590390] |The interface is not very well optimized; the output is not as good as I was expecting from this type of application.
[141000590400] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000590410] |Until I'll find something better I will count on Avidemux2 to encode my video files.
[141000590420] |It's the right application when very complex tasks aren't required.
[141000590430] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141000600010] |<title>JuK Review</title>
[141000600020] |<img/>This review is about one of the most popular audio players.
[141000600030] |Its popularity comes from the fact that JuK is included in KDE's multimedia package.
[141000600040] |If you install KDE with all its packages you'll also install JuK.
[141000600050] |Now let's see if it's any good.
[141000600060] |First thing that happens when you install it is that the software asks for the folders where you store your music so that it will import everything.
[141000600070] |I like this and it's a very common feature for this kind of software.
[141000600080] |Once you import your music files, everything will be sorted using their metadata or their file names.
[141000600090] |If your files' metadata is correct then they'll be nicely sorted.
[141000600100] |If you are a regular, normal person however, then probably some files will have messed up metadata and what you'll see probably will scare you.
[141000600110] |Don't be worried because the built in search feature will find your songs very fast.
[141000600120] |JuK tries to identify your files over the Internet using the comprehensive MuzicBrainz database.
[141000600130] |This rarely worked though with my files and I understand it's because nothing can do this considering how messed up they are.
[141000600140] |Something that worked amazingly well was the retrieval of covers via Google Image Search.
[141000600150] |One of my favorite features of JuK is the track announcer.
[141000600160] |Unfortunately this is not activated by default so you'll have to do it yourself.
[141000600170] |I like this feature because it shows the name of the track that started to play and also displays two buttons for previous and next track.
[141000600180] |Some of you will frequently use the next track button.
[141000600190] |But what about the sound quality?
[141000600200] |Like any Linux audio player, JuK supports several sound engines.
[141000600210] |In Windows there isn't much variety because Direct Sound somehow standardized sound, but in Linux we have several engines.
[141000600220] |On the Fedora 5 box I use at the moment, JuK shows three available engines.
[141000600230] |The default one was aRts and it didn't work for me for whatever reason but I didn't want to use it anyway.
[141000600240] |I selected GStreamer which is known as a good quality engine.
[141000600250] |The third one is aKode which is in close relationship with aRts and didn't work either.
[141000600260] |This is by no means the fault of JuK, perhaps it's Fedora's fault or perhaps mine.
[141000600270] |It's a normal thing that JuK uses aRts by default because aRts provides the base for KDE's multimedia features. aRts is excellent as a core component of KDE, but I prefer GStreamer as an engine for JuK.
[141000600280] |An essential feature for me is the play queue.
[141000600290] |If a player doesn't support a play queue, it's not a real player.
[141000600300] |JuK supports it and actually uses an interesting approach for it.
[141000600310] |When you right-click on a file, the first available action is to add the file to the play queue.
[141000600320] |JuK has a tag editor that is well integrated with the program.
[141000600330] |This is very useful especially when you think that all the sorting is done using the tags.
[141000600340] |If you want to edit the metadata it will really help you do this in the fast lane.
[141000600350] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000600360] |I like that it's easy to use and that is has a nice and useful announcer.
[141000600370] |These are the things that I appreciate the most about JuK.
[141000600380] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000600390] |I don't like about JuK that I can't navigate with it through my folders.
[141000600400] |At best, the collection list can be managed by albums artists and genres but if the metadata is not correct, the lists can get messy.
[141000600410] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000600420] |JuK is a good player.
[141000600430] |Using the search feature will allow you to find a song in large collections.
[141000600440] |It's far from being perfect but since it comes with KDE you'll appreciate having a good player that you don't have to install.
[141000600450] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141000610010] |<title>Tux Paint Review</title>
[141000610020] |<img/>Ever since I started reviewing software for Linux, I've never said anything about applications designed exclusively for children.
[141000610030] |We can't ignore the fact that nowadays, kids are more in touch with computers than they had been a decade ago. 
[141000610040] |In my opinion, in most cases this is a bad thing, but there are also some advantages in spending time in front of the computer.
[141000610050] |Let's see how an open source software can develop your children's creativity.
[141000610060] |For this purpose we chose a drawing application, called Tux Paint.
[141000610070] |First of all, you should know that it is designed for children three years old and up.
[141000610080] |In fact, I've seen online albums done by teenagers and adults, and the results were amazing.
[141000610090] |So, if you have talent, I guess anything is possible.
[141000610100] |This program's interface is very intuitive and easy to use, and that's why anyone can use it.
[141000610110] |Tux Paint makes use of several amusing sounds effects, therefore, kids will not get bored, as the jingles really help maintaining an entertaining environment.
[141000610120] |In your right, you will find the tools, and in the left part different actions related to each tool.
[141000610130] |The icons are large and intuitive, so kids will not encounter problems in associating them with what they do.
[141000610140] |For almost any clicked button, a comment can be seen at the bottom of the screen.
[141000610150] |It is the Linux penguin that gives hints and information.
[141000610160] |It can really help your kid, if he pays attention to it.
[141000610170] |In Tux Paint, loading and saving is done differently from other applications.
[141000610180] |You never see the filename of the path where files are stored.
[141000610190] |This is nice, because small children canget confused.
[141000610200] |This software shows only the thumbnails of previously saved photos.
[141000610210] |When creating a new image, you should know that the drawing board has a predetermined size, so the kid doesn't have to set anything.
[141000610220] |Moreover, for these operations no dialogs are used.
[141000610230] |Printing a picture is a two clicks operation, and the second click is for the dialog box that appears here.
[141000610240] |Tux Paint can be set do disable printing or to allow printing once every few minutes.
[141000610250] |This is great, because some children might get over excited by this cool printing feature and, by the time the parents notice, who knows how many pictures full of color get the kid has already printed.
[141000610260] |Another safety feature of this software is the possibility to run it in full screen mode.
[141000610270] |This way, you can make sure your work files will not get deleted or modified by accident when the children decides he found something more interesting in the root folder or something like that.
[141000610280] |This quit button can also be disabled, so this feature can actually work in some cases.
[141000610290] |Anyway, keep in mind that, at some age, your kid might find more interesting stuff to do, than just paint.
[141000610300] |I remember this was definitely my case, and it also applies to most of the people I know.
[141000610310] |There is a config program for Tux Paint that allows altering "the software's behavior", using an easy to use graphical user interface.
[141000610320] |Tux Paint is available in several languages and also for most operating systems, so it doesn't matter where are you from or what OS are you using.
[141000610330] |The only thing that matters is that you have a kid or your friends have one, and you should try to make him as happy as you can, offering him, for example, Tux Paint in order to use his imagination.
[141000610340] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000610350] |The interface is both kid-friendly and amusing, so it will certainly "paint" a smile on your child's face.
[141000610360] |The parental control features are something that will allow adults to rest somehow assured when their child is using the computer.
[141000610370] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000610380] |A few more outline examples would have been good.
[141000610390] |Perhaps, some advanced features could be grouped in a button, so this software can push the creativity even further.
[141000610400] |I had two "ten year old advisors" and, it seems that they liked it a lot, but they both said that Tux, the mascot, should have been animated.
[141000610410] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000610420] |Tux Paint is definitely the best drawing application for children.
[141000610430] |I saw the reaction of a ten year old friend of mine who usually plays strategy games, and I realized that this software can really make your children happy. 
[141000610440] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141000620010] |<title>kdissert Review</title>
[141000620020] |<img/>KDissert is an application designed for students.
[141000620030] |Because the average student is generally a busy person and because time is a very valuable resource, Thomas Nagy decided when he was a student to create an application that will be helpful in this respect.
[141000620040] |KDissert is a mindmapping application that helps at developing ideas and, based on that, allows generating documents.
[141000620050] |This way a lot of time can be saved and quality results can be obtained.
[141000620060] |If you are not a student and you feel this software might not be for you it's a big possibility you might be wrong because I can see uses for it in a lot of environments.
[141000620070] |Actually, I think it can be successfully used as project management software, as a tool for creating well structured documentation, websites where organized information is the important thing or, why not, as complex post-it software.
[141000620080] |This is not a very mature software application but, considering that development was started in 2003, the features are excellent.
[141000620090] |The idea is not new, mindmapping software was done before, but KDissert is very good at exporting the projects in several types of formats including HTML, LaTeX, OpenOffice and plain text.
[141000620100] |Considering that it is able to automatically generate presentations and documents you can just imagine how easy it is to make some adjustments and then use the time you have left for enjoying a job well done.
[141000620110] |The files exported as OpenOffice documents can be opened with the KOffice suite as well.
[141000620120] |<b>But how does KDissert help me?</b> <img/>
[141000620130] |<img/>When you begin you have an empty canvas in the main window.
[141000620140] |Double clicking here creates an item.
[141000620150] |This item is associated with an idea.
[141000620160] |The empty item can now be edited and you can add a title, some text, a picture and hyperlinks.
[141000620170] |Ideas can be added separately or can be associated into a tree.
[141000620180] |Adding more ramifications make your idea grow more and using this software allows you to keep your ideas in order and in a place so you will not forget them.
[141000620190] |For each item you can associate a color and several flags.
[141000620200] |In the case of very complex projects, the flags will really come in handy.
[141000620210] |Colors are great for any purpose.
[141000620220] |They really make ideas and branches stick out.
[141000620230] |If you are not a very organized person you can use Smart Reorganization.
[141000620240] |It is a feature used by this software that can do amazing results with your canvas.
[141000620250] |The software warns you that on large mindmaps it can take a lot of time and give bad results, but on the ones I created the results were excellent.
[141000620260] |A quick reorganization is also available and this one is nice too.
[141000620270] |It creates a more compact display but I find the smart one better in case of small mindmaps.
[141000620280] |Anyway, the cluttered quick reorganization can be also uncluttered.
[141000620290] |If the tree gets too big you might want to use the tree view.
[141000620300] |It's a tab that's located in the left part of the application.
[141000620310] |This view handles the tree in a very familiar and easy to use mode and it's good mainly because of the included search box.
[141000620320] |A leaf in a very large tree would be very hard to locate without this search feature.
[141000620330] |Unfortunately, the search doesn't look in the text field of each item.
[141000620340] |It just looks in the title. 
[141000620350] |For each item you can select a font and the text you put in that item can be written with bold, italic and underline.
[141000620360] |This is useful when you consider exporting in several formats but usually I prefer to do further editing in OpenOffice.
[141000620370] |Maybe I'm pushing the line a little here but if KDissert would be able to export as an SQL database this software would really be excellent for a lot more users.
[141000620380] |It would be a wonderful tool for integrating with dynamic websites and perhaps even more.
[141000620390] |As far as I'm concerned this is very hard to implement and in fact I don't know something similar that is able to do this.
[141000620400] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000620410] |This software's ability to keep things nicely organized in a tree and then to export them in several popular formats is awesome.
[141000620420] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000620430] |The interface is not very well optimized and also doesn't look very good.
[141000620440] |When KDE4 will be available the interface will probably "suffer" several improvements.
[141000620450] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000620460] |The truth is that this software needs some more features and a better interface but it will definitely improve the productivity in most cases if it is used wisely.
[141000620470] |I'm sure this is a very useful piece of software but I know it can be great.
[141000620480] |It really got me enthusiastic and I'll keep it in my list with favorite applications.
[141000620490] |I have a lot of faith in it.
[141000620500] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141000640010] |<title>Tux Typing Review</title>
[141000640020] |<img/>Games are a very big industry that's evolving very fast into something colossal, because gaming hardware is evolving faster than ever and large communities are created around different games.
[141000640030] |What I'm talking here is about 3D games which are a very rare thing in Linux, considering a gaming in Linux is madness.
[141000640040] |I rarely play games, perhaps because I grew up or perhaps because I feel that something was lost when they evolved this much.
[141000640050] |Some games are excellent for children because they can be a fun way to help them develop different abilities.
[141000640060] |This review will be about the second excellent application from Tux4Kids, Tux Typing 2.
[141000640070] |It is an educational game that tries to develop children's typing skills.
[141000640080] |This game integrates two kinds of gameplay and a practice feature.
[141000640090] |The first one is "Fish Cascade" and the second one is "Comet Zap".
[141000640100] |In both of them you'll have to use the letters on the keyboard to play the game. <img/>
[141000640110] |<img/>In "<b>Fish Cascade</b>", fish comes out of the sky and Tux has to eat it to satisfy his hunger.
[141000640120] |The problem is that the fish has letters on it and eating the fish with letters gives Tux a tummy ache.
[141000640130] |Typing the letter that is on the fish makes it disappear and this makes Tux go under the "clean fish" and eat it.
[141000640140] |In "Fish Cascade" we have three difficulty levels and they tell the game how fast the letters come out of the sky.
[141000640150] |When you play it using words, Tux can only eat an entire word, not individual letters.
[141000640160] |If you misspell a word you'll not be able to eat that fish.
[141000640170] |After clearing all the fish you'll be able to go to a next stage where the theme is different and the speed is higher. <img/>
[141000640180] |<img/>In "<b>Comet Zap</b>", comets come from space and can hit buildings form the city where Tux is guarding.
[141000640190] |Pressing the letters that appear on the comets tells Tux which one he should obliterate with it's laser beam.
[141000640200] |Once you finish destroying a wave, another one appears.
[141000640210] |With each new wave the speed is increased and the theme is changed.
[141000640220] |Once a comet hits a building it destroys its shield and now it can be destroyed by another comet.
[141000640230] |When all the buildings are destroyed you loose the game.
[141000640240] |To prevent cheating by protecting only one building to win the game, once a comet hits the ground the visibility is lowered.
[141000640250] |Pressing random keys in the hope of accidentally hitting something is also not helpful because the game will start making an annoying sound to prevent you to do that.
[141000640260] |The best way is to play fair.
[141000640270] |In "Comet Zap" you have four difficulty levels.
[141000640280] |For each level of difficulty you can use either letters, short, medium or long words and finger exercises.
[141000640290] |The program supports several languages so the words used can be in the language of your country or in another language if you want to learn a foreign one.
[141000640300] |In <b>practice mode</b>, a letter and two hands appear on the screen.
[141000640310] |Once the letter is printed on the screen, the finger that should be used for typing is highlighted.
[141000640320] |The practice mode is very good for teaching a correct and efficient typing at the computer.
[141000640330] |It made me realize that, even if I've been using a PC for a very long time, I'm not using my fingers as I should.
[141000640340] |When it comes to options, there is not much to say because most features are in their early development stages and others are not present.
[141000640350] |Anyways, if you want to change the language you should visit the options.
[141000640360] |One of the things that I think this game needs is a high score table and a statistics option.
[141000640370] |High scores will really drive kids to break their own record or the record of their friends.
[141000640380] |Statistics are an excellent way to help them achieving a better performance.
[141000640390] |I hope they will be available in Tux Typing 3 because this will be a big step forward.
[141000640400] |I don't think I'm overreacting when I say a child is in any of us.
[141000640410] |I definitely like Tux Typing more than those other typing tutors that are no fun.
[141000640420] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000640430] |The two types of gameplay are good for teaching the children how to type.
[141000640440] |The practice mode is good for teaching efficient typing.
[141000640450] |Support for several languages is great for making this game usable by the kids in the whole world.
[141000640460] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000640470] |A lot of typing tutors have a built in statistics feature that is excellent for knowing your performance.
[141000640480] |Unfortunately this one doesn't. Usually games have high scores but this is another thing this software lacks.
[141000640490] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000640500] |Tux Typing 2 is the key to allow your kids to learn typing fast and efficiently.
[141000640510] |I think it can also be a good way for adults who want to better their typing skills and who have some time to kill.
[141000640520] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141000650010] |<title>Kaffeine Review</title>
[141000650020] |<img/>Most of us know that Microsoft developed Media Player to be able to handle as much media as it can so it would be a central application for multimedia.
[141000650030] |Some people blame them because they say it is a strategy for making a monopoly while others admire the features of the program.
[141000650040] |Perhaps you are wondering why I brought this up because this is Linux, here the software is free and some of you don't even want to hear about Microsoft.
[141000650050] |I brought it up because I know an application that is in a way similar to the popular and controversial Media Player.
[141000650060] |This application is Kaffeine.
[141000650070] |Kaffeine is a media player for KDE that can handle all kinds of media.
[141000650080] |Basically you can use it to play most of the media from the average hard drive.
[141000650090] |By default, Kaffeine uses xine as an engine and it tries to make the best of its versatility and power.
[141000650100] |It succeeds pretty well and if you don't like xine, don't imagine that you will not like this player too.
[141000650110] |Honestly I'm a mplayer fan but I really enjoy using Kaffeine because the interface is very user friendly and supports efficient handling of a lot of media, even though is not very good looking.
[141000650120] |<b>The Interface</b>
[141000650130] |First time you start the player you are presented with a <b>quick start window</b> that allows access to most of the common media available.
[141000650140] |There are several buttons that let you listen music from the HDD or CDs, to encode music, to play DVDs, to watch digital television and more.
[141000650150] |If you look to the left of these buttons you'll see several tabs.
[141000650160] |The second is the <b>player window</b>.
[141000650170] |While playing video files the content will be displayed here but while playing audio files, in this window you'll actually see several nice visualizations.
[141000650180] |Kaffeine uses goom as default visualization, which I think is one of the best available for Linux.
[141000650190] |The player window has an OSD and most of the common controls for DVDs.
[141000650200] |Right-clicking it will show a contextual menu.
[141000650210] |The next tab opens the <b>playlist window</b>.
[141000650220] |Here things are split in three panes.
[141000650230] |The pane on the left is for navigation through directories.
[141000650240] |The pane on the right is the actual playlist and the third one is about visualizations.
[141000650250] |You can add all kinds of supported media in the playlist.
[141000650260] |In case of movies, Kaffeine automatically detects if a subtitle is available and asks you to confirm if that's what you want to use. 
[141000650270] |One of the best things about the way the playlist behaves is that for every song that is played it tries to show a cover.
[141000650280] |If none is available for that artist it goes online and retrieves several covers.
[141000650290] |You can see what it found in a window that pops up showing the thumbnails.
[141000650300] |Under the thumbs the resolution is shown so you can get the cover that is best for you. 
[141000650310] |Several playlists can be created very easily in Kaffeine.
[141000650320] |The active playlist can be changed from the dropdown list that is in the upper part of the window.
[141000650330] |Under this playlist selector is a "filters" field.
[141000650340] |This simple thing is the one that helps us locate our media in large collections.
[141000650350] |Filtered results are shown as you type.
[141000650360] |The last tab, in my case, is for <b>Audio CD's</b>.
[141000650370] |It allows both listening while looking at the visualization and ripping audio tracks.
[141000650380] |Supported encoders include MP3 and OGG Vorbis.
[141000650390] |Kaffeine has a very nice feature which I find very interesting -network broadcast.
[141000650400] |Doing this is very easy and no knowledge at all is required.
[141000650410] |To create a stream you just have to click a button and select a port.
[141000650420] |Connecting to one is also very easy.
[141000650430] |Set the sender and the port and click the OK button.
[141000650440] |I've never seen an approach as straight forward as this.
[141000650450] |Another very cool complementary feature is the one for saving streams.
[141000650460] |It was never so easy to work with streams, until now.
[141000650470] |Most of the settings related to Kaffeine are actually settings for xine.
[141000650480] |A window for setting the engine parameters is provided and if you don't like some behavior of the engine it can be set from there.
[141000650490] |Settings related only to Kaffeine include the option to pause video when it's minimized, a system tray announcer and a DVB client.
[141000650500] |In my opinion the announcer needs redesigning because it is small and doesn't really stick out to "announce".
[141000650510] |Integration with Konqueror is excellent so you can preview files in it and it's also possible to play streams embedded in web pages.
[141000650520] |This is excellent considering that, in Linux, sometimes you have to work for these features. 
[141000650530] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000650540] |Supporting xine as a backend is very good because it is powerful and versatile.
[141000650550] |Support for streams is a very nice feature to have and the fact that streams can be saved easily is great.
[141000650560] |The graphical visualizations are really nice.
[141000650570] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000650580] |Even though the interface is easy to use I don't really like it.
[141000650590] |I can't say why but I think it is kind of ugly.
[141000650600] |The announcer is important for me but the one in Kaffeine is not very usable. 
[141000650610] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000650620] |The truth is that Kaffeine is an excellent video player and a very good audio and DVB player too.
[141000650630] |The support for navigation through DVD menus and the integrated audio filters, a ten band graphical equalizer and video setting make it a very good player.
[141000650640] |With a little effort you can make play any type of media so I can't see why not using it.
[141000650650] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141000660010] |<title>gedit Review</title>
[141000660020] |<img/>My Fedora 5 just crashed after I updated it last night.
[141000660030] |I just installed the basic applications, and at this point I realized that software that's part of the daily use of almost anyone was never reviewed.
[141000660040] |Such software is gedit.
[141000660050] |It's the official text editor for the GNOME desktop environment and almost any ASCII file is opened with it when we use GNOME.
[141000660060] |It's a big possibility you didn't notice it because the attention was focused on the contents and not at all on the editor.
[141000660070] |I hope a review will be useful for letting you know what you can do with it.
[141000660080] |Let's start with what I learned today about gedit.
[141000660090] |Actually, today is the first time I took a look at what it is able to do.
[141000660100] |The thing that surprised me the most is that this simple software supports plugins.
[141000660110] |Go in the gedit preferences window, at the last tab and you will see there 12 plugins from which less than a half are activated.
[141000660120] |I activated a few more because I really like them.
[141000660130] |I've actually never wrote a document in gedit until today and even though it doesn't support formatting it's enough for editing this text to put on-line.
[141000660140] |It has an integrated spellchecker and I can also configure it to autosave my documents every several minutes.
[141000660150] |The autosave feature is disabled by default because gedit is mainly used for editing configuration files and scripts.
[141000660160] |Anyway, it has another cool feature that's good for this purpose.
[141000660170] |It creates a back-up copy of the file you want to save just before it's saved.
[141000660180] |This way, if you damage a script and wish to go back to what you had before, all you have to do is open the backup file.
[141000660190] |This feature is also common in kate and I must say it saved me several times.
[141000660200] |One of the things that make gedit very good for editing scripts and configuration files is the integrated syntax highlighting feature.
[141000660210] |This actually performs very well and various programming languages are supported.
[141000660220] |The programming language is automatically detected and, if you wish, you can change the colors used at highlighting for each language. 
[141000660230] |Bold, italic, underline and strikeout can be used for the different elements in the language.
[141000660240] |Another useful feature for handling large source codes is the one for displaying line numbers.
[141000660250] |This is a good addition over the "Go to Line" (Ctrl+I) feature.
[141000660260] |gedit has support for internationalized text and I must say I was pretty surprised when I saw that it can render Arabic characters with no problem.
[141000660270] |A plugin that helps me keep this review an acceptable size is the document statistics.
[141000660280] |It's actually a little more because it's also able to show statistics for the selection.
[141000660290] |Information included is about how many lines, words, characters and bytes are counted.
[141000660300] |You'll never guess what I think is the best thing about gedit!
[141000660310] |For me, the best thing is that it does all this stuff out of the box, seamlessly, allowing us to concentrate on the contents.
[141000660320] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000660330] |It's light, it's very easy to use and yet powerful enough to allow efficient usage with common tasks in Linux.
[141000660340] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000660350] |I'd like to have the find and replaced features integrated together.
[141000660360] |Code folding is not supported and I miss it.
[141000660370] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000660380] |The truth is that gedit is what you get by default when you use gnome.
[141000660390] |Perhaps the default editor from KDE is better, but I think this one is lighter and speed is the most important thing here. gedit definitely is up to the job and it's heavily maintained, so even better releases are to come.
[141000660400] |The screenshots below show the program in action:
[141000680010] |<title>Sylpheed-Claws Review</title>
[141000680020] |<img/>Perhaps I should begin by saying that this software evolved from the <a>Sylpheed e-mail client</a>.
[141000680030] |At this point we have to figure out if there is much of a difference and which one is better.
[141000680040] |You can imagine that this software is very similar to Sylpheed so I will emphasize on the differences, but similarities will also be discussed.
[141000680050] |The first addition that really makes a difference is actually the first thing you see when the software is opened.
[141000680060] |It's a wizard that allows adding e-mail accounts in a very easy manner.
[141000680070] |Most of the settings can be done from this wizard and generally there is no need for further configuration.
[141000680080] |The user can just start using the e-mail account right away.
[141000680090] |Next, you'll see the main interface.
[141000680100] |It is very similar to the original program and differences are hardly noticeable.
[141000680110] |Things that are modified include: an icon here, another one there, small modifications related to the behavior of some buttons and differences in the behavior of the quick search button. 
[141000680120] |The quick search feature of Sylpheed-Claws is actually better than the one in Sylpheed.
[141000680130] |I like it mainly because it's located somewhere in the middle of the screen but also because it is advanced and in the same time easier to use.
[141000680140] |A criterion can also be set in extended search and an information button is available for displaying and explaining the symbols that can be used.
[141000680150] |Something that I don't like in Sylpheed-Claws is the replacing of the text New, Unread and # with icons of different colors.
[141000680160] |If I hadn't used Sylpheed before it would have been very hard for me to figure out what that icons stand for.
[141000680170] |At some point I went through the help menu and there I noticed an icon legend.
[141000680180] |This is very useful but how many of us go through the help menu?!
[141000680190] |A big step forward for Sylpheed-Claws is that it has support for themes.
[141000680200] |Some users like to customize their applications because either they don't like the standard look or just want to make them "theirs".
[141000680210] |Generally, a new theme will not change much in this software but even little things like changing the icons and some colors make a big impact.
[141000680220] |A very cool addition to Sylpheed-Claws is the plugins.
[141000680230] |They are excellent for software because, in many cases, a lot more functionality can be easily added without modifying the whole software.
[141000680240] |With plugins you can integrate Sylpheed-Claws with software like the Clam AntiVirus, the SpamAssassin Server, the light Dillo web browser for reading HTML mail and many more.
[141000680250] |Other plugins enable support for vCalendar message handling and there is one that even handles various ACPI mail LEDs on most brand laptops.
[141000680260] |If you read the review of Sylpheed you noticed that I tried to make the point that even though the configuration is very detailed, it is a bit complicated.
[141000680270] |In this one the configuration window is redesigned.
[141000680280] |Most of the functions are the same but some additions are made.
[141000680290] |For example, after loading a plugin it can be configured from the plugins section. 
[141000680300] |You may find out that the default web browser will not always open.
[141000680310] |If you want to correct this problem you have to replace the fancy command (mozilla-firefox -remote 'openURL(%s,new-window)') for opening external browsers with this one: "firefox %s" .
[141000680320] |You will most certainly want to do this because the external browser opens the links in Sylpheed-Claws.
[141000680330] |Filtering is as powerful as it is in Sylpheed so this is a very good thing.
[141000680340] |It is redesigned too but I'm not sure it's actually easier to use.
[141000680350] |I don't find it more complicated but also not easier, perhaps it's just different.
[141000680360] |<b>The Good</b>
[141000680370] |All the good things that are present in Sylpheed, like speed and stability, are also present here.
[141000680380] |The availability of the wizard, the support for themes and plugins makes this software a lot more usable by non-experienced users.
[141000680390] |I almost forgot to say that it can fetch news and this is an excellent feature for a mail client.
[141000680400] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141000680410] |Since several people work on this one, minor bugs can be noticed in Sylpheed-Claws sometimes.
[141000680420] |Spam control is poorly supported.
[141000680430] |It's only supported through plugins and you have to be an expert to be able to configure it efficiently.
[141000680440] |Considering that one of the greatest things about the Sylpheed family is that it's able to handle large amounts of mail efficiently, an efficient and easy to use spam mail control feature is badly required.
[141000680450] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141000680460] |Sylpheed-Claws is an e-mail client based on Sylpheed.
[141000680470] |It owes a lot to that software because it puts the Sylpheed in Sylpheed-Claws.
[141000680480] |The truth is that this client is even better because it has an easier to use interface, support for plugins and for themes. <img/>
[141000680490] |<img/>There is also a <a>review of Sylpheed</a>.
[141000680500] |Perhaps reading it will be useful.
[141000680510] |The screenshots below show Sylpheed-Claws in action: