[141001170010] |<title>Sound Juicer Review</title>
[141001170020] |<img/>Linux is becoming a more and more viable alternative to other operating systems.
[141001170030] |It constantly evolves, bringing new and updated applications that make life easier for Linux users every day.
[141001170040] |Modern Linux distributions enable users to do pretty much everything they want with their computers.
[141001170050] |From browsing the Internet, printing and writing documents to professional art work such as photo manipulation and architectural designs.
[141001170060] |Multimedia software have also evolved to a rather high level allowing anyone using Linux to listen to mp3s or audio CDs, play movies or burn DVDs.
[141001170070] |Audio CDs can be converted into audio files and saved on the disk for later playback without the CD inside the drive.
[141001170080] |Sound Juicer is a simple and clean CD ripping application used for extracting the audio tracks from audio compact discs and converting them into audio files.
[141001170090] |It can also play audio tracks directly from the CD, allowing you to preview the tracks before ripping them.
[141001170100] |Sound Juicer is designed to be easy to use and to work with as little user intervention as possible.
[141001170110] |Track names are, in most cases, found and downloaded from the Internet, via MusicBrainz service.
[141001170120] |Basically, you just have to insert the audio CD and press the "Extract" button.
[141001170130] |If you care, however, about the audio quality and format, those can be easily configured from the Preferences window.
[141001170140] |<b>Installing</b>
[141001170150] |Fortunately, Sound Juicer was installed by default on my Fedora Core 6 system so I didn't have to undergo through a probably annoying installation process.
[141001170160] |However, Sound Juicer relies on several libraries and services in order to work properly or at all.
[141001170170] |It requires the following packages:
[141001170180] |- GNOME Media
[141001170190] |- GStreamer Base Plug-ins-(for the cdparanoiasrc, gnomevfssink and vorbisenc plugins)
[141001170200] |- libmusicbrainz-2.1.4
[141001170210] |Moreover, it needs haldaemon and messagebus services to gather information about your optical drives.
[141001170220] |Unfortunately, it will crash and send an error report if haldaemon is stopped.
[141001170230] |Optional packages:
[141001170240] |- intltool-0.34.2
[141001170250] |- GStreamer Good Plug-ins-0.10.3 (for the flacenc and wavenc plugins)
[141001170260] |- GStreamer Ugly Plug-ins-0.10.3 (for the lame plugin)
[141001170270] |- libcdio (which can use CDParanoia, libcddb, and VCDImager)
[141001170280] |- TagLib
[141001170290] |<b>Interface</b>
[141001170300] |To see just how easy to use it really is, I inserted an audio CD and fired up Sound Juicer.
[141001170310] |In a few seconds it found my optical drive with the audio CD in it and fetched the tracks information from MusicBrainz, which is an online free service that provides a database of data for most published CDs.
[141001170320] |In the upper part of the window, I was presented with basic information about the disc: title, artist, genre and total duration.
[141001170330] |Below that was a list of tracks on the CD, each with its own full title, artist and duration.
[141001170340] |If the wrong or no CD was detected, I could easily edit a track title by first selecting the track and then clicking on the title.
[141001170350] |To finish the process, I only had to press enter.
[141001170360] |The artist and track name will be stored directly into the audio files so music players can easily organize and display them.
[141001170370] |The main window has three menus in the upper section: Disc, Edit and Help.
[141001170380] |From the Disc menu I could Play/Pause the currently selected track(s), go to next or previous track, eject the disk or submit the track names.
[141001170390] |This feature is useful if the CD hasn't been recognized and you would like to do a good deed for the community.
[141001170400] |Next is the Extract button which allows me to extract all the tracks on the CD to audio files.
[141001170410] |I could either select only a few tracks or all of them, using the Edit - Select All menu.
[141001170420] |By default, encoded files will be saved under $HOME/Music directory but this path could be changed from the Preferences menu.
[141001170430] |Once the process is started, Sound Juicer will notify the user by displaying an icon next to the track number.
[141001170440] |Moreover, the total progress and ETA is displayed in the lower left part of the window.
[141001170450] |There's also the possibility to re-read the current disk, which can be reached from the same Disc menu.
[141001170460] |The Preferences window can be opened through the Edit menu.
[141001170470] |The first thing that can be set in the Preferences window is the CD drive but this is only the case if you have more than one.
[141001170480] |Next, you can set whether to eject the cd when finished and the destination folder for the extracted audio files.
[141001170490] |Also, if you have a preference in how the folder hierarchy should be saved as and how the files should be named, you can set those here as well.
[141001170500] |In the last section of the Preferences window, you can set which file format to be used when storing the tracks on your hard drive.
[141001170510] |There are many formats available but the most popular ones (and maybe already available for you) are FLAC, Ogg Vorbis and Wav.
[141001170520] |Each and every format has its own customizable profile through GStreamer's pipelines.
[141001170530] |These pipelines can be configured for each type and destination of music.
[141001170540] |For instance, if the album you are currently ripping is going on a portable device with small storage space, you will have to create a profile based on more compression and less quality so the resulting file will sound good (not excellent or perfect) but still have a rather small size when copied to a disk.
[141001170550] |Unfortunately, GStreamer is another application so explaining its pipelines has less to nothing to do with Sound Juicer.
[141001170560] |The last menu in the main window is named Help and has an About and a Help section.
[141001170570] |The Help section is pretty helpful even though it's not enormous.
[141001170580] |Moreover, it's stored locally so you don't have to connect to the Internet in order to find out how to rip an audio CD.
[141001170590] |<b>The Good</b>
[141001170600] |Sound Juicer is a clean and easy to use CD ripping tool.
[141001170610] |It does have a small number of features but it's enough to perfectly rip an audio CD.
[141001170620] |The track information is gathered from an online database so you don't have to rename all the tracks every time you want to extract a CD.
[141001170630] |The online information is correct and complete for almost every CD ever released, but if there are, however, wrong names or information, it can easily be edited manually.
[141001170640] |The resulted audio files can be saved in a number of file formats, each for every preference.
[141001170650] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141001170660] |Although it does its job very well, Sound Juicer is just a frontend to GStreamer multimedia library and uses GStreamer's plugins for encoding files and the configuration is made through GStreaner's pipelines which are rather complicated for a new user.
[141001170670] |But no need to worry, as there is enough documentation for every level of qualification.
[141001170680] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141001170690] |Sound Juicer is a ripping tool for Linux and nothing less/more.
[141001170700] |It is designed to be easy to use and to work with little user intervention, while still offering access to a powerful encoding engine - GStreamer.
[141001170710] |This is a good thing but it can also be a bad thing because GStreamer can be sometimes quite difficult to work with.
[141001170720] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141001180010] |<title>proFTPd Administrator Review</title>
[141001180020] |<img/>When I first moved to Linux, one of the first things I've tried to install was an ftp server so I could share files with my friends a lot easier.
[141001180030] |Also, few of my friends got used to getting new free programs from me because they are too lazy or don't exactly know where to get them from.
[141001180040] |I'm sure all of us have friends like those.
[141001180050] |So I had to make a separate user on my ftp server for each of them.
[141001180060] |Of course, besides downloading files from me, they started uploading their own files as well and after a while, I noticed my hard drive was almost full with all kind of junk files that came from the ftp server.
[141001180070] |So I had to manage their accounts, set a disk quota, transfer limit and so on.
[141001180080] |This hasn't been easy, especially because I had to configure those through ProFTPd's config file. 
[141001180090] |A few weeks ago, I found an application called "ProFTPd Administrator".
[141001180100] |ProFTPd Admin is a web-based tool written in PHP aimed at managing users and groups for the popular ftp server, ProFTPd.
[141001180110] |This tool enables you to easily manage your users, their disk quota and also, their allowed directories and to also view detailed logs about their activity on your ftp server, such as number of logins, the IPs they logged in from, what files they downloaded/uploaded and which directories they used for transferring them.
[141001180120] |In order to run this tool, you will need to have Apache, MySQL and, of course, ProFTPd.
[141001180130] |Installing ProFTPd Administrator isn't exactly an easy task, especially for very new Linux users.
[141001180140] |Fortunately, it comes with a complete documentation which is easy to follow and which explains step by step how to install this utility.
[141001180150] |Also, the documentation has a troubleshooting section which explains how to go over most of the errors you might encounter through and after the installation. 
[141001180160] |Once you have completed successfully the installation process, it's time to start using it.
[141001180170] |Simply go to the web address where you installed ProFTPd Admin.
[141001180180] |On the Main Page, you will be presented with information regarding current logged in users on the ftp server and on the Linux server, as well as their current activity and how long they have been connected.
[141001180190] |The next tab, "Users", will list the current configured users, the groups they belong to, the number of logins, the last login date, whether their account will expire, has disk quota set or is disabled.
[141001180200] |Clicking on an existing account name will send you to that account manage page, where you can view more detailed info about that user, such as home directory, shell, IPs he logged in from, expiration date and so on.
[141001180210] |On that same page, there are three tabs in the middle section named "Traffic", "Section" and "Transfer log".
[141001180220] |The first one will open a small window in the lower part of your browser and show you how many files and how much traffic in megabytes that specific user has generated on the past hour, in the last 24 hours, 7 days and 30 days.
[141001180230] |The next tab, "Section", will show you in the same bottom window the user activity by directory, while the last tab will show you the exact name of the files the user has transferred, when he transferred them, their size, how much time it took him to transfer them and whether he downloaded and uploaded them. 
[141001180240] |In the same "Users" tab, there are a few sub-tabs which enable you to configure that specific user.
[141001180250] |The first tab, "General info" allows you to enter basic info about that user such as ID, home directory, shell, whether the account is disabled or not, his name, address, email and some notes.
[141001180260] |From the next tab, "Groups", you can configure the group this user is part of.
[141001180270] |The next two sub-tabs, "Set password" and "Set expiration" are pretty self-explanatory.
[141001180280] |From the "Quota" sub-tab, you can set how much disk space the user is allowed to use and how many files he is allowed to upload or download.
[141001180290] |To use this feature, however, you must have the Quota extension installed and enabled from the Configure - Extensions tab.
[141001180300] |Finally, the next tab will delete the current selected user.
[141001180310] |However, if you enter the "Users" tab and don't have or don't click on any user, you can add a new one by clicking on the "Add user" button in the lower part of the page.
[141001180320] |This button will take you on a page where you can fill-in the fields regarding the new user's information such as username, home directory, password and so on.
[141001180330] |Overall, the user management feature is quite complex but still easy to use. 
[141001180340] |The next tab, "Groups", will take you to a page where you can configure existing groups or add new ones.
[141001180350] |By default, there are two groups already configured: admins and users.
[141001180360] |The groups' configuration can be made the same way users are configured, only a lot easier considering here are only a few tabs needed to be filled.
[141001180370] |The fields are, however, self explanatory and configuring them is a rather straight-forward task. 
[141001180380] |"Transfers" tab will take you to a general statistics page regarding transfers made by all users.
[141001180390] |You will be able to view here general statistics such as top files downloaded, top 10 downloaders/uploaders and so on.
[141001180400] |An interesting feature you will find here is the "Write out logs" which enables you to move the logs from the database to the hard drive if your ftp server is quite popular and a lot of logs will gather really fast.
[141001180410] |For ftp servers with one or two users which transfer a file once a week, this option is pretty useless but still quite interesting.
[141001180420] |You will also find here a Delete option which, obviously, will delete the log files forever. 
[141001180430] |Next tab is called "Status" and will show you various system information.
[141001180440] |You will be presented with data such as server ip, kernel version, uptime, terminal and ftp server user count, load averages, http and mysql servers version and php, proftpd and proftpd-admin versions.
[141001180450] |More detailed information about the current Linux server all of these services run on can be viewed through several sub-tabs named "Processlist", "Resources", "Hardware", "Kernel", "Database" and "ProFTPd".
[141001180460] |It's pretty self-explanatory what these sub-tabs will present once clicked on.
[141001180470] |This feature, while pretty useless on managing a FTP server, can be useful for Linux users that have installed a PHP script to view their system information because now, they can have both a FTP management script and a system info script merged in one single tool. 
[141001180480] |The next two tabs, "About" and "Manual" are basically the pages you will want to visit when you're having troubles with your proftpd server or administrator tool or when you want to find out how to use a certain feature.
[141001180490] |These are the main documentation pages which are complex, complete, easy to follow and sorted into categories.
[141001180500] |The last tab, "Configure", will enable you to configure both MySQL and ProFTPd to work flawlessly with the ProFTPd Administrator.
[141001180510] |Inexperienced users will most likely find many of the options here quite complicated but fortunately, no harm will be done if you miss configuring some of them.
[141001180520] |This is a good thing because this way, new users can play around with the settings, see what they do and finally, get to know them and configure them accordingly to their needs.
[141001180530] |In this tab, options like database type, username, password, hostname and database name can be configured.
[141001180540] |Also, ftp server directories and sections, paths to programs related to the Linux and FTP server.
[141001180550] |These programs are used to show various system information in the "Status" tab (process list, kernel info etc).
[141001180560] |Moreover, here, you can set the default disk quota settings set on new users and ProFTPd Administrator extensions.
[141001180570] |<b>The Good</b>
[141001180580] |ProFTPd Administrator is a web script written in PHP, designed to easily manage FTP users and groups for the popular FTP server called ProFTPd through a web browser.
[141001180590] |It also doubles as a system information tool providing information like free hard-drive space, memory statistics and much more.
[141001180600] |It comes with a complete documentation (with a troubleshooting section) which makes it easy for inexperienced users to set-up and manage a great FTP server. 
[141001180610] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141001180620] |Even if this web tool offers quite advanced features for managing users on a FTP server, it also offers A LOT of statistics and system information features which will be probably found by many users as 'useless'.
[141001180630] |In my opinion, the time allocated to creating these features could be very well used for enabling more FTP server-related functions and options.
[141001180640] |When users first download the ProFTPD Administrator, they will most likely expect to find a FTP server administration tool but, in fact, they find themselves using a mixed application which offers both FTP management functions and system information scripts.
[141001180650] |However, other users will probably find the sys info features as useful. 
[141001180660] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141001180670] |Overall, ProFTPd Administrator is a very handy, useful and easy to use tool for managing users and groups on a FTP server.
[141001180680] |For what it's worth, I never stopped using it since I found it and don't even consider using a similar tool.
[141001180690] |However, it wouldn't hurt to offer more FTP server-related functions and options and less system information which if I really wanted to have, I would have installed a separate PHP script designed specifically for this.
[141001180700] |It's still, however, a great application and should be used by everyone that has a ProFTPd server up and running.
[141001180710] |It will definitely make their lives a lot easier.
[141001180720] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141001190010] |<title>Gwenview Review</title>
[141001190020] |<img/>With every passing day, Linux is becoming a better and more viable alternative to proprietary licensed operating systems.
[141001190030] |Unfortunately, it still lacks important packages which could have helped a lot more people to change their minds and make the switch.
[141001190040] |Image viewing and manipulation has been one of them for quite some time now.
[141001190050] |Even though there are a lot of pictures viewing software packages, many have glitches and annoyances wrapped-around them.
[141001190060] |This isn't the case, however, with Gwenview.
[141001190070] |Gwenview is an image viewer for KDE and more.
[141001190080] |It comes with a lot of features and offers the possibility to add even more through KIPI - the KDE Image Plugin Interface.
[141001190090] |Its interface, while simple and intuitive, resembles very much with other popular image viewers so if you've ever used PixiePlus, ACDSee or Xnview, then you will feel like home with this image viewer software.
[141001190100] |<b>Image viewing</b>
[141001190110] |As an image viewer, Gwenview has four modes to show the pictures in a directory.
[141001190120] |The first is "Browse", which divides the screen in three sections, each with its own utility.
[141001190130] |In the upper left, you'll have a directory tree which allows you to browse through your computer and select the image directory you want.
[141001190140] |The whole right half will list the pictures (and other files) in the selected directory.
[141001190150] |The files can be listed as details, as thumbnails with info on side or as thumbnails with info on bottom, while the lower left section will show act as the image viewer, offering the image preview and tools regarding this action, such as zoom, next/previous and rotate left/right.
[141001190160] |More functions can be found in a menu which pops-up if you right click on the image. 
[141001190170] |If "View Image" mode has been selected, the preview section will occupy most of the window, while there will be no directory tree or files listed.
[141001190180] |However, there will be a location bar where the image location can be typed in.
[141001190190] |The location can be a local folder, as well as a web location.
[141001190200] |The resemblance between Konqueror image viewer and Gwenview while viewing an image in full window will be astonishing.
[141001190210] |The last viewing mode is "Slide Show".
[141001190220] |I think it's obvious how this mode will show the pictures: in fullscreen, between a 10 seconds delay and eventually showing them randomly.
[141001190230] |These settings can be personalized by following the menu Settings / Configure Gwenview / SlideShow.
[141001190240] |Gwenview supports most image formats but can also open Gimp files (*.xcf), SVG files and can even play videos.
[141001190250] |Moreover, it has a zoom lock function which allows you to keep the same zoom for all images.
[141001190260] |Another interesting feature is the ability to automatically rotate JPEG images according to their EXIF Orientation tag.
[141001190270] |<b>Image Manipulation</b>
[141001190280] |By default, Gwenview will allow you to perform most simple image manipulations such as rotate, mirror and flip.
[141001190290] |Even if you install the KIPI Plugins, it still won't be enough to replace your favorite image editor.
[141001190300] |However, Gwenview allows you to choose an external tool, such as a powerful image editor and open the image with it for more complex manipulations.
[141001190310] |<b>File Browser</b>
[141001190320] |You can easily turn Gwenview in a file browser by selecting the "Browser" mode.
[141001190330] |Basic file operations like copy, move, delete are supported.
[141001190340] |Moreover, Gwenview has drag'n'drop support and can also provide access to FTPs and Windows shares through KIO slaves (KDE Input/output programs that provide support for individual protocols like HTTP and FTP) and can easily browse through tarballs and zip files.
[141001190350] |The files can be either listed with detailed text information or with thumbnail view and simple text information, while the bookmarks can easily be shared with Konsole and KDE file dialogs.
[141001190360] |<b>Plugins and External Tools</b>
[141001190370] |Whether functions offered by default are not enough for you or you simply want your image viewer to support a lot more functions 'just in case', you can install all the KIPI plugins and external programs supported by Gwenview.
[141001190380] |KIPI Plugins' purpose is to extend the host programs features and capabilities, while keeping a simple and intuitive interface so users can benefit from these new features without a headache.
[141001190390] |The main package is called kipi-plugins and can be easily installed using the package manager for each distribution.
[141001190400] |(For Fedora, simply type yum install kipi-plugins).
[141001190410] |Once installed, you can choose what plugins to be enabled or not through the Settings / Configure Gwenview / KIPI Plugins menu and finally use them through the Plugins menu, once an image has been loaded.
[141001190420] |KIPI Plugins allows you to acquire images from digital camera, scanner or desktop (making a screenshot), perform mass image editing, generate a HTML gallery and a lot more.
[141001190430] |The external tools function, however, works a little different.
[141001190440] |Here, all you have to do is define a program for a certain task and then click on that program from the Gwenview External Tools menu.
[141001190450] |Once you've done that, Gwenview will send that image to the external program and let it do all the work.
[141001190460] |<b>The Good</b>
[141001190470] |Gwenview is an image viewer for KDE which features a folder tree window and a file list and thumbnail window to provide easy navigation through your files.
[141001190480] |It has support for most image formats and can extend its functionality through KIPI Plugins.
[141001190490] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141001190500] |Bad things about Gwenview?
[141001190510] |I'm not sure it has any.
[141001190520] |Gwenview does its job as an image viewer very well but if you also want a good file browser and a great image editing software, you should use separate software packages because this one is just a file viewer with a twist and nothing more.
[141001190530] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141001190540] |Gwenview can be used as an image viewer, a file browser and an image editing software.
[141001190550] |While it does the job very well as an image viewer, it's not yet appropriate to be used for more.
[141001190560] |I've set Gwenview as my image viewer but for now, I'm still sticking to Konqueror as my file browser and Gimp as the image editing program.
[141001190570] |But who knows what future versions will it bring?
[141001190580] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141001210010] |<title>Downloader for X Review</title>
[141001210020] |<img/>Downloader for X (also known as D4X) is a neat application for those of us who download lots of stuff from the Internet.
[141001210030] |It saves us from many frustrations that an integrated download manager used to give us and replaces it with an easy to use, yet powerful, download application.
[141001210040] |It supports reconnecting and resuming on connection timeouts, it has a download queue for multiple files, support for simultaneous downloads, and many other features for powerful downloading.
[141001210050] |Unfortunately, many download managers for Linux don't support full integration with X11 browsers and D4X is no exception.
[141001210060] |Everybody would like downloads to start in a powerful download manager as soon as they click a download link.
[141001210070] |So far, from what I've noticed, this only happens while using KGet, but that's another story.
[141001210080] |D4X does provide some kind of integration, but through a Drag'n'Drop basket and through a clipboard monitor.
[141001210090] |This means that if you found a download link with Konqueror and you want to load it into D4X, you will either have to drag and drop the link to the download basket, or right click the link and select copy location.
[141001210100] |For the last method to work, however, clipboard monitor should be enabled from the general options window (which is disabled by default).
[141001210110] |From what I've noticed, the author has always chosen to focus on functionality rather than appearance.
[141001210120] |This resulted in a powerful and full-featured but rather ugly and bloated application.
[141001210130] |The first time I've opened D4X, I felt quite disoriented because the application had buttons everywhere, the window was divided into three sections and I had to load a download before I could be certain what each of them does.
[141001210140] |Adding downloads to D4X could be a rather difficult task for inexperienced users.
[141001210150] |When you manually add a download or the clipboard monitor intercepts one, the "Add new download" window opens.
[141001210160] |This window is divided into 6 tabs: Main, Common, FTP, HTTP, Proxy and Time.
[141001210170] |In the first tab, you can configure general downloading options, such as file URL, where to save it, how to rename it, whether to start downloading right away or just add it to the list, paused.
[141001210180] |From the Common tab, you can select more advanced options such as timeout for reading from socket, timeout before reconnection, rollback after connecting and more.
[141001210190] |The FTP and HTTP tabs include more advanced options as well, such as user agent, depth of recursing, whether to use passive mode for FTP transfers and more.
[141001210200] |From the Proxy tab you can, of course, configure proxy related options such as whether to use a proxy for downloading this file or not, the proxy type and more.
[141001210210] |The last tab, Time, incorporates a very useful feature: a scheduler.
[141001210220] |From here, you can choose when to start downloading this file: today at 14:30, tomorrow, or even on 21 August 2159, the possibilities are limitless because there's a calendar incorporated, which enables you to choose the year, month, day and hours you want this download to start.
[141001210230] |Pretty neat.
[141001210240] |Unfortunately, not many people would know what every option from every tab does but luckily for them, the "Use default settings" feature could be enabled at any time.
[141001210250] |Once the download has been started, the left part of the window will show the Main queue, the right part will show the file names being downloaded, along with their size, the download speed, percent completed, ETA, URL and so on, while the main window's lower part is dedicated for logging; here will be shown what really happens through a download.
[141001210260] |From the right side toolbar, you can go through other D4X functions.
[141001210270] |The first button opens the main downloads window, second button opens the main log window, third button opens the URL-Manager.
[141001210280] |The forth button opens the FTP-search window.
[141001210290] |Although I've selected all the FTP search engines, popular searches like firefox, fedora or mirc returned 0 results.
[141001210300] |Too bad.
[141001210310] |The last two buttons will open the Filters and Scheduler windows.
[141001210320] |Here, you can select a date for a certain action to be taken.
[141001210330] |For instance, you can schedule D4X to exit, stop downloads or limit the global transfer speed at a certain date.
[141001210340] |D4X can be customized through the Options window, found in Options / General.
[141001210350] |Here you can customize the level one and two speed, the download folder, downloading limits, FTP and HTTP protocols options, Proxy options.
[141001210360] |Appearance options can be customized from here as well, such as interface options, application sounds and themes.
[141001210370] |Unfortunately, the themes function will only change the buttons icons and not the whole application interface.
[141001210380] |Also, from the options window you can personalize how D4X should integrate to your desktop environment (whether to open the Drag'n'Drop basket, enable the clipboard monitor or both).
[141001210390] |The clipboard monitor can be customized to ignore and catch certain extensions only.
[141001210400] |<b>The Good</b>
[141001210410] |Downloader for X is a download manager for X11 which supports reconnecting and resuming on connection timeouts, has a download queue for multiple files, support for simultaneous downloads, and many other features for powerful downloading.
[141001210420] |It can easily be used by both beginners and advanced users.
[141001210430] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141001210440] |It doesn't offer a complete integration with X11 browsers.
[141001210450] |Clicking a link in a browser will not be enough to start the download with D4X. You have to either use the drag and drop basket, or enable the clipboard monitor and right click the link in the browser and select copy location.
[141001210460] |Moreover, D4X offers a lot of features, many of them very useful but also, few of them are pretty useless.
[141001210470] |For instance, the FTP-search returned 0 results, no matter what I was searching for.
[141001210480] |I think it would be nice if the user could manage the FTP search engines, as in add, edit or remove them.
[141001210490] |Also, it would have been nice for the themes function to change the whole D4X appearance, and not only the buttons icons.
[141001210500] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141001210510] |D4X is a very powerful download manager for X11 with a lot of functions and features that offer complete control over your downloads.
[141001210520] |Unfortunately, D4X does not offer a total integration with X11 and its browsers.
[141001210530] |Also, if you're crazy for eye-candy applications, you'll either have to settle for buttons icons only or switch to another download manager.
[141001210540] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141001220010] |<title>Data Crow Review</title>
[141001220020] |<img/>Have you ever needed to organize all of your collections with one single program?
[141001220030] |You won't have to search any more because I’ve got exactly what you need.
[141001220040] |Data Crow is a media cataloger, perfect for those who like to collect software, books, movies and/or music.
[141001220050] |It enables you to create huge databases containing all your collected items with very little work and time spent.
[141001220060] |You may be asking yourself "How is it possible?".
[141001220070] |Well, it's pretty simple.
[141001220080] |In order to register an item to your collection, you only have to type in the item's name or title and Data Crow fetches the rest of the item information from the web.
[141001220090] |It's able to search either on Amazon, IMDB or both at the same time.
[141001220100] |Unfortunately, this feature is available for all modules except "Music Files".
[141001220110] |However, for music files you'll have to browse to the directory containing the media and Data Crow will read and import the embedded tag information.
[141001220120] |It supports formats such as mp3, ogg, flac, ape and audio cd's.
[141001220130] |Moreover, for Audio CD's, you can use the MusicBrainz or FreeDB servers to search for audio albums.
[141001220140] |Data Crow has many other features to offer, such as a comprehensive help system, loan administration, reporting tool (to pdf, html or text), backup/restore functions and more.
[141001220150] |Its interface is nice-looking, easy to use and intuitive.
[141001220160] |It also supports skinning for the eye-candy lovers.
[141001220170] |Because Data Crow is a Java application, you'll need to have Java Runtime Environment installed correctly on your system.
[141001220180] |However, this enables you to use the binaries provided by the author, skipping the installation process which every beginner fears of.
[141001220190] |If you choose to download and use the binaries, you'll have Data Crow up'n'running in no time.
[141001220200] |Once Data Crow has been opened, you'll have to manually add every item from your media to the program's database.
[141001220210] |In the left part of the screen, you are presented with the available modules: Software, Music Files, Movies, Audio CD's, Books, Contact Persons and Everything.
[141001220220] |The middle and right part of the screen shows item information, like title, storage medium, rating and a small review about it.
[141001220230] |In the upper part, you'll see the toolbar, which contains buttons needed to add, manage, delete or find items in your collection.
[141001220240] |Also, the toolbar contains the on-line search button which can be used to look for movies, audio albums, books or software, such as programs or games.
[141001220250] |Data Crow has an address book incorporated, which helps you to keep track of your lent items.
[141001220260] |Unfortunately, I've noticed that the contacts from "Contact Persons" section keep disappearing every time I restart the program.
[141001220270] |When I try to add the same contacts again, the program notifies me that the contact already exists.
[141001220280] |Yeah, but where is it?
[141001220290] |Eh, at least it shows up in the persons to lean to list, in the Loan Administration.
[141001220300] |Also, I could lend and return items easily so contacts not showing in the "Contact Persons" section isn't that bad after all.
[141001220310] |Every item can be edited and personalized if the information fetched from the Internet search engines don't suit you well enough.
[141001220320] |You can edit fields such as description, developer, publisher, platform, year, serial key, rating, screenshots, and more.
[141001220330] |Also, there's an interesting filed, named "State".
[141001220340] |Here you can set the item's state, which can be Lost, Unused, Used or Want to have.
[141001220350] |These are the default states and can easily be edited by following the menu Tools / Manage states.
[141001220360] |From the same Tool menu, you can also manage categories, platforms, storage media, templates and so on.
[141001220370] |Data Crow can be configured through the Settings Panel, found under the Settings menu, or by pressing Ctrl + M. Here, you can select which modules to be active and which not, you can set the default font for the program, whether to use a proxy and several other options.
[141001220380] |The interface's theme can be changed from the Look and Feel window, found under the View menu.
[141001220390] |There are a lot of themes to choose from.
[141001220400] |Data Crow also offers a comprehensive search function, which allows you to search through a large database of items for description (title, developer etc), technical information (file size, ASIN), and for loaned or available items.
[141001220410] |<b>The Good</b>
[141001220420] |Data Crow can be used as the universal media organizer because it offers support for cataloging movies, music, books or software.
[141001220430] |It fetches related information about your items from an online database, such as Amazon, IMDB, MusicBrainz or FreeDB, making your work a lot easier and less time consuming.
[141001220440] |It also offers many features that help you manage your collection and make it a more pleasant process.
[141001220450] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141001220460] |In my opinion, just being a Java program is a bad thing.
[141001220470] |I guess this comes from the unpleasant experience I had with other Java programs (Azureus).
[141001220480] |Moreover, in the short time I've spent with this program, I've noticed a few 'bugs" that need polishing.
[141001220490] |For example, the Contact Persons disappearing items on program restart.
[141001220500] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141001220510] |Data Crow is a media cataloger software with many features which makes collection managing a very easy and pleasant process.
[141001220520] |However, it needs a bit more polishing and bug fixes before it could be described as 'perfect'.
[141001220530] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141001230010] |<title>Liferea Review</title>
[141001230020] |<img/>There are a whole bunch of RSS Feed Readers available for Linux but, in my opinion, only two are worth using, depending on your current desktop environment.
[141001230030] |If you're using KDE, you'll have Akregator set as the default RSS reader, thanks to its flawless integration with Konqueror.
[141001230040] |As for Gnome however, chances are you'll go with Liferea, which is a news aggregator for GTK/Gnome.
[141001230050] |Of course, nobody will stop you from using Akregator in Gnome and Liferea in KDE, if that's the way you want it.
[141001230060] |Liferea is a very simple RSS feed reader which offers basic, yet useful features for managing your subscriptions.
[141001230070] |Unfortunately, you won't yet find fancy features such as integration with web browsers, adaptive filters, you won't be able to post on a blog and so on.
[141001230080] |On the other hand, Liferea is very fast, clean and elegant compared to other aggregators.
[141001230090] |At the moment, there are two Liferea version branches available.
[141001230100] |The latest 1.0.x branch offers version 1.0.26, while the 1.2.x branch has version 1.2-RC3 available for download.
[141001230110] |I've tried both out of curiosity but unfortunately, the difference (until now) between them consists in several bug fixes, several interface translations and a few more small modifications.
[141001230120] |No big features have been added to 1.2 from 1.0.26 so far, but this is only the release candidate 3 and a lot of changes can take place until the final release.
[141001230130] |Moreover, a 1.3.x branch has been announced, which may bring a version with more features.
[141001230140] |Because it's a pretty popular application, packages for most of the Linux distros have been made available by packagers.
[141001230150] |This means that you will probably be able to install Liferea through your package manager.
[141001230160] |I'm using Fedora Core and installing Liferea was just as easy as typing yum install liferea into a terminal.
[141001230170] |This installed the 1.0.26 version which is very stable and reliable.
[141001230180] |But I was curious about the 1.2-RC3 version, so I've decided to get the RC3 source package, compile and install it.
[141001230190] |Everything went smooth and without incidents.
[141001230200] |So, whether you choose to install Liferea through yum, apt-get, emerge and so on, or by compiling the sources, you will have Liferea installed on your system in no time, which is very good considering how other applications scream for several dependencies through the whole installation process.
[141001230210] |Once the installation was finished, I found the Liferea shortcut in both KDE and Gnome main menu, under the Internet submenu and gave it a go.
[141001230220] |The first thing I've noticed about Liferea is that it comes with a whole bunch of RSS subscriptions by default.
[141001230230] |I found feeds like art.gnome, gnomefiles, slashdot and a few Fedora-related ones.
[141001230240] |Most of them are quite important and useful and I'm sure they will make a great starting point for everyone using a RSS reader for the first time.
[141001230250] |Liferea knows three display modes:<b>Normal View</b> - Email client-like: the upper right pane contains a list of all headlines of the selected feed and the selected headline is shown in the lower right pane.
[141001230260] |<b>Wide View</b> - 3 panes: the middle pane contains a list of all headlines of the selected feed and the selected headline is shown in the right pane. 
[141001230270] |<b>Combined View </b>- 2 panes: the right pane contains a combined display of all headlines of the selected feed.
[141001230280] |You can change between these modes in the "View" menu.
[141001230290] |This is a per-feed setting so you can view each feed in the mode that fits best.
[141001230300] |The default viewing mode is "Normal View".
[141001230310] |Every item can be tagged as important using the flag button from the auto-hide toolbar under the item's title or using the "Toggle Item Flag" from the menu, found once an item has been right-clicked.
[141001230320] |Once an item has been flagged, it will show-up in the "Flagged" folder under the subscriptions list.
[141001230330] |Also, the flagged item won't be dropped from the cache when aging.
[141001230340] |There's also a search function which allows you to search through the downloaded items but also, you can use an online search engine to look for news.
[141001230350] |An interesting search-related function I found is the permanent search folder.
[141001230360] |This feature allows you to create a folder among your subscriptions that contains all items matching the search rule.
[141001230370] |Creating a new subscription is a rather easy process; all you'll need to do is press the "New subscription" button from the toolbar or from the Feeds menu and enter the feed address into the text box.
[141001230380] |After successfully creating a subscription, you'll be able to change the feed proprieties by right clicking it and selecting the appropriate button.
[141001230390] |Usually, there's no need to change a feed's proprieties unless it needs HTTP authentication or other feed specific options.
[141001230400] |Liferea can be customized from the Preferences window, which can be opened by pressing the "Preferences" button on the toolbar or from the Program menu.
[141001230410] |The preferences window is divided into seven tabs: feeds, folders, headlines, browser, GUI, proxy and enclosures.
[141001230420] |The feeds tab allows you to change basic feed-related options such as the default number of items to be saved in each subscription or the feed update interval.
[141001230430] |From the folders tab, you can change the way feeds are loaded once a subscription has been selected, while from the headlines tab, you can change the default hotkey for skimming through the items and also, you can set the default bookmarking website.
[141001230440] |This feature allows you to send an item to a bookmarking website (such as del.icio.us) once you've clicked an item's bookmark button.
[141001230450] |From the browser tab you can configure several options related to the internal and external browser.
[141001230460] |From the GUI tab you can enable the system tray icon and set whether you'd like to be announced when new headlines are downloaded or not.
[141001230470] |The proxy tab contains, of course, proxy-related options.
[141001230480] |Finally, from the Enclosures tab you can set what download tool to be used for downloading enclosures and the directory where to be downloaded to.
[141001230490] |Enclosures are often media files added to the feeds in order to enhance the visitor's experience.
[141001230500] |For instance, some weblogs provide feeds containing more than just html text, but also an audio or video file.
[141001230510] |Liferea allows you to select the appropriate media player used for playing each media format downloaded from a news item.
[141001230520] |<b>The Good</b>
[141001230530] |Liferea is a simple, clean, fast and yet quite powerful RSS reader for GTK/Gnome.
[141001230540] |It offers basic features for creating and maintaining subscriptions.
[141001230550] |It has a powerful search function and provides system tray integration for quick access.
[141001230560] |Moreover, it allows flagging the items you don't want to be deleted for aging.
[141001230570] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141001230580] |Unfortunately, there's no integration with Gnome (or KDE, for that matter) browsers but I'm not sure this is Liferea's fault, so adding items to the subscription list won't be as easy as with Akregator (click'n'go).
[141001230590] |Also, there are a few important RSS-related functions which are missing such as easy to use filters.
[141001230600] |Finally, there isn't an option in the preferences window which allows you to change the font used for displaying selected headlines.
[141001230610] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141001230620] |Even though it doesn't have a lot of advanced features to offer, Liferea is still a powerful, fast and clean RSS aggregator which you should definitely try out.
[141001230630] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141001240010] |<title>KShutDown Review</title>
[141001240020] |<img/>Shutting down a computer is one of the easiest tasks one can perform.
[141001240030] |However, finding a reliable program that will shut down your computer at a selected time could be a little bit harder.
[141001240040] |Take for example a misfortune Linux users come across quite often: compiling huge programs from sources.
[141001240050] |And the time needed to finish compiling increases substantially if you have a slow CPU.
[141001240060] |So what do you do?
[141001240070] |You either leave your computer running over night or you check on it once in a while to see if it's done so you can shut it down.
[141001240080] |OR, you can use an advanced shutdown utility, set it to shut your computer down when the compilation is complete, go to bed and sleep happily till morning.
[141001240090] |KShutDown is an advanced shutdown utility for KDE which comes in handy when your computer needs another couple of hours to finish doing something but you really can't sit around and wait.
[141001240100] |It's very simple to use but also comes with a few other functions a little more advanced.
[141001240110] |It can turn off your computer, restart it, lock the screen or end current session.
[141001240120] |You'll probably think "Hmm… this program probably executes shutdown -h now … and I'm using KDE… not good".
[141001240130] |Yes, I know. shutdown -h now is way too rude for KDE but fortunately, KShutDown uses (by default) the KDE Desktop Manager for shutting down and rebooting.
[141001240140] |This way, the shutdown process will start with logout, saving all KDE modifications.
[141001240150] |Sweet.
[141001240160] |Moreover, it offers additional functions such as stopping a media player or killing a PPP/PPPoE connection.
[141001240170] |If you think about it, KShutDown also comes in handy when you're leaving your computer over night to complete a huge download.
[141001240180] |And that's not all.
[141001240190] |It offers support for command line and DCOP (Desktop COmmunication Protocol) so you can use it to schedule a custom command at a certain hour when you won't be around the computer.
[141001240200] |There's also a system tray icon and visual/audio notifications when a task is near its schedule time.
[141001240210] |The basic actions (turn off computer, restart computer, lock session and end current session) can be configured to use one of the 3 methods available.
[141001240220] |The first method is KDE, which will use KDM to complete the scheduled tasks, the second method is forcing the shutdown/restart/screensaver command (shutdown -h now, reboot and xscreensaver-command -lock).
[141001240230] |Using this method is not recommended and should it be used when there are no other alternatives.
[141001240240] |Finally, the third method allows the user to run a custom command.
[141001240250] |For all three methods, there's the possibility to run a custom command before the action.
[141001240260] |You can set what method to be used, as well as a few other options from the settings window which can be found by following the menu settings / configure KShutDown.
[141001240270] |From the same settings window, in the General section, you can create a link (shortcut) on the Desktop or in the KMenu, remove the links and configure when the system tray icon to show (always, if active or never).
[141001240280] |From the Messages section you can configure KShutDown to display a warning message before the action and also set a custom message.
[141001240290] |From the last section, Advanced, you can set KShutDown to lock the screen after login and close the cd-rom tray before logout.
[141001240300] |The visual and audio notifications can be configured from the notification settings found under the same settings menu.
[141001240310] |You can download KShutDown from <a>SOFTPEDIA</a>.
[141001240320] |<b>The Good</b>
[141001240330] |KShutDown is an advanced shutdown utility and can also be called a command scheduler.
[141001240340] |It can turn off, restart, lock the screen or end the current session by using KDM, specific Linux commands or a custom command set by the user.
[141001240350] |This application can also be used for additional scheduled tasks such as stopping a media player or killing a PPP/PPPoE link.
[141001240360] |It has a lot of visual and audio notification that can be configured and also offers a system tray icon for quick access.
[141001240370] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141001240380] |KShutDown is an advanced shutdown utility which does its job very well and then some.
[141001240390] |However, it would be nice if it also supported GDM.
[141001240400] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141001240410] |Overall, I was pretty impressed by this application.
[141001240420] |If you're one of those guys that leave their computers running day and night for no apparent reason, you should definitely give KShutDown a try.
[141001240430] |And I guess there's no need for me to remind you how important power saving can be for the environment.
[141001240440] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141001250010] |<title>KMobileTools Review</title>
[141001250020] |<img/>KMobileTools is a nice application for KDE that enables Linux users to control mobile phones with their PCs.
[141001250030] |It offers quite a large number of features but unfortunately, some of them are pretty useless, while other important functions are missing.
[141001250040] |Even so, KMobileTools will definitely enable you to handle your mobile more easily.
[141001250050] |The authors claim that this application has been tested on Motorola, Nokia, Siemens, Sony Ericsson and LG mobile phones, but I could only test it on a Nokia 6230i phone and it worked flawlessly.
[141001250060] |This is an OpenSource project (GPL2 licensed), written in C++ using Qt and KDE libraries.
[141001250070] |Moreover, it uses KParts technology which offers compatibility with applications such as Kontact, KAddressBook, KMail and much more.
[141001250080] |This compatibility enables you to export or import contacts from the phone's address book into/from KAddressBook.
[141001250090] |Also, it allows you to read, write SMSs and export them from/into KMail.
[141001250100] |Basically, the limit will be set by your phone capabilities.
[141001250110] |Because I'm running Fedora Core, I've decided to resort to YUM to install KMobileTools on my system.
[141001250120] |The whole process went smooth, no crazy dependencies were required and in about one minute, my system was ready to run this application.
[141001250130] |Installing it was the easy part, making the application work completely with my phone was not that easy on the other hand.
[141001250140] |I've plugged in the USB cable into my phone and started the application.
[141001250150] |(I've answered "No" when my phone asked if I wanted to use it as a storage device).
[141001250160] |The first thing I've seen was an error saying something about how the application couldn't find a phone attached to the selected device.
[141001250170] |<b>NOTE:</b> To quickly find out what device your phone has been connected to, go into a terminal and type:
[141001250180] |<b>CODE</b><code># tail /var/log/messages</code>Now, look carefully for a line that resembles to this:<b>CODE</b><code>Dec 4 12:32:48 localhost kernel: cdc_acm 1-2:1.1: ttyACM0: USB ACM device</code>The <b>/dev/ttyACM0</b> (that's a zero at the end) is the device you'll need to set into KMobileTools phone device field in the program's configuration window.
[141001250190] |After I've set the correct device, the main KMobileTools window started showing the signal and battery level, as well as whether the charger is attached to the phone or not and the number of new and total received SMSs.
[141001250200] |The lower part of the main window had some functions that could come handy for a lot of people.
[141001250210] |These functions allow you to dial, answer and hang-up a telephone conversation.
[141001250220] |If you decide to dial a number, you can either type it in the number field or open the phone book and select it from there.
[141001250230] |The last two functions were "Browse SMS" and "New SMS".
[141001250240] |It's pretty self-explanatory what they do, but I had a small problem with them.
[141001250250] |The Browse SMS function refused to list any SMSs until I opened-up the main settings window, went to the SMS tab, clicked "Refresh" and checked both discovered slots.
[141001250260] |These functions can be reached also from the Calls and SMS menus.
[141001250270] |The Settings menu however, contains unique items so to speak.
[141001250280] |Here, you can set the visual and/or audio notifications on events like battery charging complete, incoming call, low battery and so on.
[141001250290] |Another item is called "Reinitialize GSM device", function that will most likely cause a program reload, relieving you from the need of restarting the application when any changes occurred.
[141001250300] |The last item from the Settings menu is the "Serial Terminal" item which will open some kind of console that looks pretty scary for everyone that's not a mobile phones guru.
[141001250310] |KMobileTools can be configured through the "Main settings" item in the Settings menu.
[141001250320] |Clicking this item will open a Settings window divided into 4 sections: Device, Mobile phone, Phone Book and SMS.
[141001250330] |In the first section, you'll find general settings related to the mobile phone device (the one I've written about earlier, /dev/ttyACM0), text encoding, port speed and a few other advanced options.
[141001250340] |From the Mobile phone section, you can choose the phone type, Nokia (generic), Ericsson (generic), Motorola (C359, C650) or Generic GSM Device.
[141001250350] |Also, you can choose whether to use a CKPD or ATD system for dialing.
[141001250360] |The Phone Book section allows you to change importing and name format settings, as well as choosing what phone slots to use for showing contacts in the phone.
[141001250370] |Finally, from the SMS section, you can choose which memory slot to use for reading and writing SMS.
[141001250380] |<b>The Good</b>
[141001250390] |KMobileTools is a nice application for KDE which enables Linux users to handle their mobile phones more easily.
[141001250400] |It allows them to dial, answer or hang-up a phone conversation, as well as reading and sending SMSs from their PCs.
[141001250410] |It also enables users to import/export phone address book from/into KDE AddressBook.
[141001250420] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141001250430] |Compared to original phone management software which arrives with every modern mobile phone, KMobileTools lacks an important feature: browsing through the phone’s memory.
[141001250440] |At least, for a Nokia phone with a memory card, you can answer Yes when the phone asks you if you want to use it as a storage device and then mount the /dev/sda device to an empty directory on your Linux system.
[141001250450] |However, I couldn't find a way to browse the phone's memory from Linux.
[141001250460] |Moreover, editing and deleting address book contacts or SMSs only works partially or doesn't work at all.
[141001250470] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141001250480] |Even if browsing the phone’s memory function lacks or it's pretty difficult to use, KMobileTools offers other powerful features that enable Linux users to handle their mobile phones more easily and also, allows them to import/export phone book contacts from the phone from/into the KDE AddressBook.
[141001250490] |Moreover, the future version (beta right now) is quite promising, more extended and with advanced features being announced.
[141001250500] |Overall, KMobileTools is a Linux application that comes useful for everyone using Linux and owning a modern phone and a USB cable (or bluetooth accessories on both phone and PC).
[141001250510] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141001260010] |<title>KWord Review</title>
[141001260020] |<img/>There are several word processors available for Linux, each with its own goals and features.
[141001260030] |Some are open source software, some are based on open source software and some are proprietary.
[141001260040] |You should choose the best suitable word processing application based on your daily activities and necessities.
[141001260050] |For example, if you're writing something small or informal like a few notes or an email draft, you definitely don't need to use a fancy word processor.
[141001260060] |On the other hand, if you're working in a stable and productive environment whose success depends on the manner of your writing, you'll probably go with a proprietary word processor like Corel's WordPerfect.
[141001260070] |Otherwise, KWord will make a perfect word processing tool for light writing.
[141001260080] |<b><u>Interface</u></b>Most of word processors show the influence of Microsoft Word in their interface.
[141001260090] |Fortunately, KWord's interface is the less imitative and far cleaner than either Writer's (OpenOffice) or AbiWord's (Gnome Office).
[141001260100] |Moreover, KWord's runs faster than the other two, the starting process being sped up by the template screen.
[141001260110] |Once you've reached the editing window, you'll notice that its toolbar contains basic options, leaving the more complex options and features for the menu items.
[141001260120] |Also, you'll notice a Document Structure pane in the left side that keeps track of multiple frames.
[141001260130] |Overall, KWord's layouts are geared towards making rich media, highly formatted print media but also it's equipped to handle writing projects in general.
[141001260140] |<b><u>Styles</u></b>Word processor styles are tools that enable users to easily configure numbering, line spacing, paragraph spacing, tabulators, borders and so on for each paragraph.
[141001260150] |By default, KWord offers only a few styles to choose from but as compensation, it allows you to create more styles by using the Style Manager.
[141001260160] |The large number and variety of functions available in Style Manager for each style is quite impressive, as it allows you to change many options such as font name, decoration, shadow, indent, spacing, layout, bullets and more.
[141001260170] |It also shows a small preview in most of the tabs.
[141001260180] |<b><u>Templates</u></b>Like styles, templates offer a way to save time by planning and re-using the structure of recent documents.
[141001260190] |When you start KWord, by default it will ask you to choose from a bunch of already created templates.
[141001260200] |These templates are based on page size, orientation, margins and columns.
[141001260210] |You can either choose from an already saved template, or select "custom document" and configure your own values.
[141001260220] |Alternatively, you can add a new template by selecting File / Create Template From Document.
[141001260230] |<b><u>Inserting Objects</u></b>KWord supports most types of objects.
[141001260240] |Its list includes objects such as links (local, hyperlink, mail, bookmark), notes, variables, expressions, tables, pictures, text frames, formulas and more.
[141001260250] |Linked graphics are described by KWord as "in-line", therefore disallowing linked graphics to be converted to embedded ones.
[141001260260] |<b><u>Bullets and numbers</u></b>KWord include all the possible options related to positioning bullets and numbers in relation to list items but these options are available only as styles from KWord's toolbar button.
[141001260270] |The good news, however, is that cutting and pasting list items into new positions or new documents remain uncorrupted as long as you only use KWord.
[141001260280] |<b><u>Frames</u></b>Most word processors are page orientated but this is not the case with KWord, which uses frames instead.
[141001260290] |This enables the user to write his text into a set of frames, where the normal pages based setup are emulated by showing one frame per page.
[141001260300] |The Document Structure pane shows how frames are nested and allows the user to extensively customize each frame, quickly building documents of impressive complexity.
[141001260310] |Although KWord's frames have fewer options, they are a lot easier to work with compared with other word processors' frames.
[141001260320] |<b><u>Headers and footers</u></b>Headers and footers can be enabled or disabled in documents from the Format menu.
[141001260330] |They can be configured to either be the same for the whole document, or to be different for the first page or all pages.
[141001260340] |To edit the header or footer, you'll only have to click on them and all the pages will automatically be updated.
[141001260350] |They also resize themselves if you add or remove text.
[141001260360] |And the best part is that you won't have to switch to another mode, like in other word processors in order to edit them.
[141001260370] |<b><u>Tables</u></b>Because KWord is a frame orientated word processor, the tables are created as frames which means that every table cell is a frameset, enabling the user to easily resize and move the table.
[141001260380] |Moreover, if a text in a table cell doesn't fit anymore, the cell gets automatically resized. 
[141001260390] |<b><u>Autocorrection</u></b>One of the most important feature of a word processor is its ability to find spelling errors in your writing.
[141001260400] |This is an important feature because many of us, even if we do have an editorial staff to look over our work, the human eye can make mistakes from time to time, whereas a properly configured electronic proofing tool misses nothing and does not make any mistakes.
[141001260410] |The best aspect of electronic spell checking is its on the fly scanning.
[141001260420] |This tool checks your spelling as you type, enabling you to immediately catch errors and edit them.
[141001260430] |KWord also offers an Auto completion feature which, if correctly configured, will suggest words when at least the first 5 letters have been typed.
[141001260440] |<b><u>Import/export filter</u></b>KWord offers the ability to load data from non-KOffice documents but the success of the import/export process will vary from format to format.
[141001260450] |Also, KWord can save data to non-KOffice data files, allowing you to interact with people who use other operating system and word processors.
[141001260460] |KWord supports importing/exporting Abiword, AmiPro, HTML, Oasis OpenDocument, OpenOffice Writer, Palm Document, plain text, RTF, WML, and WordPerfect files, while only supports importing Applixword, KPresenter, Microsoft Powerpoint and Word, PDF and XML files.
[141001260470] |As for the exporting support, KWord can easily export SGML and TeX document files.
[141001260480] |<b>The Good</b>
[141001260490] |KWord is a word processor for GNU/Linux with all the features included for word processing.
[141001260500] |Besides the basic features such as writing, deleting, cut/copy/paste, finding/replacing text, KWord also offers more extended and advanced writing features like paragraph settings, bulleting, headers and footers, tables and autocorrection/autocompletion for your spelling.
[141001260510] |It also supports importing and exporting documents from many other word processors.
[141001260520] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141001260530] |Even though KWord is a great word processor with amazing features, it still doesn't offer the same power and complexity as OpenOffice's Writer (free) or Corel's WritePerfect (proprietary).
[141001260540] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141001260550] |KWord is a WYSIWYG word processor and desktop publishing program.
[141001260560] |Its tools and layout are geared toward making rich-media, highly formatted print media, although it's also equipped to handle general writing projects.
[141001260570] |However, KWord is not as advanced as other word processors and therefore, it shouldn't be suitable for very long and complex documents such as doctorate theses.
[141001260580] |Still, it's almost perfect for daily use by students or office workers.
[141001260590] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141001270010] |<title>KSpread Review</title>
[141001270020] |<img/>KSpread is a free spreadsheet application that is part of KOffice, an integrated office suite for the KDE Desktop Environment.
[141001270030] |Spreadsheets applications have two important purposes: making lists and doing calculations through formulas.
[141001270040] |Unfortunately, KOffice seems to be focused on formulas, slightly ignoring list making.
[141001270050] |KSpread offers a single tool for list-making, Custom Lists, found in the Tools menu.
[141001270060] |The Custom Lists tool allows users to define custom words or series of words recognized by KSpread, such as the days of the week, months or years.
[141001270070] |Moreover, it allows users to quickly add them to cells by entering one list item and then dragging the mouse over other cells to add the rest of the list in sequence.
[141001270080] |KSpread lacks very important functions like sorting and filters, except for the ability to sort rows and columns in ascending and descending order.
[141001270090] |On the other hand, KSpread includes hundreds of mathematical functions, some very similar to ones found in Microsoft Excel, others unique and accessible only in KSpread.
[141001270100] |Either way, an eventual migration from Microsoft Excel (or other spreadsheet applications, for that matter) to KOffice KSpread shouldn't be very complicated.
[141001270110] |Its interface isn't very different from most spreadsheets, it provides cell styles laid out in organized series of tabs.
[141001270120] |It has the ability to shrink worksheets in order to fit the page size but unfortunately, it lacks the ability to set the order in which columns and rows are printed when they require more than one sheet.
[141001270130] |Overall, KSpread provides all the features of popular commercial and free spreadsheets while maintaining a high compatibility level between them through the import/export filters.
[141001270140] |These filters aren't installed by default, or at least they aren't on Fedora.
[141001270150] |I've installed KSpread through yum and the import tool had only OpenDocument spreadsheet and KSpread formats supported, which was a little suspicious.
[141001270160] |I knew that KSpread was able to at least import Microsoft Excel (xls) files but even though I had a xls file on my desktop, it didn't show up in the browse window when I tried to import it.
[141001270170] |Finally, I found out there was a package called koffice-filters that I needed to have installed in order for KSpread (and other KOffice applications) to be able to import several file formats.
[141001270180] |Once that package was installed, KSpread was able to import Microsoft Excel files, as well as GNUmeric, OpenOffice, Kexi, Quattro Pro, dBASE and Applix documents.
[141001270190] |Pretty big change.
[141001270200] |When you start KSpread, a wizard appears which offers you several templates.
[141001270210] |The templates are divided into three sections: General, Business and Home and Family.
[141001270220] |The General section contains the Blank spreadsheet, as well as the Student ID Card templates.
[141001270230] |The Business section contains Balance Sheet, Expense Report, Invoice, Packing Slip and Price Quotation templates.
[141001270240] |The last section contains BMI Calculator, Credit Card Tracker, Menu Plan and Vacation Checklist spreadsheet templates.
[141001270250] |From the same wizard, you can open an existing document from your hard drive and there's also the ability to open a recent document.
[141001270260] |KSpread's workspace is basically divided into three main sections.
[141001270270] |The upper level includes the menus and toolbars, the middle section is the spreadsheet itself with rows, columns and cells, while the bottom section contains the status bar, which shows info about the marked cell.
[141001270280] |The toolbars can be configured to include only the buttons you need and use regularly by right-clicking a toolbar and selecting the "Toolbar configuration" entry.
[141001270290] |For new users, the toolbar buttons can be a little confusing but fortunately, KSpread shows tool tips for each button and menu.
[141001270300] |Moreover, the help manual is very helpful for new users and it even includes a section for beginners.
[141001270310] |Formulas and Calculating are used to automatically calculate our results, generate new sheets for other months and make an abstract in the overview of the year.
[141001270320] |A formula can be used in two ways.
[141001270330] |The first one is to fill it by hand in the formula field found in the upper part of the main window.
[141001270340] |You'll have to select the destination files and then enter an equal sign.
[141001270350] |Finally, you can enter the calculation by hand, typing the operators and the required filed names.
[141001270360] |A formula can look like this: =a27+E3/a23*(5-f17)-sum(a13:a28) and once it has been typed in, it's time to get tested.
[141001270370] |If the entries in the formula were right, you should get a result in the destination filed.
[141001270380] |Otherwise, you'll see an error message inside.
[141001270390] |Alternatively, you can enter the data by clicking on the cells with the mouse cursor.
[141001270400] |To select areas of cells, simply left click a cell and drag the mouse cursor over the cells you want to have selected.
[141001270410] |<b>The Good</b>
[141001270420] |KSpread is a full featured spreadsheet package for Linux that provides both table-oriented sheets and support for complex mathematical formulas and statistics.
[141001270430] |It has many simple and advanced functions which make KSpread a spreadsheet application that can easily be used by both novice and advanced users.
[141001270440] |Moreover, it offers a complete hand book and many tool tips that come in handy for new users.
[141001270450] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141001270460] |Even if it supports importing several spreadsheet applications format, it lacks a very important feature: the ability to export MS Excel files, currently being able to only import them.
[141001270470] |This will definitely make Excel users think twice before making the switch.
[141001270480] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141001270490] |Overall, KSpread is a free, full-featured spreadsheet application for Linux, suitable for both beginners and advanced users.
[141001270500] |It offers a good variety of mathematical and formatting functions.
[141001270510] |Users of Microsoft Excel will have no trouble converting to KSpread as the interface is very similar, yet still intuitive and KSpread supports importing Excel files.
[141001270520] |Unfortunately, it doesn't also support exporting into Excel format.
[141001270530] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141001280010] |<title>KPresenter Review</title>
[141001280020] |<img/>KOffice is an office suite for the K Desktop Environment which includes a number of components, each unique and especially designed for a certain type of work.
[141001280030] |Each of its components has been released under an open sources license, meaning they're free to use.
[141001280040] |Unfortunately, not rarely does KOffice get overlooked and ignored in favor of its rival office suite, OpenOffice.
[141001280050] |Some would think it should be this way, considering OpenOffice offers a wider set of features, corporate backing and not to mention cross-platform compatibility which enables users to work with OpenOffice regardless of their current operating system.
[141001280060] |However, with every new release, KOffice gets more features, more usability and more power, slowly but surely getting closer to OpenOffice's level.
[141001280070] |Aside from a word processor and spreadsheet application, the third most important application in an office suite is the presentation software.
[141001280080] |KOffice has created an application called KPresenter for creating slide presentations (often referred as "Power Point presentations because of the large number of people using Microsoft Office's Power Point presentation software").
[141001280090] |This application allows adding text and images and also allows placing them anywhere on the page.
[141001280100] |You'll notice some similarities to KWord, on one hand because it uses the same text engine and on the other hand, because it follows the design rules: slides in a presentation are listed on the left in a small pane, while the current slide appears in the main pane on the right.
[141001280110] |Several slide transitions and options regarding a presentation can be found in the Tools menu.
[141001280120] |The list of slides are divided into two tabs, one that shows a preview of each slide, while the outline tab shows a collapsible tree view containing all the elements on each slide.
[141001280130] |Once an element has been selected in the main pane, its items are automatically highlighted in the tree pane, allowing the user to easily edit their properties by using the right-click menu in the tree pane.
[141001280140] |Moreover, KPresenter displays notes below the main pane, which are not confined to a limited number of lines, unlike in OpenOffice's Impress.
[141001280150] |Making a slide presentation using KPresenter is a pretty straight-forward process, especially if you had any past experience with other presentation applications.
[141001280160] |By default, KPresenter will open the template window at its start-up, allowing you to choose from a quite large number of templates.
[141001280170] |These templates are sorted into five categories: Letter, A4, Legal, Screen Presentation and Screen.
[141001280180] |The first category includes a couple of empty templates, as well as presentation templates with a page title and one or two column text or not text at all.
[141001280190] |The rest of the categories include the same type of templates but on different sizes of pages.
[141001280200] |The Screen Presentations category, however, contains some nice, colorful presentations.
[141001280210] |If you have created a custom template for a presentation and you'd like to use it again in the future slides, KPresenter allows you to save the current presentation template from the Template Manager, found under the File menu.
[141001280220] |Simply select which group your template should be part of (you could create a new group only for templates created by yourself) and finally, give your template a name and press OK to save it.
[141001280230] |Once you've chosen which template to use for your presentation, you'll notice some innovations which are minor as individual but their cumulative effect increases KPresenter's functionality level and makes it easier to master.
[141001280240] |For instance, KPresenter makes selectable both slide layouts and background templates, instead of separating them.
[141001280250] |KPresenter provides quite a few drawing tools such as straight lines, polygons, Bezier curves and ellipses.
[141001280260] |All of these can be resized, rotated, colored or filled with gradients.
[141001280270] |The freehand drawing tool only allows you to change the color of the drawing but not the size as well.
[141001280280] |Page backgrounds can contain either a picture or a gradient fill.
[141001280290] |Individual objects can be animated.
[141001280300] |In fact, you can specify how they appear and disappear, the speed of the effect and a custom sound effect.
[141001280310] |Unfortunately, movie files aren't (yet) supported.
[141001280320] |Moreover, the transition effects between slides only include movement effects, there are no crossfades or fade to black.
[141001280330] |<b>The Good</b>
[141001280340] |KPresenter is a quite powerful slide presentation software which includes all the basic features for creating presentations, as well as a powerful text handling, thanks to the KWord text engine.
[141001280350] |It also includes some extra features, some of them quite impressive such as the ability to export slideshows as HTML, which creates a set of webpages with images on each slide, notes and navigation control.
[141001280360] |It also supports several slide presentation applications format, including support for importing Microsoft Power Point files. 
[141001280370] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141001280380] |KPresenter's set of features is rather narrow compared to those offered by other rival office suites (OpenOffice).
[141001280390] |It doesn't offer support for including video files in the slideshows and even though it does offer support for importing Microsoft Power Point files, this support is quite poor and most likely, it will destroy your Power Point presentation once you try to import it into KPresenter.
[141001280400] |Also, support for exporting presentations into Power Point format totally lacks.
[141001280410] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141001280420] |Many of the difficult features, such as drawing tools and text handling have already been implemented.
[141001280430] |However, if the trivial features such as the ability to use the mouse cursor as a pointer through a slide show or a better support for importing Power Point files would be here, KPresenter would be much more usable and would have definitely been used by more people.
[141001280440] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141001300010] |<title>Jajuk Review</title>
[141001300020] |<img/>Have you ever wanted to organize your music collection and listen to the songs in it at the same time?
[141001300030] |Jajuk allows you to easily organize your collection, regardless of whether it's a small, large, scattered or arranged one.
[141001300040] |It was firstly designed for advanced users looking for powerful functionalities, but it keeps at the same time a fast and intuitive interface which shouldn't cause any hard time to inexperienced users as well.
[141001300050] |Moreover, because it's written in Java, it provides maximum portability and desktop integration, regardless of the current operating system one would use.
[141001300060] |Jajuk can be installed either from a jar installation file, from an rpm file or from a jnlp webstart application.
[141001300070] |More advanced users can get the sources package, rebuild it and finally install it.
[141001300080] |Unfortunately, from what I've noticed, Jajuk isn't (yet) available on Fedora's repositories and possibly for other popular distributions as well but I can't say for sure as Fedora was the only available testing distribution for me at this time.
[141001300090] |In order to install Jajuk, I've downloaded the jar installer and ran the command <b>java -jar jajuk-java-installer-version</b>.
[141001300100] |On a second Fedora system, I've tried installing Jajuk using the provided rpm file.
[141001300110] |I've downloaded it and installed it with the command <b>rpm -ihv jajuk-version.noarch.rpm</b>.
[141001300120] |Both were a complete success.
[141001300130] |A Jajuk shortcut was placed into the KMenu, under Multimedia.
[141001300140] |The first time I've started Jajuk, I had to select the music location.
[141001300150] |All my music files reside under a single directory so selecting the location took a very short while.
[141001300160] |After completing this step, I was presented with the usual "Tip of the day" (which I find very annoying and immediately unset the "show at start-up" option because I like to see each feature in action rather than reading about it.
[141001300170] |It can, however, be a good place to start for inexperienced users.).
[141001300180] |Closing this window finally allowed me to interact with the application's interface.
[141001300190] |At a first look, its interface seemed rather easy to use and, because I've selected the music directory earlier, I was now able to browse through and listen to any of the songs from my collection.
[141001300200] |At a closer look, I've noticed that the interface was divided into four important sections: in the left were the perspective buttons, the upper section contained various functions that enable the user to control how the collection is being played, the lower section displayed track name, selection size, progress bar and other various information.
[141001300210] |The main section is also divided into a few sections, depending on the current perspective.
[141001300220] |The first perspective, Physical, will show your collection as it's on the disk, sorted by files, directories, playlist files etc, while the Logical perspective will show your collection by following the id3 tags, sorting it by genres, artists, albums and so on.
[141001300230] |The Player perspective will show various information about the current playing tracks, as well as the album's cover.
[141001300240] |The Configuration perspective allows you to set various configuration options, as well as any new devices or directories containing audio files.
[141001300250] |The Statistics perspective will show graphs regarding genres, collection size and number of tracks, while the last perspective, Help, will show a complete documentation system, sorted by titles.
[141001300260] |When the current perspective is set to Physical, the main screen will be divided into four sections.
[141001300270] |To the left, you'll see a physical tree that shows the collection items sorted by their directories, while to the right, all items will be listed in the Physical table, regardless of the directory, genre or artist.
[141001300280] |There's also a filter that allows you to show only a certain artist, title, size or many others.
[141001300290] |In the lower left part, you'll see a playlist editor that I think shows some kind of history of played items, as well as a rate meter showed in yellow stars.
[141001300300] |Finally, in the right lower section, you'll see a cover for the album the current song is part of.
[141001300310] |This function is a little weird, as it searches the web for images containing the artist or album name.
[141001300320] |Even if you set the filter to "High", Jajuk will surprise you with images that don't have anything to do with the album, artist or music in general for that matter.
[141001300330] |To give you an example, I was listening to a Gwen Stefani song and the cover function showed me a picture with some groceries.
[141001300340] |Pretty neat, huh?
[141001300350] |Unfortunately, I couldn't find an obvious option that will allow me to manually choose a picture from the hard drive as the current album's cover, but I've later noticed that Jajuk will automatically set the image in the album's directory as the cover image.
[141001300360] |So if you'll see pictures that have nothing to do with the album you're listening to, search the web for a suitable cover image and save it in the album's directory.
[141001300370] |Of course, strange images show for less popular albums or for albums with very common names.
[141001300380] |As for the music player integrated into this application, it's highly recommended that you install MPlayer before installing Jajuk.
[141001300390] |This way, you will be able to make use of all its advanced features which will most definitely offer a pleasurable experience.
[141001300400] |Jajuk also offers some advanced features for playing the songs in your collection.
[141001300410] |For instance, you'll be able to choose a genre and listen only to the newest items added to the collection that are part of the selected genre.
[141001300420] |Moreover, you can set Jajuk to play only the most popular items or simply set it to play random files from a certain genre.
[141001300430] |The basic functions are also present, such as repeat mode, shuffle mode, continuous mode or intro mode, which will play only a part of the current song.
[141001300440] |Another interesting feature I've noticed in Jajuk is the Digital DJ.
[141001300450] |This feature acts like a real DJ: it generates music playlists according to your set of rules and attributes.
[141001300460] |You can configure several options for a DJ: its name, the rating level of the tracks it's going to play, the cross-fade duration and whether a track can be played several times in a party.
[141001300470] |Moreover, you can define several ambiences so the generated playlists will be filtered using your settings.
[141001300480] |An ambience can consist of one or more genres.
[141001300490] |Unfortunately, for this function to work properly, all your music files must be tagged correctly.
[141001300500] |The application's interface also supports skinning so If you don't like the default look'n'feel, you can easily change it from the Options tab in the Configuration Perspective.
[141001300510] |In the same perspective, you can customize several advanced options such as the intro mode playing and crossfade duration, how the player should behave on each startup, as well as a few file patterns used for organizer and animation and several network options.
[141001300520] |<b>The Good</b>
[141001300530] |To be honest, I was pretty impressed by this application.
[141001300540] |The first reason was that it's among the few applications of its kind and the second reason was the large number of features that allowed me to quickly arrange my music collection by genre, artist or the directory they were part of.
[141001300550] |Moreover, if you don't know what a feature does, you'll most certainly find it in the Help perspective.
[141001300560] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141001300570] |I don't know if there's anything bad about this application.
[141001300580] |Apart from the fact that I couldn't manually set a cover for an album (rather unimportant, considering that I finally succeeded), there's nothing bad about this program.
[141001300590] |It's possible to be missing some less popular features one would find useful but that's it.
[141001300600] |For what is worth, I couldn't think of a feature I would use that Jajuk doesn't already have.
[141001300610] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141001300620] |If you're a music lover but unfortunately have a pretty large and scattered collection, you're using Linux and moreover, you're looking for a powerful, full-featured music player, then Jajuk is the most suitable application for you.
[141001300630] |You should definitely give it a try, even if you don't have a music collection at all.
[141001300640] |I'm sure you'll be impressed by it as much as I was and you'll create a music collection in no time, just to make use of all its features.
[141001300650] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141001310010] |<title>Krita Review</title>
[141001310020] |<img/>Did you know that for each piece of Windows software, there's an alternative for Linux?
[141001310030] |Well, at least for most of them.
[141001310040] |Krita, part of KOffice, is an image manipulation software that could be considered an alternative for Photoshop.
[141001310050] |Unfortunately, even if it tries really hard, it still has a very long way to go until it will reach Photoshop's level of performance.
[141001310060] |But this doesn't mean that it should be ignored until then, not at all.
[141001310070] |At the moment, Krita allows you to pretty much do whatever you want to with images, from photo retouching and image editing to creating original art using Krita's tools (paint, brushes, pencils, pen and ink).
[141001310080] |Krita can be obtained either from your distribution's repositories or by downloading and compiling the KOffice source packages.
[141001310090] |When Krita is launched for the first time, a new document window pops up, which offers several templates to choose from, such as a Grayscale, CMYK or RGB document of various sizes.
[141001310100] |You can also opt for a custom document, which allows you to select a custom image size and color mode. 
[141001310110] |<b>Interface</b>
[141001310120] |If you have worked with Photoshop, you'll notice that its interface is rather identical to Krita's.
[141001310130] |The left part of the main window is reserved for the toolstrip, which consists of painting, selecting or editing tools.
[141001310140] |The upper part for menus, toolbar and a brush selector, while the right part for layer and options palettes.
[141001310150] |The center section is reserved for showing the image you're currently working on.
[141001310160] |Similar to many other KDE applications, Krita's menus are a combination of KDE or KOffice menus with menus particular to Krita.
[141001310170] |The menu's names are kept just like in any other application: the File menu contains commands for file manipulation, such as new, open, import, print etc.
[141001310180] |The Edit menu contains commands related to the current selection, the View menu consists of commands that allow you to change the way you look at the image, the Image menu contains commands that enable you to change the entire image such as resize, rotate or shear.
[141001310190] |The next menu, Layer, offers commands similar to ones found in the Image menu but the difference is that commands in the latter apply to the current layer, while the former ones apply to the image as a whole.
[141001310200] |Next menu is named Select and allows you to manage selections.
[141001310210] |The Filter menu consists of commands that apply to the current layer, based on the filter you have installed and also offers adjustment operations for contrast and color balance.
[141001310220] |The Scripts allows you to execute or manage scripts.
[141001310230] |The Settings menu which is commonly found in KDE applications allows you to configure toolbars, shortcuts and opens Krita's configuration window.
[141001310240] |Finally, the Help menu presents various information such as Krita's handbook, its authors and license.
[141001310250] |Many image manipulation applications have a toolbar in the left part of the main window which offers quick access to various tools, including Krita.
[141001310260] |You can change various options for most of the tools from the toolstrip positioned in the right, once a tool has been selected.
[141001310270] |Among the tools in the toolstrip, you'll probably notice the shape-drawing tools but also the lack of basic drawing tools such as a pencil or airbrush tool.
[141001310280] |Krita has chosen a different approach for this, compared to other editors: the toolstrip allows you to choose the drawing mode which can either be freehand or by using one of the geometric primitives, while the style of drawing is controlled by the brush selector found on the toolbar, in the upper section of the screen.
[141001310290] |The brush selector consists of four options: airbrush, eraser, brush and pencil.
[141001310300] |The rest of the tools are pretty self-explanatory.
[141001310310] |Moreover, Krita uses many of the GIMP's keyboard shortcuts.
[141001310320] |If you have been using Krita for a while and just upgraded to version 1.6, you'll notice a few changes among its tools, filters and effects.
[141001310330] |The first tool you'll probably notice is the Bezier curve tool which allows you to create and edit a curve, while the result can be painted with any of the built-in brush tools.
[141001310340] |The next new and worth mentioning tool is called Magnetic selection which attempts to tighten the outline you draw around edges recognized in the image.
[141001310350] |Other new additions include a tool for manipulating the perspective grid and two new options added to the duplicate tool: healing and perspective correction.
[141001310360] |As for the file filters, Krita now allows importing from and converting to bitmap PDF files.
[141001310370] |Moreover, some improvements have been added to the png filter so it allows opening big files.
[141001310380] |A few effect plugins and filters have been added as well: an adjustable blur effect, some color filters, fast color transfer and lens correction effects and also an unsharp mask, layer masks and the ability to add noise.
[141001310390] |<b>Features</b>
[141001310400] |Krita can be extended through plugins, which can be tools, colorspaces, paint operations or filters.
[141001310410] |It can also be extended through Python and Ruby scripts, using Kross, the cross language scripting engine that originated in Kexi.
[141001310420] |The scripting is compatible with PyQt/KDE and allows adding GUI items, such as dialog boxes.
[141001310430] |The color modes available in Krita are part of a complete color management system based on lcms.
[141001310440] |8, 16 and 32 bit colorspaces are available (RGB, CMYK etc), while colors can be selected from a color wheel, rgb or greyscale sliders or with a palette.
[141001310450] |As for editing and viewing, Krita offers unlimited undo and redo actions, as well as basic editing functions such as cut, copy and paste between layers and images.
[141001310460] |An interesting feature is that OpenGL is supported for display.
[141001310470] |Moreover, the main view can either be fullscreen or split, the image can be zoomed, while the palettes can be hidden in one go, pressing Ctrl+Shift+H. Also, a histogram palette is made available.
[141001310480] |Layers can be added, removed, grouped, locked, make visible or invisible and re-ordered.
[141001310490] |Images can be mirrored, sheared, rotated and scaled but unfortunately, some transformations tools, such as flipping and shearing, can be applied only to individual layers.
[141001310500] |Filters available in Krita can be previewed in the filter gallery.
[141001310510] |Custom brushes can also be created, even from entire layers or images, or by importing the GIMP brush shapes.
[141001310520] |<b>Image Formats</b>
[141001310530] |Krita supports most of the general image formats, such as PNG, JPEG, TIFF, GIF, BMP and Targa but also can import ICO files, XPM and OpenEXR.
[141001310540] |It can also import the Photoshop file format (PSD) but only up to version 6.
[141001310550] |Embedded icc profiles and exif information are preserved while exporting the images to supporting file formats.
[141001310560] |<b>The Good</b>
[141001310570] |Krita is a free, image creation and manipulation software that allows you to do anything with images through its large number of features.
[141001310580] |It allows you to create art images using paint and brushes, pencils, pen and ink.
[141001310590] |Krita is being actively developed so expect important features and improvements with each new released version.
[141001310600] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141001310610] |Although at its current state, Krita is a quite powerful editing tool, it seems to be more suitable for manipulating images, rather than for creating them.
[141001310620] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141001310630] |Krita's development seems to be heading in the right direction so we shouldn't be surprised if most of the Photoshop users will switch to a better, yet free alternative - Krita.
[141001310640] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141001320010] |<title>Dolphin File Manager Review</title>
[141001320020] |<img/>A file manager or file browser is a computer program that enables a user interface to speed up the interaction with files on a hard drive.
[141001320030] |Every file manager will offer basic file operations like create, open, edit, view, search, rename, move, copy, delete and so on.
[141001320040] |More advanced file managers will provide other functions as well, such as network connectivity via FTP, NFS or SMB, directory synchronizing and other powerful features.
[141001320050] |File managers started as command-line and generic graphical tools and progressed towards desktop-specific ones, gaining sophistication along the way.
[141001320060] |Commands and buttons were replaced by mouse controls and more options and features were added with every new released version, suiting the needs of more and more users.
[141001320070] |Dolphin is a very simple and easy to use file manager for KDE desktop.
[141001320080] |It offers only a few basic features as it's a file manager focused on speed and optimization, but that's all it is - a file manager.
[141001320090] |It could never be a substitute for Konqueror or other advanced file manager because it doesn't support advanced functions such as searching or viewing files.
[141001320100] |The first time you run Dolphin, you'll notice a very simple interface, divided into five sections: the menu bar, the toolbar, the location bar, the workspace and status bar.
[141001320110] |The menu bar contains Dolphin's menus: File, Edit, View, Go, Tools and Settings.
[141001320120] |The toolbar consists of buttons that act as a shortcut to various functions.
[141001320130] |The user can choose what buttons will be available in the toolbar and which won't.
[141001320140] |The location bar displays the current directory path and has two versions: first is the typical line input version which shows the current path as text, while the second uses the 'bread crumb' display which displays each folder as a link.
[141001320150] |The workspace section shows the contents of the current directory.
[141001320160] |Users can configure how the workspace displays directories: either as icons, details or previews.
[141001320170] |The workspace can also be split in two, gaining a midnight commander-like look.
[141001320180] |The status bar shows a limited amount of data related to the currently selected file or directory, while if no file is selected, the status bar shows the amount of files and folders in the current directory.
[141001320190] |Both ways, the status bar always shows the amount of storage space that has been used on the current mount point.
[141001320200] |Dolphin can display the contents of a directory in a variety of ways.
[141001320210] |When the icon view is selected, the workspace will list the contents of a directory using each file type's icon.
[141001320220] |For example, mp3 files will be represented with the mp3 icon currently configured in your desktop environment.
[141001320230] |The detail view will show the contents of a directory in alphabetical order and by type.
[141001320240] |Folders are shown at the top of the list, while the files are listed at the bottom.
[141001320250] |The preview mode is similar to the icon view, except that whenever possible, there's a preview shown instead of the icon.
[141001320260] |For instance, if you list a directory with jpg files, those files will appear as a small preview, rather than showing the jpg icon.
[141001320270] |Dolphin also offers a sidebar feature, which has two modes: bookmarks mode and information mode.
[141001320280] |The sidebar can be enabled or disabled via the menu bar: views / sidebar.
[141001320290] |The bookmarks mode will display the filesystem bookmarks an user has stored, while the information mode allows the user access to their service menus for a given file type.
[141001320300] |<b>The Good</b>
[141001320310] |Dolphin is a file manager suitable for users that need speed and simplicity.
[141001320320] |It offers basic file managing features such as navigation bar, split mode and a bookmarking feature.
[141001320330] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141001320340] |Dolphin doesn't have bad parts unless you have higher expectations than it can fulfill.
[141001320350] |It's just a file manager with no advanced functions.
[141001320360] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141001320370] |If you're looking for a simple, two-panel file manager without tons of features, Dolphin is the perfect file manager for you.
[141001320380] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141001350010] |<title>ShowImg Review</title>
[141001350020] |<img/>In a not so distant future, it's very possible to find a built-in camera in just about any mobile phone, gadget or device.
[141001350030] |Even nowadays, built-in cameras are widely spread among electronic devices, allowing anyone to take pictures in digital format.
[141001350040] |And because digital photography frees users from the film processing expense, people are taking more pictures now than ever before, making the digital image format one of the most popular ones.
[141001350050] |Unsurprisingly, more and more image tools are invading the software market for every operating system, tools that either edit the photos or organize them.
[141001350060] |Or, in the case of ShowImg, both.
[141001350070] |But can ShowImg compete with other image tools available for Linux?
[141001350080] |ShowImg is a picture viewer for KDE 3 that tries to combine all the useful features that other picture viewers don't have.
[141001350090] |It also allows you to quickly browse through your images collection using its built-in browser panel or its file list.
[141001350100] |The file list shows either icons or thumbnails and allows you to choose single pictures for viewing.
[141001350110] |So basically, ShowImg offers three image browsing modes: list mode, thumbnail mode or one by one.
[141001350120] |Images from digital cameras include a significant amount of embedded data in the exchangeable image file format (EXIF).
[141001350130] |The EXIF data shows the time and date when the picture was taken and also a great deal of information regarding the state of the camera and the camera itself.
[141001350140] |ShowImg provides easy access to that data and even makes use of it when appropriate.
[141001350150] |As for supported image formats, ShowImg can read all the popular formats (JPEG, GIF, PNG) and some of the less popular ones (MNG, BMP, TIFF, XPM, XBM, PBM, PGM, PPM).
[141001350160] |Many image management tools include various types of image manipulation.
[141001350170] |ShowImg provides basic manipulation features such as manually rotate and flip as the user desires, as well as using the EXIF data to auto rotate and flip images and can also convert images to black and white.
[141001350180] |From the View menu, you can set one or more effects that will apply to every image previewed with ShowImg.
[141001350190] |These effects include remove red eye, gray scale, normalize, equalize, intensify, invert, emboss, swirl, spread, implode and charcoal.
[141001350200] |When the result using one or more of these effects is satisfying, the edited image can easily be saved on the disk in one of the supported formats or, alternatively, can be exported to an archive on CD/DVD, to Flickr or other remote gallery.
[141001350210] |Images can also be exported to print wizard or to a generated HTML gallery.
[141001350220] |Of course, any image can be set as wallpaper.
[141001350230] |While browsing through your images collection, the thumbnails can be cached by storing them in ~/.showimg directory so they will be quickly displayed the next time you browse that directory, rather than regenerating them each time.
[141001350240] |Moreover, each interface panel can be hidden, moved or resized so its main interface will suit your taste, desktop size or any other preferences you may have.
[141001350250] |ShowImg also offers drag'n'drop support for easy file manipulation within itself and with external programs such as Konqueror.
[141001350260] |ShowImg offers additional tools for managing your image collection besides just browsing the file system.
[141001350270] |Images can be pooled into albums which don't store images, just their names.
[141001350280] |This function is similar to mp3 playlists used by music players.
[141001350290] |Albums can be created by selecting a directory in the browser panel with the right click and choosing Create New… and then selecting Album.
[141001350300] |Later on, images can be added to the album by dragging them from the file list and dropping them in the browser panel.
[141001350310] |Additional information and description can be added to each image by right clicking it and selecting Image Info.
[141001350320] |Unfortunately, that info won't be saved in the image itself but in a central text file that resides in each image directory.
[141001350330] |The text file is called descriptions.txt.
[141001350340] |Another interesting feature you'll find in ShowImg is its duplicate files detection tool.
[141001350350] |This function is found under the Tools menu and can be applied for the selected images, the whole directory or both.
[141001350360] |Moreover, you can select the search method and the approximate threshold.
[141001350370] |This process uses a cache folder for images fingerprints to speed-up the analysis of items.
[141001350380] |There's also a collection of batch processes that enable ShowImg to perform mass actions upon the images from the current directory.
[141001350390] |This function allows you to easily rename, border, color, convert, filter, compress or resize all images, as well as apply effects to them.
[141001350400] |Other ShowImg features include full screen view mode and slideshow function (which can also create a MPEG slideshow using ImageMagick and MjpegTools), mouse wheel support, zip files can be browsed as directories and also, there's an image scanning tool available.
[141001350410] |<b>The Good</b>
[141001350420] |ShowImg provides easy access to your images collection through its file list and browse panels, allows you to generate images albums, supports most of the image formats and basically combines all the useful features of other image viewers into a single application.
[141001350430] |It also provides basic image editing and manipulation functions.
[141001350440] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141001350450] |I don't know if it's because of something miss-configured on my system or it's just the way ShowImg is, but all transparent images viewed with it are erroneously displayed.
[141001350460] |Either some random effect is applied to them, or they just don't appear.
[141001350470] |Moreover, an embedded service has been added to image types as default, forcing Konqueror to open images in ShowImg view mode.
[141001350480] |However, this can be changed from Konqueror's View menu while displaying an image or from the File Associations section in Konqueror configuration window (known types - image, select an image type, go to embedding tab and modify the services preference order).
[141001350490] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141001350500] |ShowImg tried to gather all the useful functions from other image manipulation tools and get rid of the annoying and useless ones.
[141001350510] |But unfortunately, what one would consider useful, other would consider useless and vice-versa.
[141001350520] |That said, none of the image tools currently available can truly be referred to as "complete".
[141001350530] |However, ShowImg has reached the point where it's "useful" and "definitely worth a try".
[141001350540] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141001360010] |<title>Kmp3burn Review</title>
[141001360020] |<img/>The CD storage medium becomes less popular with each passing day, since its capabilities are fading compared to the DVD's.
[141001360030] |However, this endangered medium is still being used for Audio CDs, either for official music albums releases or by people that want to listen to their favorite tracks elsewhere, using an audio device that doesn't yet have mp3 support.
[141001360040] |At the moment, CD recording is probably fully supported in Linux and similar CD recording programs have been developed over and over again.
[141001360050] |This is somehow good for the end user, as he will have a large collection of burning software to choose from.
[141001360060] |Even though K3b is probably the most popular CD burning software for Linux, there must be people looking for easier alternatives that only create audio CDs from mp3 files.
[141001360070] |Kmp3burn is a KDE front-end to cdrecord that allows you to easily select mp3 files and store them on any audio CD.
[141001360080] |It also offers some basic functions that allow you to customize the resulting CD.
[141001360090] |Even if it's very easy to use, Kmp3burn can cause some problems while installing it, because of the large number of requirements.
[141001360100] |Unfortunately, Kmp3burn can't (yet) be found in the software repository if you're using Fedora, so you'll have to manually install all the requirements and then compile the source package and install it.
[141001360110] |Installing it from source will require even more software packages to be installed, but first things first.
[141001360120] |Kmp3burn requires kde 3.5, cdrecord, tablib, libmad, akode and sox.
[141001360130] |If you don't have any of these installed, you can say goodbye to successful compilation.
[141001360140] |Moreover, it's recommended you also install normalize if you want to use Kmp3burn's volume adjust feature.
[141001360150] |But once you have it installed and working properly, you'll see that it was worth it.
[141001360160] |If you used to convert the mp3 files to wav files just to create an audio CD, you'll be glad to hear that Kmp3burn has the ability to burn on the fly, therefore, your disk space won't be excessively used with all those wav files.
[141001360170] |The first time you run Kmp3burn, you'll need to configure it.
[141001360180] |The configuration dialog can be found under the settings menu, in the main window.
[141001360190] |You'll need to set your SCSI-Device, which is by default set as /dev/cdrom, to your correct recording device.
[141001360200] |Next, you'll have to set the mp3 directory which will be scanned for audio files, just to make things easier.
[141001360210] |The playlist configuration option allows you to save burned projects as playlists by default.
[141001360220] |You choose if this feature is useful and should be enabled or disabled.
[141001360230] |Next, you'll have to set the CD recording speed (8 by default) and whether to enable or disable the dummy mode to test your configuration.
[141001360240] |Last configuration options include the playlist directory where the auto generated playlists will be saved to and some fine tuning options, such as whether to reload last entries on start or not, which quality level songs will be marked as bad and whether to burn files on the fly or adjust the volume of all files to a standard level.
[141001360250] |The normalize function is useful when creating music CDs from mp3 scattered collections, where different recording levels on different albums can cause the volume to greatly vary from song to song.
[141001360260] |After setting the configuration values, you can simply browse through your music directories using the left pane.
[141001360270] |Every audio file in the left list box can be previewed with the built-in player, underneath the list box.
[141001360280] |This player will display basic info, such as name, length and quality.
[141001360290] |There's also a volume tuner and some basic control buttons: play, pause, stop, rewind and fast forward.
[141001360300] |In the right half of the main window, you'll see the burn box which lists the audio files chosen for recording.
[141001360310] |You can add files to the burn box by selecting them and clicking the right arrow in the middle of the window.
[141001360320] |To remove a file from the burn box, select it and click the left arrow.
[141001360330] |The up and down arrows allow you to change the sequence of the mp3 list.
[141001360340] |Underneath the burn box, you'll see the total play time for the added mp3 files, as well as a progress bar that shows how much space is currently occupied.
[141001360350] |The progress bar also has a display limitation at 80minutes which you don't want to surpass if you want the audio CD to be played by most of CD players.
[141001360360] |Right next to the total play time box, there are two buttons: Create and Burn.
[141001360370] |However, only one button can be clicked at a time, depending on the configuration.
[141001360380] |If you configured Kmp3burn to normalize the files before burning, the create button will be available, while if you set 'burn on the fly', only the burn button can be clicked.
[141001360390] |<b>The Good</b>
[141001360400] |Kmp3burn allows you to create audio CDs from mp3 files, quick and easy.
[141001360410] |It can read playlist files and can either burn the files as they are, or first adjust their volume to a standard level and then burn them.
[141001360420] |Its interface is very simple and intuitive, making it very easy to use.
[141001360430] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141001360440] |This application doesn't have many features to offer but this can be considered as a good thing by people looking for simplicity.
[141001360450] |And because it has very few features, it's hard to find something bad about it.
[141001360460] |Moreover, the installation can be tricky for beginner Linux users.
[141001360470] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141001360480] |Kmp3burn makes a great application if you're looking to easily burn an audio CD without any advanced features.
[141001360490] |However, if you're looking for more control over the recording process, you might want to look at other applications.
[141001360500] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141001370010] |<title>Exaile Review</title>
[141001370020] |<img/>Although there are a lot of good audio players available for Linux, it seems that Amarok has reached the top of the preferences list.
[141001370030] |And even if Amarok was developed mainly for the KDE platform, it's being used by both KDE and Gnome users.
[141001370040] |Running KDE applications in Gnome and vice versa isn't necessarily a bad thing, but could increase their loading time.
[141001370050] |Luckily, there's a relatively new media player available for Linux called Exaile.
[141001370060] |Although it's based on a different GUI toolkit (GTK+) than Amarok, it seems to be trying really hard to imitate it.
[141001370070] |Its interface and even some of its functions are pretty much identical to Amarok's.
[141001370080] |But this could only be good news for Gnome and Amarok users: they can now use a player similar to Amarok, but which will load faster and integrate nicer into Gnome?
[141001370090] |Moreover, because of their similar interfaces, users will feel right at home using either of them.
[141001370100] |But before you can enjoy Exaile's impressive features, you'll need to install it.
[141001370110] |Hopefully, you won't bump into any problems along the way.
[141001370120] |The installation process will probably be different on every popular distribution.
[141001370130] |For instance, if you're running Fedora, you'll have to use yum to install Exaile, on Ubuntu you'll have to get the .deb package and install it using dpkg, while on other distributions, if you can't find Exaile in their repositories, you'll have to get the source package, compile and install it.
[141001370140] |However, while the package manager will also fetch the dependencies required by the package you're trying to install, this is not the case for source installation.
[141001370150] |Here, you'll have to manually download and install the required packages which aren't a few.
[141001370160] |Exaile requires Python, Python-gtk2, gstreamer, (with gstreamer-plugins-good and gstreamer-plugins-ugly for MP3 playback), Python-bus, Python-pysqlite2 and Python-mutagen, while Python-gpod, Python-gadmin, sexy-python and Python-gnome2-extras are optional requirements.
[141001370170] |You will also want to install streamripper if you want to record any shoutcast station.
[141001370180] |Exaile has also been ported for FreeBSD.
[141001370190] |The first time you'll run Exaile, it will ask you to select the directories containing your media files.
[141001370200] |This is rather an optional step, as you can add or remove directories through the Library Manager, at any time.
[141001370210] |If you’ve selected a general directory with many subdirectories and you'd like some of them to be ignored, you can drag and drop them in the Blacklist Manager and they will automatically be ignored.
[141001370220] |Moreover, Exaile can watch for new directories using Gamin, which is a file alternation monitor.
[141001370230] |Without a doubt, Exaile will impress you with at least one of its features.
[141001370240] |Besides, most of the features you'll expect to find in a modern media player are most likely already available in Exaile.
[141001370250] |For example, Exaile uses tabbed windows that can be used either for multiple playlists, or for various information regarding a song or an album.
[141001370260] |An information tab consists of several sub-tabs: Statistics which displays data fetched from MP3's ID tag (title, artist, year, genre), Artist which will fetch data regarding the artist from wikipedia, Album, which will fetch data regarding the album also from wikipedia, Lyrics which will search the lyrc.com.ar website for artist and title keywords and will display a list of result, allowing you to choose the right one and finally, Tablature which will try to get the tablature (a form of musical notation which uses musical notes) for the current song, from the fretplay.com website.
[141001370270] |This will be a long shot, unless you're listening to classics.
[141001370280] |Its main window is divided into five sections.
[141001370290] |You can reach any of them through the left side tabs.
[141001370300] |The first tab, Collection, will list the albums and their files from your selected media directories.
[141001370310] |Each item listed here can be either appended to the current playlist, added to queue or black list or can be deleted.
[141001370320] |The next tab, Playlists, will list playlists sorted by various criteria: entire library, top 100, most played and so on, while the iPod tab will allow you to browse through and play media from your iPod.
[141001370330] |Next tab is called "Radio" and will list all the stations from shoutcast.com website, categorized by genre.
[141001370340] |The last tab, Files, acts like a basic file manager, which will allow you to browse through your local filesystem and append scattered media files to the current playlist.
[141001370350] |The playlists, along with the information regarding the collection, are stored in a SQLite database, which is a lightweight database engine that doesn't require a running daemon.
[141001370360] |This type of database is powerful enough to hold a lot of files and there's no need for MySQL or PostgreSQL support.
[141001370370] |Good choice here.
[141001370380] |Other useful features you'll find while using Exile are its plugins and skins support, its ability to minimize to system tray, as well as its ability to fetch album covers from Amazon.
[141001370390] |It comes with a few plugins by default, which adds a twist of functionality to Exaile:LibNotify (uses libnotify to inform you when a new song starts)Desktop Cover (will display the current album's cover on the desktop)Alarm Clock (will hit the Play button at a pre-specified time)Mini Mode (will allow you to activate mini mode when pressing Ctrl + Alt + M)Streamripper (records any shoutcast station to an mp3 file on local disk - adds a REC button)Serpentine Plugin (which will open the songs from the current playlist for burning in Serpentine).
[141001370400] |<b>The Good</b>
[141001370410] |Exaile is quite an impressive media player.
[141001370420] |It will load and run flawlessly on Gnome (no problems with it on KDE either, just a little bit slower), it offers most features one would expect to find in any modern media player and also comes with a few interesting but not so popular features.
[141001370430] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141001370440] |Unfortunately, it has a lot of requirements and chances that one of them won't install, messing everything up, are rather high.
[141001370450] |Moreover, it's an application written in Python and I haven't yet met a person that can say he can flawlessly install any python application or dependency.
[141001370460] |That’s also a problem.
[141001370470] |And to make things worse, Python applications tend to run a little slower, at least when compared to ones written in C/C++.
[141001370480] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141001370490] |Overall, I'm sure Exaile will slowly become the favorite media player for many Gnome users, and why not, KDE users as well.
[141001370500] |Check out some screenshots below:
[141001380010] |<title>KMyMoney Review</title>
[141001380020] |<img/>Personal finance managers are complex applications that allow an individual or a family unit to create, manage and follow monetary decisions, based on the principles of finance.
[141001380030] |These applications address the ways in which individuals or families obtain budget, save and spend monetary resources over time, taking into account various financial risks and future life events.
[141001380040] |There are a number of available applications, some of them are released under a proprietary license, some are free, while others haven't seen development for years, thus not advancing beyond simple transaction listing.
[141001380050] |Fortunately, there are several free applications for Linux that can easily meet and even exceed the capabilities of proprietary programs.
[141001380060] |So far, KMyMoney stands up from the crowd and reaches the top of downloads and preferences' lists.
[141001380070] |KMyMoney can easily be installed on most popular Linux distributions thanks to the pre-built binary packages for each distribution.
[141001380080] |The source code package is also available, but with automated tools like yum, apt-get or synaptic, there's no need to compile it from source.
[141001380090] |The first time you'll run KMyMoney, you'll need to set up a new KMyMoney data file so you'll be able to import QIF files, add a new institution, categorize the transactions and so on.
[141001380100] |To do this, simply follow the first link from the "Home" section.
[141001380110] |You will be prompted for various personal information and for a base currency.
[141001380120] |The currencies list consists of every imaginable currency, from the Mongolian Tugrik to Gold.
[141001380130] |Unfortunately (and you will be warned about this), you won't be able to modify the current selection, so choose it carefully.
[141001380140] |The next dialog will allow you to add predefined account/category templates and different languages.
[141001380150] |This step can be skipped for the moment, and if you wish to add more templates later, you can do so by restarting this operation from the File / Import / Account Templates menu.
[141001380160] |After following these steps, you will be presented with your financial summary which for the moment will be an empty page.
[141001380170] |To get started, you will either have to get the QIF file from your bank and import it, or manually create your accounts, depending on what you have, checking, savings, investments or other accounts.
[141001380180] |From there on, it's quite easy to keep track of your money.
[141001380190] |Once those are set, KMyMoney is ready to be used.
[141001380200] |You can keep track of several accounts at one or more institutions, but make sure you don't make a mistake along the way.
[141001380210] |KMyMoney has a lot of categories so you can keep yourself more organized than you would by writing your expenditures in a check book ledger.
[141001380220] |For each transaction, you can choose from check, deposit, transfer, withdrawal and ATM.
[141001380230] |Basically, if you're writing a check for someone, you can write who you're paying to and then choose the category.
[141001380240] |Also, you can write a Memo to remind yourself which check number was it and then enter the amount, which will instantly be withdrawn from your balance.
[141001380250] |Moreover, if you have something to pay monthly, like rent or insurance, you can keep a schedule for those things that will occur once a month so that you won't forget when the bill is do.
[141001380260] |Also, if you're a stock broker, you can keep a list with stocks you own or are planning to buy and their price information will be automatically updated from online sources, or you could manually update them.
[141001380270] |A pretty useful feature is KMyMoney's ability to generate monthly and yearly reports based on what you spent and where you spent it, as well as based on your investments, transactions and so on.
[141001380280] |Basically, this report generating feature will show you where your money went, allowing you to focus on important things like rent and food and to try cutting unnecessary expenses.
[141001380290] |Unfortunately, these reports are text-only and rather dry and ugly.
[141001380300] |<b>The Good</b>
[141001380310] |KMyMoney has an intuitive interface, it's easier to learn and use than other personal management applications, has a lot of features and most of all, it's free.
[141001380320] |<b>The Bad</b>
[141001380330] |Even though KMyMoney is probably the easiest personal finance manager application to work with, it's still a little difficult for a beginner.
[141001380340] |It doesn't have a beginner mode with more wizards or something like that.
[141001380350] |If it's your first time working with such a program, it's possible to encounter some difficulties while working with it.
[141001380360] |<b>The Truth</b>
[141001380370] |KMyMoney can be a very useful application for small business needs but unfortunately, it lacks some of the other features implemented by more advanced programs such as GnuCash.
[141001380380] |Check out some screenshots below: