It's been a week since Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail was released. Many are enjoying the enhancements to Ubuntu's Unity desktop, but many former fans – including our own Kev Quirk– are not feeling very impressed. I was a big fan of Unity when it first debuted as the main desktop of Ubuntu in 11.04 two years ago, but recent performance issues and a dash design that feels more and mor... »
Is Unity for your laptop not enough? Do you want classic GNOME 2 on your phone? Two launchers for Android currently working through beta phase are available in Google’s Play Store and both let you skin your device to look and feel like an Ubuntu desktop. Ubuntu Launcher is the simpler of the two and consists of a single home screen, complete with Ubuntu 12.04′s default purple ... »
Most of you Android users out there probably have no need for anything other than Google’s own outstanding Gmail application. It has nearly everything you’d hope from a mail client, including conversation threading and full access to your web mail folders, etc. But there are a few thing that Gmail doesn’t quite do and for that I need to find a better email client. Gmail generally... »
First, I have to admit that I’m biased. I was curious about Linux Mint 14, but I didn’t really want to like it. I had flings with Julia, Katya, and a brief and tumultuous run with Maya (the Euro babe nicknames of Mints 10, 11 and 13) but my feeling about the popular distro was always a big healthy who cares? I never saw the point. At first, Mint was really little more than a skinned Ub... »
Update Nov. 15 So after being down by a day, a helpful Google+er pointed me to an update this morning of Firefox Beta. Flash works again just as well as it did before the 4.2 upgrade. So be sure, if you follow the steps below, to use Firefox Beta. Tuesday is the official release date of two new Nexus devices — the LG Nexus 4 and the Samsung Nexus 10. With a refreshed Nexus ... »
Let’s get to the big question: Is Android a suitable OS with which to get work done. The answer is mostly a yes, but with caveats. In the last month or so I’ve been using Android to get work done, I’ve been mostly surprised by what I could accomplish. I could email, write, move batches of files, edit photos and PDFs and more. In tests, I was even able to update a WordPress blog t... »
I’ve used every desktop environment out there. From Cinnamon and Gnome shell to KDE, E17 and LXDE. All have things they are good at. None of them has been as absolutely bulletproof for me as XFCE. I have never suffered a graphical glitch or a screen tear. I’ve never had a UI lockup at all. So a few weeks ago, when 12.10 was released, I had a decision to make. I really wanted the latest... »
It’s been about a week since my last post on going Android at work. So far much of my time spent work on Android has been a lot more productive than I even suspected. I’ve talked about hardware here a little — I’ve essentially used the two best Android devices available in the Asus Transformer Infinity and the Nexus 7. But the real power behind Android has been the software... »