In the corporate proprietary world the development of software is restricted to the four walls of the the company/organization responsible. Here it is the organization that determines what is included or removed from the software. But in the Free and Open source software (FOSS) world it is tied to the community. The FOSS community… Read More »
To Backup is not a strange phrase in computer-users circles, it simply means keeping files somewhere outside your computer system – either for security or safety reasons. And you must be able to retrieve such files when necessary. In a previous post, we advised to always back up as an insurance against loss or crash… Read More »
When Microsoft first started addressing market pressure toward open source, the company didn’t get it. Probably it’s more accurate to say Microsoft didn’t want to get it. Or wanted to pretend not to get it. A key exhibit was the Shared Source Initiative (SSI), an early 2000s initiative to allow certain parties to view… Read More »
After using your PC for some time no doubt you would have accumulated some useful files. These files could be cherished family/personal photographs, music, videos, document, and some times applications. It as necessary for any computer user to have a back up strategy – a way of saving files outside the machines. This is because… Read More »
Judy Gichoya is a medical doctor from Kenya who became a software developer after joining the open source medical records project, OpenMRS. The open source project creates medical informatics software that helps health professionals collect and present data to improve patient care in developing countries. After seeing how effective the open medical records system… Read More »
To check the hard disk space (free and used) of your PC’S hard disk. Open the system tray and type Disk Usage Analyzer (for Ubuntu) or any such name in different distro. On the disk usage analyzer in Ubuntu you should be able to see a hard drive with an Ubuntu logo and… Read More »
I am writing this post to refute an argument I’ve heard some people give why they’ve decided not to use Linux. The argument is that Linux does not come with many things (most times applications) that an average computer might need. But on a closer inspection this kind of thinking is unfounded and misplaced… Read More »
There is no doubt that Linux is the best free/open source operating system (OS) out there. But we’re living in a Window-lized non-free country, and so a transition to a free operating system would not be a day job. And I’d like to share some lessons on how one can easily try (and probably move… Read More »
One thing that many newcomers to Linux discover when installing applications on their systems is that they’d always have to install directly from the internet – – most times. To add to the web of these technicalities, different distributions (distros) support different format for distributing and utilizing their applications (e.g. the .deb for Debian-based systems… Read More »
One important thing to know when using a computer system is that it is prone to attacks. This could be either locally (when a computer system is used by more than one person) or remotely (when used to connect to the internet). It is true for a computer with any operating system. So though… Read More »
