Category: Linux (Page 14 of 33)

Tech news digest (September 2016)

2016-09-09 / Muaad Elsharif / 0 Comments

In this post I’m collecting tech news from all over the web, too small for separate posts, but I guess that everyone is up for a treat with a digest like this!

The Samsung galaxy note 7 catching fire!

Samsung has called a worldwide recall of the smartphone on complaints of catching fire and exploding while charging. So if you got one I recommend you to check with the closest Samsung reseller.

Samsung galaxy note 7

And tests that involved Galaxy Edge 7 show that it catches fire and explodes as well.
It is so serious that the Australian airlines banned the use of Galaxy Note 7 because it’s a security concern, and the FFA warns the passengers not to use the phone on planes.

Apache Openoffice maybe put to rest!

The project may be put to rest due to lack of volunteers working on it, as most of them moved to to work on LibreOffice in 2011.

Apache OpenOffice logo

Apache open office has been very slow in development and the last stable update was issued in October of 2015. Bug fixes weren’t issued and the developers fear a major denial of service attack, and Apache’s advice was to use Microsoft office or convert to LibreOffice!
This comes as a shock for many people, Apache open office has a big user base of over 100 million users, I’m sure many people will be upset over this. Personally I had a pleasant experience using Apache Openoffice, and conventing wasn’t the easiest call to make. I hope someone stands for Apache Openoffice and saves it from a horrible feat, and maybe change the Apache license and give it more code freedom!

Whatsapp users will be receiving advertising messages

WhatsApp will start sending advertising messages in the following months, as it shares its data with the parent company facebook, raising high security concerns, I personally advise moving to Telegram for a secure texting experience, I’ve blogged about this as soon as it happened, but it doesn’t hurt to inform the people of the potential security risk.

Whatsapp logo

Those who share your data today will sell it tomorrow!

iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 plus are released

Apple has released the highly anticipated iPhone 7 recently, while the iPhone 7 still keeps the 4.7′ screen size that iPhone 6 had, the iPhone 7 plus will have a 5.5′ screen, an Apple first, and will be running on iOS 10.

iPhone 7

Apple has doubled the internal storage space on iPhone 7 and 7 plus, but no SD slot available in this model too, and no battery capacity information was released yet (as long as it doesn’t blow up, it’s fine by us!).
The latest iPhone is also water resistant, a delight to Apple fans worldwide in case thier phone falls into their overly priced mocha latte!

Google Fuchsia

Google has added a new project to github the leading open source code repository code named Fuchsia.

a little is known about this project as of now, but there are reasons to think that it’s the new operating system that Google is developing to ditch android and the Linux kernel altogether, and to install it on a wide range of devices and wearables.

Yahoo announces the biggest security breach so far

In the latest trend of major companies announcing security breaches, Yahoo said that a breach affected the data of 500 million users, making it the biggest security breach to be announced so far.

I hope you enjoyed this tech digest of news, please let me know what do you think of this bit? Should it become a regular post on my blog? I will add more news as needed to this digest.

Waiting for your feedback in the comments section below, and share this post with your friends on social media 🙂

My 3 year journey with GNU Linux

2016-09-01 / Muaad Elsharif / 0 Comments

Linux has been around for 25 years! Last week the world celebrated the 25th anniversary since Linus Torvalds wrote the Minix kernel.
I’ve been using Gun/Linux based operating system as my main OS for three years now, and it’s been very rewarding! In this post I’ll talk about a journey with GNU/Linux and how it turned into what I use on daily basis and feels right to me rather than the new interesting idea I saw in a tech magazine!

My beginnings with Linux

Although I learned about Gnu/Linux over ten years ago (thanks to the wonderful LTT magazine) I didn’t fully convert to open source until I graduated from college. We depended on Microsoft based products for school such as SQL server and Visual studio, which were essential softwares for a computer science major and I couldn’t risk converting to Linux and messing up my school work so it had to wait, I was itching to get rid of Microsoft Windows and start fresh with an all open source system.

Even then I relied on open source software to do my daily tasks such as Gimp and Apache Open office (LibreOffice came into play in 2011) and the only proprietary software was Windows itself. Once I graduated it was time to kiss Windows good bye.

My Windows setup

My computer had Windows 7 installed on it and I have to admit. It was running like a charm!
I had everything I wanted and had the system fine tuned and optimized to my liking. I downloaded tools and learned how to harness their power to the max, I even blogged about it here on this blog at the time.
But I was willing to give all that up for the sake of open source! Apparently I don’t have a problem of fixing what doesn’t need to be fixed.
Research.
Before converting to Linux I did a lot of research and took my time looking for the best alternatives for tools I used daily, luckily many tools are cross platform and open source so these were a given like VLC and Firefox.
I also took my time testing it as a live version and I even installed it under Windows as a software (older versions of ubuntu supported that).
I didn’t do much distro hopping, I liked Ubuntu from the start and still use it until now.
Distro hopping is one of the major criticism points GNU/Linux receives as people say there are too much distros out there for a person to try and it can be confusing and counter productive.
I have a theory about that!

Distro hopping

Linux is all about freedom and you can try what ever you like, it would be a good idea if you used a virtual machine to test so you don’t ruin your HDD with the excessive installation and removal of systems.

Preparing to convert

After I listed my software and got the alternatives (executor wasn’t ported to Linux) I decided to install Zorin, built on Ubuntu and came fully featured with everything new comers to Ubuntu needed.

The Linux gateway for Windows users.

From flash support and restricted extras all the way down to Wine and Playonlinux to make sure your tools from Windows didn’t go to waste.
It looked and behaved like Windows 7 and I didn’t like that very much. Trying to change it messed it all up and nothing worked, not even installing it fresh?! I was a beginner and didn’t know what to do so I decided to move on to something new.

Installing Ubuntu

So I installed Ubuntu 13.04. It was really good and got even better when I added xfce interface, while googling for it I learned that latest version of Ubuntu won’t be released for another 2 months, and was going to be an LTS (long support version).

At the time I had a separate laptop for work and I didn’t think that was really productive!

My first LTS and dual booting

As soon as Ubuntu 14.04 was out I got it and installed it clean, I chose the Xubuntu version because I enjoyed the XFE interface.
It was the best time ever getting to know the new distro and customizing it to my liking.
I had to install Windows for work. And since I gave away the work laptop I decided to dual boot Windows 8.1 and Xubuntu on my computer.
I used Windows to work and it was a good solid experience with the metro interface, but I didn’t feel home until I restarted and went to Xubuntu, I sighed in relief as I saw the loading screen knowing that I enjoyed working on this system and I wrote a list of reasons why.

My interface revolution

After a while I felt I needed a change, so I began testing with different interfaces until I decided to go with the Gnome interface, but my “home brew” distro was buggy. I was delightfully surprised to know that there is a project where Gnome was used as the interface for Ubuntu (Ubuntu Gnome) and I downloaded it and installed it right away after a successful trail on a virtual machine. It was the end of the dual boot period for me.

Settling down with Ubuntu Gnome

I got Ubuntu Gnome 16.04 as soon as it got out and I couldn’t be happier! I did a review about it here on this blog which proved to be a total success! Hundreds of readers tune in every month to read this tutorial which I keep to update as often as I find new things (I use the same principle all over my blog).

Windows is residing now on the virtual machine, I use it every once in a while.

The 1% percent dogma and the “Personal computer failure”

Many people claim that GNU/Linux failed on the personal computer with user share just above 1%. While it remains to be a success in the server and super computer department.
Just for your information, GNU/Linux’s user share has exceeded the 2% barrier in July.

And to be honest I never really cared for those people’s opinions anyway, I have a system that is well supported, totally free and I get the job done just as good as I did on Windows based systems (and maybe even better) so why all the fuss?

I love Linux, and so does Microsoft!

I could sing the praises of Gnu/Linux and open source on and on and totally miss the point, I enjoy using and contributing to open source, and I don’t have a problem with Microsoft based software, I think it’s really good!

This image is still strange to me!

Gnu/Linux has came a long way from it’s humble beginnings and it’s a force to be reckoned with in the computer world today, even Microsoft has showed it’s love and support and there is a lot of cooperation between Canonical and Microsoft (it doesn’t necessarily make me happy, but times change).

Final words

A long journey of exploring indeed. I didn’t do it by the book and I took my time experimenting with things and making my mistakes along the way. But I’ve settled into my system and it feels great! I wouldn’t have it any other way! Much like life itself.

How did you like this post? Are you using open source or thinking of converting to it anytime soon?
Drop a line below and let’s see what we can do 😉

P.S: I have reached 110000 views on my blog 🙂

LibreOffice Draw to design Mind maps! (Template inside)

2016-06-18 / Muaad Elsharif / 0 Comments

There are many free and commercial tools to create mind maps, I for one prefer a bit of minimalism, and who can’t be a minimalist when the Document Foundation develops such an amazing software package such as LibreOffice! I use it personally to do many day to day tasks, and I just added one more thing to my list of uses!

Today’s post doesn’t require you to be a master LibreOffice Draw user (even when making the map is so easy!) all you have to do is to download the template and edit it to suit your needs! I’ve put the download link at the bottom of the post, so read on!

The Map

The template I prepared is a three level map with six main topics ordered in counterclockwise order, with each topic having three sub topics, you can increase them easily by copying and pasting then using the proper connector type from the tools.

You can easily customize the colors of topics and font types to suit your needs, this is just a template after all! And feel free to remove the attribution I put -feel free to visit my blog tho ;)-

I’m sharing this template under creative commons CC BY you can use it freely as long as you mention I made it when asked so.

I was going to make this post a detailed one on how to make this mind map, but I realized that it’s basic skills and no need to repeat them, especially that I’m sharing the mind map template itself so everyone can use it.

To download the mind map template, please click here.

So here you have it! We used the versatile LibreOffice to create a great looking mind map! Let me know what do you think in the comments section below, and remember to share with your friends and family.

Happy mind mapping with LibreOffice!

Tech news digest June 2016 (Linkedin sale, OnePlus3, snaps for Linux and more)

2016-06-13 / Muaad Elsharif / 0 Comments

This week had many interesting news happening all over the tech world!
Let’s take a look at this digest and catchup really fast!
Microsoft is said to buy the enterprise social media site Linkedin for a record 26.02 Billion dollars in cash, the deal is trending worldwide with people shocked over the size of the acquisition, it’s a bold business choice to say the least!
The current S.E.O of Linkedin Jeff Weiner will report to Satya Nadella the C.E.O of Microsoft, as Microsoft is looking to reach to the 433 million users of Linkedin to expand it’s business and products such as Office 365 and cloud solutions.

Microsot’s logo

In other Microsoft news the Windows 10 “free upgrade” will expire on July the 29th, so if you are planning to update you better put that on your checklist and fast!

OnePlus is ready to launch the third smartphone of it’s famous “flagship killer” series: OnePlus3, the highly anticipated phone will come with a 64GB internal memory and 6GB of RAM! (specs according to GSMarena).
The countdown is almost done and the launch event will be presented in virtual reality via a The Loop. A special App available on the Google store.
More details will be available as soon the smartphone is released.
Here is the official unboxing video.

Apple’s logo

Apple annonced at WWDC 2016 the release of it’s latest update to iPhone and iPad: iOS 10. Which brings many improvements to iPhones such as a redesigned message app, lock screen and the ability to delete many pre-installed apps, the update will be shipped this fall. (for more details check the Apple site from here)

It’s not a Snap! Just a package icon!

Now we take a tour of the Linux world: Sanps are the hottest thing in the Linux world today and for a good reason! Snaps were first announced as a feature of Ubuntu 16.04 that installs programs easily without needing to install dependencies (as it’s packed with the binary) or use command lines to install, these snaps can run virtually on ANY Linux distro! Meaning you can use Ubuntu apps anywhere you go on Linux: Desktop, server or cloud!

The main advantages of Snaps are security, speed and ease of use as they are easier to create, install and update! And many of the major open source projects like LibreOffice and Ubuntu will use them very soon as the standard way to deliver software.

This has been a dream for Linux users for many years because different distros use different package managers, meaning that Debian software won’t work on Fedora and vice-versa.
I’m glad to see that happening finally, learn more about this awesome new technology!

Fedora’s latest release: Fedora 24 was supposed to be released today, but due to some bugs not being fixed it was postponed, Fedora is ready when it’s ready! Checkout the bug list if you can’t wait!

Finally the Linux oriented blog it’sfoss is celebrating it’s fourth anniversary (does it ring a bell?) by throwing a giveway, the prise is the awesome Raspberrypie3.

It’s F.O.S.S’ logo

Here is my lucky link for you to enter and help me win, because if I did I’ll make a video review of it and many posts about it! 😉

The Raspberry Pi 3 as shown on the giveaway site!

That was the tech news of the week segment, I hope you enjoyed this quick digest, let me know what you think in the comments section below!