Main interface, dark

Krita – Ars longa, vita brevis?

Krita? GIMP? Darmok and Jelad at Tanagra. So, if you are into any kind of image manipulation, you probably have heard of GIMP, a free would-be (!) alternative to Adobe Photoshop, and in its own right a very reasonable and powerful image manipulation and processing suite, hence its acronymy name. But there’s less of a…

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Plasma Mobile: So far, so adequate

Ever since Plasma Active was released in 2012, I’ve been waiting for KDE to release another desktop environment for mobile devices. Last week, that wait was finally over with the first alpha release of Plasma Mobile, Active’s successor. However, delay may have raised my expectations too high. While Active was full of innovations, so far,…

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Plasma 5.12 – Long Term Sweetness?

Roughly a year ago, I wrote my fairly lengthy State of Plasma article, which examined the KDE’s fifth major desktop environment incarnation in great detail, focusing on the many facets of goodness and badness that imbue it. Fast forward, there’s a new LTS coming, with final touches being added to a largely baked beta release.…

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Xfce featured

Best Xfce distro of 2017

One more. After exploring the ups and downs of the Gnome and KDE/Plasma crop of this year, we now focus on what Xfce can deliver us. Arguably, this is the third largest, most important desktop environment in the open-source universe, straddling the chasm between the two opposing philosophies of the G and K worlds. Back…

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Cataloging Collections with Tellico

KDE has such a rich ecosystem of applications that I am constantly discovering new ones. The best of these applications are simple and exhaustively thorough, with every feature you can imagine for a task. Occasionally, I like to cruise the KDE sites to find new ones. My latest discovery is Tellico, an app for cataloging…

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Featured

Best KDE/Plasma distro of 2017

Plasma me, Plasma you, a-ha, there was nothing we could do. But wait! Yes we can. Let us glimpse back upon Year 2017, and try to figure out which Linux distribution delivered the best overall user experience whilst adorned with the Plasma desktop environment. Continuing what we did with Gnome, we will now focus on the…

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Featured

Best Gnome distro of 2017

Following in the best of traditions, it is that time of the year, when we wrap up the previous twelve months of hard work, software scrutiny, pain, tears, joy, and hope, all mixed and blended inside one big, scalding cauldron that we call Linux. We shall commence with the Gnome desktop environment. If you look…

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Featured

Flatpak – St. Distro’s Package

The word best used to describe Linux is variety. That, or fragmentation. Whichever part of the desktop system you choose, from the environment to the text editor to the underlying software packaging mechanism, there’s always a huge number of options. Alas, plenty != choice. In fact, most of the subsystems are incompatible with one another,…

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Plasma 5.11 – Keep the momentum going

Just a few short days ago, the KDE team released Plasma 5.11, the latest edition of this desktop environment, plied with a range of bug fixes as well as some new features. Reason enough to celebrate, but even more so when you consider the fact that Plasma has been slowly, steadily – and consistently –…

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Replacing Audacity with KWave

KWave has been developed since 1998, yet few have heard of it. I only recently heard of it myself from  writer and podcaster Marcel Gagné while I was setting up to do how-to-videos. Part of the reason for its obscurity might be that, despite its name, it only recently become an official KDE project in…

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Featured

It’s the Qt showdown

Qt desktops are many and varied. So one may ask, all right, if you have to choose one, which one? Well, the answer is both complicated and philosophical. First, because taste is subjective, and my immediate answer would be Plasma, hands down. The way it is realized in Kubuntu 17.04 is just awesome. The best…

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