TLWIR 55: How Moodle is Revolutionizing Education With Open Source Freedom

April 16, 2013 TLWIR
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Summary: Moodle is a free software Learning Management System (LMS) that is taking the educational world by storm. It is bringing advanced features that used to only exist in expensive commercial products to the educational community. Technically speaking, Moodle is a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) that allows one to administer every aspect of student courses. [...]

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MailMerge on OpenOffice and LibreOffice

March 29, 2013 Training
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In its most common use, MailMerge allows you to customize a standard letter you want to mail out to a bunch of people. You have your letter and you have a file with their names and addresses in. Using MailMerge you put the two together and end up with one individually addressed letter for each [...]

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Introduction to Blender

March 22, 2013 Training

If you’ve ever dreamed of creating the next Shrek or Kung Fu Panda, or even working on a more modest 3D modelling project, you’ll need a piece of software like Blender. 3D modelling is a specialist area, and there aren’t too many software players in the field. Commercial studios tend to use proprietary software like [...]

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Using Separate Drive Partitions for MySQL Databases

March 15, 2013 Training

One way to enhance database performance is to break large database files into smaller chunks. These smaller chunks can either be all on the same hard drive, or they can be spread across different hard drives. Either way, this process is referred to as “partitioning” the database. But, there are a few problems with this [...]

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Understanding SELinux

March 13, 2013 Reviews

SELinux A task of any operating system is to provide software that strongly increases its security. A lot of programs of this type have been created; some are better than others. What does it look like in terms of Linux? Of course, here we have many more choices when it comes to this type of [...]

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TLWIR 54: Fedora 18 – A Solid Distro with a Few Quirks

March 2, 2013 TLWIR
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Summary: On January 15, 2013, Fedora 18 was released, after a few delays.  I’ve had F18 running on my Toshiba laptop for about a month-and-a-half now. In TLWIR 54, I’ll give you some of my impressions of the latest and greatest Fedora operating system.  Fedora 18 Versus Fedora 17 Fedora 18 is not radically different [...]

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Video on Linux

February 28, 2013 Reviews
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It seems like only yesterday that getting video to play on Linux was tougher than counting ballot papers in Florida, but in reality it’s come on leaps and bounds in the last few years. Here’s how it used to work. First there were codecs. A codec – or “coder-decoder” is a piece of software to [...]

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Four ways to share files in Linux

February 17, 2013 Training

1. Simple sharing with Samba Windows has long allowed you to share a folder with other users on your local network with a simple right-click, and over that time the Samba project has done a good job of reverse engineering the Windows software, bringing the same functionality to Linux. For the end user, that means [...]

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Securing your Linux PC

February 13, 2013 Training

A few years ago, your author took possession of what was then the latest version of SuSE Linux. For the first time, this version allowed you to easily encrypt a whole filesystem right from the start (it was always possible to do before then, but required a lot of obscure command line magic). Interested in [...]

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Linux Printing Rundown

January 25, 2013 Reviews

Computing had always had its annoyances, none more so than printing. Even on the most well-behaved system, printers can misbehave and if it isn’t a paper jam or obscure flashing error light, it’s the printer resolutely failing to talk to the computer. Printers often seem little better than a sulky teenager who storms off to [...]

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TLWIR 53: Transforming the Broken U.S. Patent System with Free Software-Style Reforms

January 20, 2013 TLWIR
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Summary: In The Linux Week In Review 52, I talked about the need for a Linux Reference System, a GNU/Linux computer guaranteed to work with the latest free software and drivers. In TLWIR 53, I will present some ideas on how to fix the broken U.S. patent system. I. The Basic Reforms A.  Crowdsource the [...]

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TLWIR 52: Secure Boot Reveals the Need for a GNU/Linux Reference System

January 5, 2013 TLWIR
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Summary: In TLWIR 51, I talked about how Coreboot might provide a solution to the confusion created by the Secure Boot fiasco. In the Linux Week in Review 52, I’ll talk about the need for a GNU/Linux reference system. In this “gold standard” system,  all of the installed hardware would be known to work perfectly [...]

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Getting Started With Scribus

January 3, 2013 Reviews

Scribus is a mature, multi-platform Desktop Publishing (DTP) application. The Scribus team are keen to say that it’s used by amateurs and professionals alike and, since its launch in 2003, Scribus has established itself as the premier Free and Open Source DTP package. Desktop Publishing software is aimed at producing magazines, leaflets, handouts, newspapers – [...]

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TLWIR 50: A Case Study on Line Printing from GNU/Linux to a Wifi Printer

December 27, 2012 TLWIR
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Summary: In The Linux Week in Review 49, I showed you how to reliably print to a printer connected to a Windows 7 computer. This article is for those who don’t want to depend on a Windows machine for printing. In TLWIR 50, I will show you how to print directly to a WiFi-enabled printer. [...]

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