Oh boy, this week the ‘quality’ of the biggest Linux distributions almost depressed me. Here are a couple fine examples of issues that one will never experience in the commercial software world. You see, after more than one and a half years of testing distributions, except for the times I was happily using PCLOS 2008, I wanted to try something in the long run. I got the idea that I should install a distro and usefor a longer period of time. My particular point of interest was how well do distributions backport the key applications to their aging releases. This story involves Ubuntu and openSUSE, but it actually starts with PCLinuxOS and a demonstration of what kind of problems may arise with distros that are a one man show.

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In case you have read our articles, you know that I’ve been doing plenty of distro hopping recently. The freedom of choice is one thing that Linux fans often boast about – you can choose in between hundreds of Linux distributions, a number of desktop environments and so on. Initially this freedom seems appealing and interesting, but after a number of hops from a distro to another I have started wondering about the meaningfulness of the huge variety of distributions. And then I happened to read an article at the Linux Hater’s Blog, who makes an interesting statement:“This “choice”, as loudly as it is trumpeted, is a key reason that Linux has not made it on the desktop.” - and he is damn right about it!

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The Apple iPhone 3G has finally arrived to the global market. It has been very interesting to read about the consumer reactions and initial comments regarding this device. After all the European / International market has used to advanced 3G smartphone concepts, and in that sense is much more demanding than the U.S. consumers on Apple’s home field. I skimmed through some mobile phone related message boards and discovered that the iPhone 3G has already found a number of passionate fans, but the limited set of features and restricting operating systems has also been heavily criticized. The iPhone 3G has also raised many questions that have been asked over and over again during the last few days, so I decided to sum it up for you - here is the Apple iPhone 3G  FAQ.

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Couple of years ago Google released a nifty little Mozilla Firefox add-on known as Google Browser Sync. This little tool had the sole purpose of synchronizing the personal data in between multiple installation of Mozilla Firefox web browser. In other words it synchronized user’s passwords, bookmarks, saved form data and cookies in between multiple PC. This was very convenient for people like me that have more than one PC, a desktop and a laptop, because I would not have to feed all my web passwords, logins and bookmarks to two computers. I especially enjoyed the service while I was testing various Linux distributions, as it only took minutes to sync my Firefox on the laptop with all the personal browser data I have on the desktop - this means that I was using and producing with a number of web based tools that I use daily literally in minutes after I had finished my Linux installation. Unfortunately Google stopped developing the service and apparantly pulled the plug by not updating the add-on for the Firefox. Mozilla however is working on something that might work as a replacement - Mozilla Weave.

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ConvertXtoDVD 3 is the best tool for converting video files, and I mean virtually any video file, to standard compliant DVDs. It is very fast to process the files, while it produces very good quality as well. The best part of it however is the intuitive user interface, that is very user friendly but still offers plenty of functionality for the more advanced users. It literally doesn’t take more than 30 seconds to start converting videos to a DVD with subtitles and good looking animated menus. Here is a video guide that covers the basics of this fine software and should give anyone a pleasant start with this software. Click here to download the software and read on to watch the video guide.

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Dealing with video files or DVD images on a PC typically involves massive hard drive operations, as the file sizes tend to be rather large. A full size DVD image is roughly 4.4 gigabytes, but high definition files (Blu-ray, HD DVD) can be ten times larger! Copying, moving or extracting files for archives takes time, even on a high performance computer, so therefore it is worth while to check that your hard drive is performing at it’s peak by defragmenting it every once in a while. Windows comes with a disk defragmention software, but unfortunately it is not best of it’s kind. There are a lot of commercial alternatives out there, but luckily also some very good free software is available. In this guide we show you how to defragment Windows drives by using JkDefrag and PageDefrag software.

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The six month update cycles of major Linux distributions guarantees that there will be plenty of fresh releases for every spring and fall. At the end of 2007 we ranked the best distributions of the year, but as most distros have been refreshed since it is time to have another look at the current Linux offering. In the past six months the development has been incremental, but with a few nice surprises as well.

As before our focus is on typical desktop and Internet usage, seeking an open-source alternative to Windows. We value a good out-of-the-box experience, polished desktop design and usability over other features.

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GOTSent is an easy to use application for converting .MKV (Matroska) video files to the .MP4 (MPEG-4) format. The MPEG-4 is a videly supported audio/video format which can be played on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, HTPCs and number of other MP4 compatible playback devices. In this articles we explain the basics of using the free GOTSent application for the conversion. Owners of PlayStation 3 might want to read our other PS3 video conversion articles before proceeding with this one.

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Pioneer BDC-202 is an interesting combo drive that brings you the features of a Blu-ray BD-ROM drive and a DVD recorder. As such it is an interesting choice for any home computer, but especially for HTPCs due to the Blu-ray playback features. We have just started testing the drive, and as usual our primary interest is on the DVD recording quality. The drive uses a “three-way compatible” optical pickup unit, which means that a single optical unit is handling all the disc formats. As such the recording speed is a bit slower than the fastest DVD recorders on the market, but the 12x speed should be quite sufficient for everyone unless you are planning on using the drive for DVD-R mass production. We have just started testing the drive and so we decided to publish the first results right away, even thought the testing work is far from completed, since this is a drive that has a lot of consumer interest currently.

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Marble Maze for Nokia N95, N95 8GB and N82 by Cahoona Games

Marble Maze is a labyrinth game that utilizes the orientation sensor built inside some Nokia mobile phones (like Nokia N95, N95 8GB, and N82). In the game you control a ball inside a labyrinth by tilting the device in your hands. Currently there are 40 different labyrinths to solve, and 3 different balls, a metal ball, a rubber ball, and a super pingpong ball. In the game you object is to Read more »