I have many documents created with Microsoft Office for assignments written for graduate school courses years ago. How can I easily convert those dozens of documents to a different format without using an online application? This is an excellent example of the power of open source. Five years ago I took a course at a … Read more
Recently I have been tasked with assisting a local medical office with finding a new way to securely store medical images. The office needed a robust replacement for an aging Windows computer that was soon to be out of date. I considered a number of solutions among them TrueNAS, OwnCloud, Nextcloud and a Samba share. … Read more
There are lots of ways to backup Linux. One of them is using the ‘tar’ command which was the first method I used many years ago when I was a Linux newbie. Later I used ‘rsync’ to backup a mail server that was running on RHEL 2.1. Linux is like a Swiss Army knife when … Read more
Let’s suppose you want to get into the Linux thing and you want to do it with a new computer. You could buy a Linux laptop or desktop from a number of different vendors including System76, Tuxedo, Dell, Lenovo and others. What if you come across a computer in a technology store how do you … Read more
October 14, 2025, is a big day if you’re a Microsoft Windows user. That’s the day that support for Windows 10 ends. But what if you’re happy with the computer you have now and don’t feel like spending more money to stay with the guys from Redmond? Is there a choice for you? You bet. … Read more
In the last blog post I wrote about the new Lenovo V 15 laptop I purchased and installed Fedora KDE Plasma 42. One of the annoying problems I have had in the last day since setting this laptop up is the lack of access to a right button click using just the touchpad. I had … Read more
I’ve been looking for a new laptop for a couple of months because the one I’ve been using is missing a ‘P’ key. Replacing the key turned out to be more work than I was interested in pursuing, so I had to decide what I would do to replace the unit. Recently, I was helping … Read more
LibreOffice is a free and open-source office productivity suite developed by The Document Foundation (TDF). It originated as a fork of OpenOffice.org in 2010. I have been using LibreOffice Writer, Impress, and Calc almost since its inception. It was an easy move from OpenOffice.org. I readily recommend LibreOffice to all those who ask for my … Read more
Writing blog posts that share my experiences with Linux and open-source software often requires screenshots of accomplishing a task or an expected outcome. Over time, I have used a number of such programs in Windows, macOS, and Linux. Most recently, using Fedora 42 KDE Plasma has introduced me to Spectacle. It can capture images of … Read more
I have been using Fedora with the KDE Plasma desktop environment for almost three months, and overall, it’s been a wonderful experience. However, I’ve encountered some issues along the way. The most recent problem involved the Chrome browser. A couple of weeks ago, Chrome stopped functioning correctly, and I couldn’t launch it even after rebooting … Read more
