I have owned several MacBooks and purchased one for my wife a few years ago. She’s not a power user, mainly utilizing it for shopping, email, and discovery. As it approaches the end of its life, each new OS upgrade renders it less usable. Although my wife has never used a Linux computer, transitioning might … Read more
In 1995, an email from my brother introduced me to Linux. Although I had heard of a high school student using Linux to build a web server, my knowledge was limited. Intrigued by my brother’s recommendation, I purchased a copy of Red Hat 5.0 from a nearby computer store. However, my initial attempt to explore … Read more
Open source software is developed and distributed under a license that gives users the right to use, modify, and redistribute the software. When you purchase proprietary software, you don’t own it. In many cases, proprietary software is effectively leased to you for a set period. Many companies force their customers to upgrade to newer versions … Read more
I own two laptops. One of them is a System76 Darter Pro which is the older of the two computers. It came with Pop!_OS preinstalled when I bought it over four years ago. I’ve experimented with Fedora, Ubuntu and Linux Mint on this computer, and I’ve settled on Linux Mint because its easy to use and … Read more
Yesterday I helped a friend restore two laptops to good working order using Linux Mint 21.1. My daily driver is Pop!_OS but my friend is new to Linux and I thought Linux Mint with a Cinnamon desktop would be a good place for him to start his Linux journey. I saved his files from the … Read more
GnuCash is a popular open-source personal finance or small business accounting for Linux users. It is a full-featured double-entry accounting system that supports multiple accounts, investments, and currency conversions. The app also provides a variety of helpful financial tools, including budgeting, reporting, invoicing and more. GnuCash is a great choice for users who are looking … Read more
Today I decided to give Windows 11 a try. I downloaded the ‘iso’ from Microsoft onto my Linux laptop. My System76 Darter Pro is an i7 with 16 GB of RAM. I decided to try to run the new operating system in Virtualbox. I gave it a 64GB disk and 8 GB of RAM. I … Read more
I’ve been a fan of Chromebook’s since the first time I saw one seven or eight years ago. I bought my first Chromebook in 2013 and loved it so much that it became my daily driver, replacing the MacBook Pro that I had been using. Since that very favorable experience I’ve had a number of … Read more
I’m frequently called as I was this morning to support Windows computers. Many of those calls come from senior citizens as was the case this morning. The fellow was running Windows 7 and had recently purchased virus protection for it. He didn’t know how to install it and had called me to do that for … Read more
I came across a blog post from 8 years ago where I wrote about how I was working with students and talking about computers. In the post I shared that I used Ubuntu Linux as my operating system. I still work with students and I still recommend Linux over any other operating system because there is something … Read more
