For two decades the era of “Linux on the Desktop” has been just around the corner. This week Knightwise takes us through a discussion of how he’s using Linux to drive some tasks for work, and how the pandemic-driven changes of 2020 might have helped push more Linux to the forefront. LINKS Linux Distros SUSE…
Sometimes the way to achieve “less” is to make more use of the things you already have. If the thing you already have is a fairly powerful old laptop, what you may find is that it makes the perfect home server. This week Knightwise tells us all about the laptop with the new lease on…
A little more then a year ago I bought my very first laptop that came pre-packaged with Linux. My slick, cool, small and light Dell XPS 13 was probably the first laptop I bought that did not have the OEM stickers stuck to the palm rest, removed. Usually I peel off these lame “Windows” or…
The knightwise.com podcast is back this week with a splash of cold water and a dose of plain old common sense. This week we talk about some strategies to keep you, your devices and your data out of nefarious hands. Vigilance, my friends. Links xkcd 936 – Password Strength VeraCrypt [wiki] Music Specter Whitefish –…
“Wanting is more pleasing then having” : It’s not logical, but it is the truth. It’s a line Spock must have quoted in some long gone Star Trek episode somewhere (please don’t ask me, I can’t remember which one). For some reason it has stuck in my mind for the longest time. “It’s not logical but…
We kick off season 10 of the Knightwise.com podcast with a hands on review of the BQ Ubuntu Phone. We review the hardware, talk about the fledgling OS and see how the phone holds up in “daily use”. Splice in some cool tunes selected by Daniel Mesner and you have yourself the first episode of…
“I run operating system X, I prefer distribution Y, I like desktop interface Y better” I’ve heard the discussions over and over again. Sometimes people stick to their guns and defend their choice, other times people hop around from OS to OS or from Linux distro to Linux distro just because they want thingie X…
Some gadgets are just hard to throw out. Perhaps you keep hanging on to them because you have this plan of “using them someday” for “some project”. Perhaps you keep hanging on to them because of nostalgia. Whatever reason you might choose, those geeky gadgets that keep occupying that box in your office aren’t getting…
Dropbox changed its terms of service so they can give you data to the Feds if they just ask for it, Ubuntu shuts down the online fileservice “Ubuntu One” : Who can you trust these days ? The great thing with cloud solutions is that they are on a server far far away, most of…
Knowing “how busy” your network card is on your Linux system can be very handy in a variety of occasions. You might want to see whats holding up traffic if you use your Linux box as a router, You might want to check how fast that download is going on your torrent machine, you might…
Its time to dive back into the audio podcasting after your Double Topping of F.A.C.T.S. video coverage last week. This week we grill wiseguy Thor about his experiences with Elementary Linux, a Distro spin on good old Ubuntu 12.04 with stunning looks and a soft spot for the hardware impaired. Afterwards we give you a…
Guest Blogger: Keith Murray Earlier this year I switched my web hosting from my long-time account at DreamHost to a fancy new VPS at Linode. I really did enjoy my time with DreamHost, but what I wanted out of my hosting provider had changed somewhat. I was looking for full control of a machine in…
Do you have any USB Thumbdrives lying around collecting dust or data that you haven’t used in quite a while ? Those days are gone after you listen to this weeks episode of the Knightwise.com podcast. We show you how to “live of a stick” and have both your data, your applications and even your…
It had only been a couple of days since the release of the latest version of Ubuntu’s next incarnation 13.04 when I decided it would be time to give it a spin on my Lenovo Thinkpad. I had only purchased the little 11.6 inch I3 laptop a couple of days earlier ( A nice second…
We start out a new series of Video tutorials on Knightwise.com called “Sliders Academy” where we give you step by step guides to ‘learn how to slide’. We start out with chapter one of Sliders Academy where we show you how to setup a central Ubuntu system that will serve as the nervecenter for your…
With all the great feedback we have been getting on the last podcast episode ” Return of the Netbook” we have gotten quite a few Knightwise.com fans asking “What would be a good distro to pick”. Yeah sure there are plenty of *buntu or Debian based versions of Linux out there with a very light…
I mentioned a couple of interesting command line suggestions for a good Wordprocessor a while ago in a previous post. But thanks for the research I did for the “Return of the netbook” podcast, I came across Wordgrinder. Unlike most word processing applications from Redmont, Wordgrinder is not infested by a talking paper clip, and…
The one upside of being a slider is that you can do whatever the hell you want with your computer. I mean, its not only thinking outside the box, its like thinking about the box outside the box before there ever IS a box. The fun part of doing all this is that you can…
We kick off season 5 of Knightwise.com by cutting into a hot topic : Ubuntu on Mobile phones. Oblivious to the announcement Canonical made a couple of days ago about bringing Ubuntu to the Mobile phone, we talked to one of their lead developers in December of 2012. Alex Chaing tells us about the development…
As I mentioned in this weeks podcast, making bootable Live usb disks on a Mac is far from a joyous experience. It requires a bit of command line fu, and although thats pretty cool once you get it working its not always easy. So before you strangle a baby squirrel out of sheer frustration, lets…
Sometimes being a geek means taking risks, trying things out and experimenting with new gadgets, technologies and trends that arrive on the shores between real and Cyberspace. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been noticing such a “looming trend” in my techno-ecosphere and decided to bite the bullet and go head on into it…
You’ve heard us talk lots of times about Virtualbox. Our FAVORITE free (as in ‘Gratis’) cross platform virtualisation software. As we mentioned in the previous podcast episode about “Proxmox” (a more serious virtualisation tool) the machines in our home with their I5 and i7 processors and “Gigglebytes” of ram .. are mostly idling around in…
One of the very annoying things about having multiple Linux systems (or virtual machines) in the house is that you constantly need to keep them patched and updated. Sure, they are not as vulnerable as some Windows systems but it is still good practice to keep your systems nicely patched. So instead of doing sudo…
When I take a look at what I cram into my bag every morning, I try not the think of the redundancy that huddles inside. Should my Tablet, Phone and Laptop ever play together using a magical protocol made of fairy farts, I would be able to have a small load balanced computer cluster with…
With the coming of Windows 8, changes will be inevitable for our fellow computer users who embrace the ways of Redmont. Where we have been used to hitting the Start button for years and have been closing the windows to our virtual world with the little cross, everything is about to change. Sure, the big…
One of the machines I use on a daily basis is my 11.6 inch Macbook Air. I love power and the portability of the system and the fact that it is downright so small and sexy it easily fits into my compact but efficient “mobile setup”. The one thing I don’t like on it is the fact…
It was a first timer for me : an “in place” upgrade. I had made it ‘a thing’ to install every Ubuntu version fresh, and do it fast. Creating a list of installed applications, exporting the software sources I collected and then let it install everything automatically after a fresh instal of the OS. This…
As we talked about in our interview with Alan Pope last week , Ubuntu 12.10 is going to be released somewhere today. If its your first plunge in the purple pool or if you are waiting to hit “Distribution upgrade” on your 12.04 install.. here are the top ten things to expect. Related PostsKW1605 –…
Since I’ve ported my brand new 11.6 inch Macbook Air to Ubuntu Linux, I’ve noticed that I seldom boot back into OSX on this little machine. Life is good on the Ubuntu side. Because for where it might lack powerful video editing tools or multitrack recorders that come with the same ease of use as…
We take a good look at the hubbub around Ubuntu 12.10 with Mister Alan Pope. Canonical employee deluxe and host on the UUPC podcast. We try to find out whats awesome about Ubuntu, Who is Who in the world of benevolent dictators, New features in the upcoming Ubuntu release and the difference between Youzeewoozees and…
