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The Trouble With Mandriva February 09, 2012 
Now that Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Mint are enjoying such widespread attention and success, it's increasingly difficult to remember that not all distros are sharing in the same good fortune. Take Mandriva, for example. This venerable distro dates back to 1998, when it was born as Mandrake Linux, but its last few years have been tempestuous.
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Radio Tray: Tiny Web Radio Player Is Handy but Picks Up Some Static February 08, 2012 
If you spend a lot of time at your keyboard, no doubt you dabble a lot in listening to Internet radio. Radio Tray is a relatively new Linux app that can make tuning in to your favorite radio stations a new experience. Radio Tray is a streaming player for online radio that sits on the Linux desktop panel. Think of this app as a shortcut that hides the browser interface.
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Amazon May Be Going Small With Retail Boutique Experiment February 07, 2012 
Amazon is planning to launch a retail store in Seattle in the coming months, according to reports published by Bloomberg and Good E-Reader. The endeavor is meant to serve as a pilot project for a possible chain of stores that would sell Amazon Exclusive books, as well as its Kindle Fire tablet, line of e-readers, and related accessories.
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SMPlayer: A Flexible, Feature-Filled Media Player With a Frustrating Flaw February 01, 2012 
When it comes to playing audio and video files in Linux, media players pretty much all work the same way and have a very similar user interface. It usually all comes down to features. With SMPlayer it depends on what you want to play. Unfortunately, this bug of sorts is something its developer Ricardo Villalba has yet to resolve in the latest release, version 0.7.0.
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Ubuntu's New 'HUD' Factor: A Step Forward or Back? January 30, 2012 
Some of us here in the Linux blogosphere may have hoped for a quieter 2012 than 2011 turned out to be, but so far at least, it doesn't look like we're getting our wish. January appears to have started the year off with a bang. Do we get a little break now that it's the end of the month? No, we don't, thanks to the arrival of Ubuntu's "HUD."
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Fotowall Has a Sharp Eye for Sweet Collages January 25, 2012 
Eye candy can be a great user experience sweetener, but tastes vary widely as to how much is just enough, and it's one differentiator among Linux desktops. Fotowall is a handy app that can spice up your desktop as well as create personalized print and wallpaper displays. Fotowall is a really clever collage-making tool of sorts.
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LiVES: A Rich Video Editor With Layer Upon Layer of Features January 18, 2012 
LiVES is an advanced video editor that can double as a video jockey tool. It is surprisingly powerful. But its interface makes it rather simple to learn. In fact, it has so many feature levels that this app would be right at home as the video editor of choice in any professional film editing studio.
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The Surprisingly Juicy Desktop Linux Market Share Report January 16, 2012 
There's no doubt the Linux world has seen its share of good news over the past year or so, but every once in a while a tidbit comes along that calls for a little extra fanfare. Case in point: Recent data from research firm Net Applications suggests that desktop Linux's market share has jumped considerably over the past few months.
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Mint With Cinnamon: A New Sweet Spot for Desktop Linux? January 12, 2012 
Well CES is nearing its conclusion for another year, winding down an event that may well have brought Linux more mainstream attention than any other in the show's four-decades-long history. Ubuntu had its share of the limelight, but it's another Linux distro entirely that's captured many bloggers' attention. Linux Mint, that is -- and its tantalizing new desktop environment, Cinnamon.
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Oracle Makes Bold, Risky Move With Big Data Appliance Launch January 11, 2012 
Oracle has released its Big Data Appliance, which it announced last year at Oracle OpenWorld. With no release date promised, the industry was surprised by its relative speed to market. Less surprising was Oracle's enlistment of Cloudera -- the leading provider of Hadoop system management tools -- to provide an Apache Hadoop distribution and tools for the appliance.
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Music Management Takes Flight With Songbird January 11, 2012 
Asking a seasoned Linux user what music player you should use is akin to bringing up questions about religion or politics with your drinking buddies. A much safer strategy is, don't ask and don't tell. But if you insist, let me throw a suggestion into the fray. Uncage Songbird. You might be pleasantly surprised at the melodious results.
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Open Source: Not Just for Tech Anymore January 10, 2012 
Amid the many predictions for 2012 regarding Linux and open source software, including my own forecast of Linux domination, there is a larger, wider embrace of open source software taking place not only in the technology and other industries, not only in North America, Europe, Australia, Asia and South America -- but all over the globe in new corners and facets of our society.
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All Eyes on Ubuntu as CES Draws Near January 09, 2012 
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious," a very wise man once said, and that's surely as true in the tech world as it is in the rest of life. Maybe that's why so many have been so intrigued by Canonical's cryptic announcement last week about its plans for this week's CES event.
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Going All-FOSS With a New Computer January 05, 2012 
Linux bloggers' New Year's resolutions tend to be many and varied in any given year, but one most can surely agree upon is the desire to outfit a new PC with nothing but free software. That sentiment was anticipated over at Computeractive UK, which published a compelling little story along those lines back in December. "I want to use only free software on my new PC. Where do I start?" the piece began.
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Minitube Puts More You in YouTube January 04, 2012 
YouTube is a great source for watching an eclectic collection of videos on music, human stupidity and worldly comedy. But I find it much too easy to go far afield as I click on "also watched" videos when viewing a particular topic line. Minitube solves that problem for me.
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Clonezilla: A Drive-Duping Monster With a Fearsome Face December 28, 2011 
Backing up data and restoring a crashed computer are two of those "I wish I hadda" moments in the life of every computer user. When you maintain a collection of computers for your job or organization, those tasks can be critical. One of the fastest and most reliable ways to restore an afflicted computer is to copy its previously saved image onto the hard drive.
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