Linux Desktop

You won't find any KDE-, GNOME-, or X-specific hacks here, as those were covered in the previous three chapters. The first hack covers how to load the OpenOffice.org office suite faster, and the last hack explains how to create a PPTP connectio...

org Startup Time OpenOffice.org might seem like it is composed of separate productivity applications, such as a word processor and spreadsheet, but it actually is closer to being a single large application with different faces, one being a w...

A few years back webmail exploded onto the scene. It was new, it was cool, and it enabled you to read your email from any computer with Internet access. In an age when people were increasingly using computers at work, school, and home, webmail wa...

We all seem to take email for granted these days. Although we are using it for more and more things, we rarely stop to think about its security, and regularly include telephone numbers, home addresses, and even credit card details inside email w...

Email is the Internet's killer app. Everybody uses it, everybody loves iteven those who feel like their lives are controlled by it. The volume of email in our lives has increased exponentially the last few years, and I'm not referring just to sp...

Switching email clients, MTAs, or mail servers can be a traumatic process. And getting used to the different interface of an email client and its way of working can be awkward. Aside from the cosmetic changes, you might have a far more serious pr...

Almost every application allows you to customize it to some extent. For most graphical programs, these configuration options are available through dialog boxes and settings menus, whereas console programs usually store these options in a series of...

It doesn't happen often, but every once in a while, you visit a web page that seems to take forever to load, or simply hangs and never finishes loading. The problem often occurs because the web page includes a picture, a button, an advertisement, ...

The Web has long moved beyond its humble beginnings as a text-based medium. Now it is filled with dynamic content that includes animations, interactivity, video, sound, and other types of media. Special software, known as plug-ins, is usually requ...

As the number of broadband installs increases and the connections get faster and faster, the potential to use quality audio and video applications over the Internet has become more feasible. These kinds of heavy-bandwidth applications are no longe...

Some years back, it was the height of geek cred to have a webcam. At that point in history, the average webcam was a hulking device that looked more like a CCTV camera and cost an inordinate amount of money. Many of these bulky units also needed a...

This little hack is fun. It does not improve system performance in any way, but it allows you to share with the world what you're currently doing. This hack is a perfect way for you to demonstrate how cool your Linux desktop is by automatically ...

Wireless networks are rapidly gaining use in homes, businesses, schools, and other places. You can often access these networks for your personal use. As an example, if you are visiting a conference and a number of different wireless networks are a...

When Global Positioning System (GPS) technology was launched, it was heralded as the next big thing. Although its usefulness has not been quite as explosive in the consumer market as many people predicted it would be, GPS has proved useful in area...

Your business is so far into the Microsoft camp that, horror of horrors, it has chosen to protect network access using a Microsoft VPN server. It won't even allow an SSH connection, which means you can't use port forwarding in SSH to access inter...

Out of the box, many Linux distributions do not include support to play a few restricted media formats, such as DivX, Windows Media (WMV), Quicktime, and DVDs. The distros don't include the codecs to play these formats due to licensing restriction...