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Why You Should Be Using an App Launcher (and How to Make It Do Anything You Want)

Why You Should Be Using an App Launcher (and How to Make It Do Anything You Want)

How to Use Text Expansion to Save Yourself Hours of Typing Every Week Top 10 Uses for Linux (Even If Your Main PC Runs Windows) Ditch Hard Drive Clutter with an Organized, Automated Home Folder Just wanted to share another tool that can replace and improve upon Belvedere (since it hasn't been updated in 2 years). The program is called DropIT. Here is the description from their website: When you need to organize files, DropIt can eliminate much of the drudgery of searching and manually opening folders and moving files around. Drop a group of different files and folders on the floating DropIt image and it sorts them to defined destination folders, compresses or extracts them, opens them with associated programs or performs other defined actions. You can define how to filter your files (by name, directory, size, date, properties, content, regular expressions) and associate one of the 18 available actions to perform (Move, Copy, Compress, Extract, Rename, Delete, Encrypt, Decrypt, Open With, Upload, Send by Mail, Create Gallery, Create List, Create Playlist, Create Shortcut, Copy to Clipboard, Change Properties and Ignore).

10 of the Most Popular Linux Distributions Compared Linux isn’t a complete operating system — it’s just a kernel. Linux distributions take the Linux kernel and combine it with other free software to create complete packages. There are many different Linux distributions out there. If you want to “install Linux,” you’ll need to choose a distribution. Ubuntu Ubuntu is probably the most well-known Linux distribution. The Ubuntu project has a focus on providing a solid desktop (and server) experience, and it isn’t afraid to build its own custom technology to do it. Ubuntu is modern without being too bleeding edge. Linux Mint Mint is a Linux distribution built on top of Ubuntu. This distribution now has its own identity. Debian Debian is an operating system composed only of free, open-source software. Ubuntu was originally founded to take the core bits of stable Debian and improve on them more quickly, packaging the software together into a user-friendly system that’s more frequently updated. Fedora CentOS / Red Hat Enterprise Linux Arch Linux

Give Your Old, Slow, Overheating Laptop New Life and an Extreme Makeover How to hack any Linux machine just using backspace If you press the backspace key 28 times on a locked-down Linux machine you want to access, a Grub2 bootloader flaw will allow you to break through password protection and wreck havoc in the system. Researchers Hector Marco and Ismael Ripoll from the Cybersecurity Group at Universitat Politècnica de València recently discovered the vulnerability within GRUB, the bootloader used by most Linux distros. As reported by PC World, the bootloader is used to initialize a Linux system at start and uses a password management system to protect boot entries -- which not only prevents tampering but also can be used to disable peripheries such as CD-ROMs and USB ports. Without GRUB password protection, an attacker could also boot a system from a live USB key, switching the operating system in order to access files stored on the machine's hard drives. The researchers discovered the flaw within GRUB2, of which versions 1.98 to 2.02 are affected. Read on: Top picks

The Best Firefox Addons Advertisement Firefox is famous for its addons, and for good reason: they can make your browser do just about anything. But which addons are the most useful? Here are the addons we think are best, what they do, and where you can find them. Enjoy! Bookmarks If you’re using the web for research, you need to save what you find fast. Xmarks If you use more than one browser, you need this. Pearltrees Compile things you find interesting, arrange them visually and share the results with the world. SiteLauncher SiteLauncher offers a quick and easy way to access your favorite sites. Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar Plus If you like having your most visited sites on a toolbar, but often run out of room, check out Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar Plus. Clipping Many times you need to note a few sites for future reference. Evernote Web Clipper If you don’t use Evernote, you’re missing out: it’s the perfect place to put all those things you need to remember for later but don’t need right now. Zotero Scrapbook Stratiform

10 Top Most Popular Linux Distributions of 2015 As the end of 2015 approaches, it is not only a time to start drafting your new year’s resolutions but also to check out what were the most popular Linux distributions in 2015. A brief comparison with 2014 will also help us whether those distros are actually experiencing sustained growth or not. Ready to start? Let’s begin. To find out what are the most widely used distros of this year, let’s head to Distrowatch and check the Page Hit Ranking (PHR for short) table. To begin, let’s take a look at the following comparative table, which lists the position of the top 10 Linux distributions from this year and from 2014: As you can see, there hasn’t been much or remarkable changes during this year. 10. Advertised by its developers as “a fast and open replacement for Windows and OS X”, this nice-looking Ubuntu LTS-based desktop Linux distribution was first made available in 2011 and is currently on its third stable release (codename “Freya“). Website: 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 3. 2.

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