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As a user of desktop Linux distributions, both at work and at home, I’m often trying to promote the use of Linux-based systems such as Ubuntu.

Systems such as Linux to often seen to be only for the most geeky or technical minded of people, whilst Windows or Mac are heavily promoted as being used for everyday, family orientated purposes. This can be as complex as managing home finances and budgets with a spreadsheet application such as Microsoft Excel or the more simple managing of your family and friend’s photographs with some kind of photo album software.

Linux systems, such as Ubuntu, have plenty of tools available for spreadsheets and budgeting and the more complex home productivity. For budgeting, there are spreadsheet application such as Gnumeric Spreadsheet, KSpread and the more well known OpenOffice.org spreadsheet application, Calc. This is all very well and good, but what about the simpler, nicer and frankly muchc more things in life like grabbing, tweaking and showing off your friends and family photographs. Well, there are certainly quite a variety of Linux photo album applications available out there. In case you are thinking of moving to Linux, or are just curious about the available Linux based photo management applications, I have put a few details about the best of the bunch below.

F-Spot

First up is F-Spot. F-Spot is one of the top open-source Linux photo albums. It allows you to import your photos from anywhere – your camera, your phone, a CD, DVD, USB drive or even images you pull from the Internet. Take a look at the screenshot of F-Spot below.

As you can see from the screenshot, this is an imported picture I took from our office window. Down the left hand side, the view is set to ‘Metadata’ showing all the details which are sneakily embedded in your image files by your camera. As you can see from this information, this photograph was taken with my fantastic Nokia N97 phone’s camera, and even gives advanced photography details such as Exposure Time and ISO Speed Ratings.

But F-Spot is not just about these details, it also lets you perform special effects on all your photos, such as cropping, red-eye reduction, desaturation, sepia toning and much more. It also stores a clever history of all changes made in F-Spot so any accidental mess ups can easily by reverted with only a click or two. Of course, F-Spot is a photo album tool, and does indeed allow to you manage entire albums of photos, give them captions, rate them, tag them as favourites, organise by name, date and much more.

Overall F-Spot is a very comprehensive tool, which is both easy to use and comes with a great set of features. It also ships with the very popular Ubuntu Linux distribution.

digiKam

Next up is digiKam, which is a professional, open-source photo album management tool. It is primarily designed for the KDE Desktop Environment, but works in essentially all Linux systems. A screenshot of digiKam running on my Ubuntu system is shown below.

digiKam is quite a clever photo album management tool, and offers the vast majority of features present in F-Spot. It also allows for filtering by ratings, file types and has a comprehensive pop-out image editor which allows for additional manipulation of photos and the applying of special effects. Renaming of your images in application, searching, adding of captions, ratings and tags and sorting by the physical location photos were taken (via a geolocation service) are also some of the many cleverly supported features.

digiKam is, in my opinion, a more professional photo management suite, but its range of features is of such magnitude that it may daunt the non-professional. However, for those wishing to make perfect albums and manage their photographs with intricate details and changes, it is a perfect choice.

Picasa

Although not open-source, Picasa is an excellent family orientated image editing tool from a big brand name who you might just have heard of – Google. It is very much aimed at being simple to use, whilst still provided a nice range of features.

Along with being user friendly, many of the features have the same aim and are targeting at having fun with your photos. For example, the above screenshot shows Google Picasa 3.0 allowing you to create a collage from an album of photos in many different styles. It is hardly limited to collages however, allowing you to create gift CDs to send to friends, ordering online prints, creating slide-showing and more more in the way of fun and funky features. Picasa is defintely the way to go if you wish be the easily creative and produce stunning creative elements with very little effort.

Although fantastic functionality and feature wise, for those who are dedicated to open-source software, Picasa is proprietary and indeed, not a native Linux application but is instead a custom build of the Windows version running under Wine (a Windows compatibility layer for Linux). Although this works very well in most cases and it very fast in terms of performance, sometimes even outstripped the Windows version of Picasa, some users do report issues running Picasa for Linux. However, these issues do seem to be few, far between and usually quite simple to resolve.

I hope this quick little guide gives you some good advice on the best of the best in Linux photo album software, regardless of whether you are switching to Linux, looking for an alternative to an application you already use or just stumbled upon this article and have had your curiosity spiked.

Some time ago I wrote a very basic PC buying guide, granted it was Windows based only but seeing how they have the majority market share I thought it appropriate. But what if you’re still kinda confused? Well follows is a list of 3 recommended PCs, pictures are a representation and may differ to actual product.

Best budget PC

This is one if you just want to skim the net, use your MP3 player and upload photos to Facebook e.t.c. it’s nothing flash but only carrying a £180 (best Price) price tag. Here’s the spec:

Acer Aspire Revo R3600 Mini PC, Intel Atom 1.6Ghz Processor, 160Gb Hard Disk, 2Gb Ram, Wireless LAN, NVidia Ion Graphics, 4-in-1 Card Reader, Keyboard & Mouse, Windows Vista Home Premium, Fast Ethernet, No Optical Drive or Modem, 6 x 4-pin Type A USB 2.0 – USB, 1 x 15-pin HD-15 VGA, 1 x HDMI Digital Audio/Video, 1 x eSATA, Mini-phone Headphone, Mini-phone Microphone, Mounts on your desk or fits to the back of your monitor via the VESA mounting holes. Granted you’d have to buy a separate CD/DVD drive but you can pick one up for £35. You would also need a monitor OR plug it directly into your flat panel TV either way a cracking entry level PC for around £300 all in. A slightly ‘punchier’ model can be found here

Mid range enthusiasts system

One of the funkiest PC’s I’ve seen in a while (that won’t break the bank) is the range of Touchsmart PC’s from Hewlett Packard. It has a 22” touch screen ‘all in one’ style setup so it’s not near as bulky and cumbersome as a standard style desktop plus the added ‘family fun’ of not having to use the mouse. There are various models but I think this one is one of the best all rounders. A PC like this will set you back around £1,124 (best price). Spec. as follows.

Intel Core2 Duo P7450 Processor, 4GB DDR2 Memory, 1TB Hard Drive, DVDRW Drive, NVidia GeForce 9900M Graphics, 22″ Touch-Enabled LCD Screen, Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit, Touch-enabled 22″ diagonal widescreen BrightView LCD with tilt adjustment (10 to 40 degrees). resolution: 1680×1050, Communication Ethernet 10/100/1000BT integrated network interface, LAN 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth® wireless networking 2.0 EDR, TV (analogue and DVB-T) tuner card, High Performance 2.0 speakers, High Definition Audio 5.1 (via digital output) front headphone port, front audio line in port, rear audio line out port, rear digital audio out port, Wireless keyboard with hide-away bay and numeric keypad, wireless optical mouse. Integrated VGA webcam with built-in microphone with HP Vista Media Center Remote Control. Find HP’s Touchsmarts here

If money were no object

This is, in my opinion, the pinnacle of PC’s – the cream of the crop if you will. This PC will set you back a cool £4,338.01 but the spec speaks for itself.

Alienware Area 51ALX Black Anodized Premium Desktop Chassis, Intel Core i7 processor 950 (3.06Ghz, 8MB L2 cache, 4.8GT/sec), Genuine Windows® 7 Ultimate 64bit- English, 3 years Next Business Day service + 3 years Accidental Damage Support (paying 4k I’m dam sure I’m going to have accidental cover!), 23in SP2309W Full HD+ Widescreen Black UK/Irish (2048 x 1152), 6GB 1600MHz (3x2GB) Tri Channel Memory, 1.2 TB (2x 640 GB) Serial ATA (7200 Rpm) Dual HDD Config Raid 0 Stripe, DUAL SLI™ 1.8GB NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX295 graphics card, Alienware TactX™ Surround sound headset (with microphone), Alienware TactX™ Keyboard – UK QWERTY, Alienware TactX™ Mouse, Blu-Ray RW (Blu-ray, DVD, CD read & write), SoundBlaster XFi Titanium PCIe card.

Quite a beast I think you’ll agree, if you do have a bunch of cash lying around buy one from here

So I guess the next thing to talk about would be graphics cards, now there are literally hundreds out there, different manufacturers, different models and different chipsets but again it’s the numbers game and sadly, as with everything, the more it costs the better it is. Prices start from around £20 and rocket up to around £400 so choosing the right one could be crucial. Spend too little and you’ll be left wanting, spend too much and buyer’s remorse will set in… First of all you need to decide what sort of games you’d like to play, if you just like simple puzzle games like Zuma, Bejeweled or Puzzle Quest then a £20 graphics card will be fine but if you want to get into some hardcore first person shooters like Bioshock, Fallout 3 or Crysis then you have to start around the £150 mark to get anything decent. One of the biggest games ever sold is The Sims franchise of PC games, a lot of parents when buying PC’s for the kids who like to play this game (and believe me LOTS of under 16’s play this game) fall into the trap of thinking just any PC will play it. Sure Sims, the first in the series, was only a 2D game meaning it didn’t really need a lot of power to play it. Then when Sims 2 was released everyone who was playing Sims 1 couldn’t play it due to it needing almost 3 times the graphical power! So if you’re buying a family computer then you all need to sit down and discuss what you’d like to use the PC for. Being able to play the top flight games is what can easily double the cost of a PC.

One of the biggest arguments with graphics cards is ATI or NVidia – the 2 leading GPU (graphics processing unit) manufacturers, there’s really not a huge amount in it, there are arguments for both sides. You just have to do a little research into what’s recommended at the time I’ve had ATI 9800 pro then an NVidia 8800GT and now I have an ATI 4890 so not really any bias I just bought the best at the time. The numbers involved can get quite complicated; take these for example Sparkle NVidia GeForce 8400GS 512MB PCI-E @ £22.94 and this one Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB PCI-E 2.0 @ £103.44, both are 512 Megabyte cards so why the huge price difference? Well as I said it’s the numbers game so I’ll try and break it down for you.

There are key things to look for when buying a graphics card:

1) Interface type

2) Clock speed

3) Ramdac clock speed

4) API support

5) Video memory installed

6) Video output

7) Max resolution details

8 ) Max monitors supported

Without getting too complicated I’d say the above would be the best items to compare as I feel they are the most common denominators in all graphics cards.

1) Interface type: all modern computers use PCI-E (peripheral component interconnect express) this is a motherboard level interconnecting port and is much quicker at handling data then the older AGP (accelerated or advanced graphics port) PCI-E 1 = each ‘lane’ can handle 250 megabytes of data, PCI-E 2.0 = 500 megabytes of data and in turn PCI-3 (when its released) claims to be able to shift a whole gigabyte.

2) Clock speed: basically clock speed refers to rate in cycles per second for the frequency of the clock in any synchronous circuit. For example a graphics card that has a clock speed of 200 MHz will be able to perform 200,000,000 cycles per second, this is the aspect most ‘Overclockers’ will look at, pushing to get more cycles per second will increase performance.

3) Ramdac clock speed: this is how quickly the digital to analogue converter pushes the graphics output from the card, this will govern how many refresh rates are supported and at what resolution. So again the higher the number here will determine how quickly the image gets to the screen and in turn how big that image can be.

4) API support: this basically outlines which Direct X support the card will conform too which handles things like video editing, blending, rendering plus other accelerated processing. Direct X is Microsoft’s unification programme for both gaming and multimedia. Direct X 9.0c is still (probably) the most widespread, Direct X 10 is used by a lot of gamers and now that Direct X 11 was released July this year only the most hardened of ‘hardware chasers’ will currently be using it.

5) Video memory installed: this tells you the amount and type of RAM on the card 128MB, 256MB, 512MB all the way up to 2GIG nowadays for amount and the GDDRx (graphics double data rate) refers to version of RAM, stick with the higher the better again.

6) Video output: simple one this it’s the maximum resolution achievable – how many pixels can be displayed.

7) Max resolution details: I’ve included this as it often differs to the above dependant on connection used. VGA (video graphics array) is the most common connection and will give a standard signal whereas DVI (digital visual interface) and HDMI (high definition multimedia interface) can often give not only a crisper picture but also a higher resolution so check the connections you have to achieve the best picture possible.

8 ) Max monitors supported: no prizes for guessing what this means! Lots of designers will use 2, 3 or even 4 monitors I’ve also know gamers to do the same so its handy to know.

So back to my original graphics card comparison here are the specs for both cards:

Sparkle NVidia GeForce 8400GS 512MB PCI-E @ £22. (approx)

Interface type: PCI-E

Clock speed: 450MHz

Ramdac clock speed: 400MHz

API support: OpenGL 2.0, DirectX 10

Video memory installed: 512MB DDR2

Video output: 2048×1536

Max resolution details: VGA/S-Video /DVI-I all formats = 2048×1536

Max monitors supported: 2

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB PCI-E 2.0 @ £103.00 (approx)

Interface type: PCI-E 2.0

Clock speed: 750MHz

Ramdac clock speed: 400MHz

API support: Direct x 10.1

Video memory installed: 512MB GDDR5

Video output: 2560 x 1600

Max resolution details: DVI: 2560 x 1600/VGA: 2048 x 1536

Max monitors supported: 2

So as you can see from the above specs, you see why the ATI card is so much more expensive. It’s defiantly more of a gaming card than just a display adapter; feel I should re-iterate at this point no bias whatsoever has been implemented in the above guide. Find a great range of different cards here

So you’re looking to buy a new PC but worried about what a CPU is or how much RAM you’ll need? Well I’m going to try and break it down for you into more friendly terms. I feel that a lot of high street stores try to squeeze every last penny out of people in order for their figures to look good

“…would you like an extended warranty with that sir…”

“…not really I live alone and the laptop will never leave the house, it’s simply a replacement for my current desktop that I’ve had for 4 years…”

“…but what if you were to spill a drink on it sir or to leave a pen on the keyboard and shut the lid…”

“…sigh, please let me just buy it and be on my way…”

We’ve all been there right? So what do you need to know when buying a PC? Well first of all I’d start by looking at the CPU (central processing unit) or processor for short. This is kind of the brain of the unit! The speed of this device is measured in gigahertz or GHz for short. The best way to determine if the processor will be fast or not is simple;  the higher the gigahertz the faster the ‘brain’ will function. A lot of processors out there have something called ‘Dual Core’, ‘Triple Core’ or even ‘Quad Core’.  This is easiest explained as the amount of processors inside the CPU and each ‘Core’ will have a gigahertz rating and again the higher the number the faster it will be.  Allow me to provide an example:    An Intel Pentium Dual Core processor, model number E2220, has 2 processors each with a 2.4GHz (2×2.4GHz) rating where as an E8400 model has 2 processors each with a 3.0GHz (2×3.0GHz) rating, so looking at the figures the E8400 model will be considerably quicker. Simple! Then just apply that to the 3 and 4 processor model. As a side note I think I should mention that a ‘Quad Core’ processor each with a core speed of 2.33GHz will be much quicker than the E8400 example as it has 4×2.33GHz processors – common sense I know, I just wanted to make sure you were still with me and didn’t have a nosebleed!  There’s no point in going for a superfast CPU if all you want to do is use the internet and use Microsoft Office. If you’re not doing anything that requires a lot of ‘umph’ so to speak, which is normally anything heavily graphics based like gaming or photo/video editing, then a low GHz processor will be just fine – use this general rule of thumb with all PC hardware. Applying this principle means you can now get good entry level laptops for £400 which would be more than adequate for general all round use. A smart shopper may even find something for the £300 mark – but just remember entry level laptops are exactly that and the higher the numbers the higher the price – but the faster it will go.

The next thing I would consider is the RAM (random-access memory). Take this to be the heart of the PC. There are quite a few different types of RAM on the market – some now more used than others.  The key thing about RAM is that it is measured in megabytes and gigabytes so again the higher the number the quicker it will be. We used to buy RAM in lots of different sizes but nowadays the most common form is 1 Gigabyte sticks so again the higher the gigabytes of memory the faster it will perform. You may see some computers displaying 512 megabytes of RAM; this is where it can get a little confusing – a ‘Gigabyte’ is more than a ‘Megabyte’ and without printing a list of exactly what the numbers refer to this is the simplest way to explain it.  I  don’t want you falling asleep now… A computer with 2 Gigabytes of memory is about average these days, 4 Gigabytes of memory will mean your computer will run nice and quick (as long as you’ve read about CPU’s). You can go above 4 Gigabytes but your PC may not be able to use it all, dependant on which Operating System you have but that’s a whole other conversation.

As I mentioned earlier if you’re not doing anything intense that’s all you need to know! The rest is just common sense – I mean you must know yourself what you’d like to use it for. If you’re into your photography maybe it should have a card reader but just make sure it will read the particular card that goes into your camera. Maybe you’d like the ability to plug your laptop into a flat panel (LCD) TV so make sure it has the correct connectors both on the TV and on the laptop – usually a VGA (video graphics array) or a HDMI (high definition multimedia interface).

If you’d like to know about other hardware devices i.e. graphics cards & sound cards etc there will be more overviews to follow.

So last time we spoke about Windows 7 I perhaps got a little too excited about how quickly it installs, can’t fully guarantee I won’t get excited whilst writing this either. What I plan to do now is put some snippets from the Microsoft website about new features in Windows 7 and give some advice on how they work in reality.

New ways to juggle windows

Overwhelmed by open windows? Windows 7 comes with three simple yet powerful new features called Aero Shake, Aero Peek, and Snap to help you instantly clear through desktop clutter.

“…Aero Shake – Ever need to cut through a cluttered desktop and quickly focus on a single window? Just click a pane and give your mouse a shake. Voila! Every open window except that one instantly disappears. Jiggle again—and your windows are back. (Who says the old mouse can’t learn a new trick?)…” So this is pretty cool right? Having a nice interface that doesn’t require you to have 30gig of RAM is always welcome.

“…Aero Peek – gives you the power of X-ray vision, so you can peer past all your open windows straight to the Windows 7 desktop. Simply point to the right edge of the taskbar —and watch open windows instantly turn transparent, revealing all your hidden icons and gadgets. Quickly reveal a buried window by pointing to its taskbar thumbnail. Now only that window shows on the desktop…” It’s not actually x-ray vision before you start jumping around. Although this isn’t available on the Starter version of Windows 7 it’s still a nice feature to have, gives the OS a ‘complete’ feeling – like it’s really been worked on this time instead of rushed out with a ridiculous price tag.

“…Snap is a quick (and fun) new way to resize open windows, simply by dragging them to the edges of your screen. Depending on where you drag a window, you can make it expand vertically, take up the entire screen, or appear side-by-side with another window. Snap makes reading, organizing, and comparing windows a…well, you get the picture…” Hhmmm after using Windows 7 for a while I didn’t really get on with this, sure it’s a cool feature and as I said before it does give the feeling of a good development team but the double click on the top of the window or simply ‘maximising’ is still king in my eyes.

Spectacular new wallpapers

“…We spend a lot of time staring at our PCs. Aesthetics shouldn’t just be an afterthought. That’s why Windows 7 includes a slew of new desktop backgrounds—wallpapers—that range from sublime to silly. Or try the new desktop slide show, which displays a rotating series of pictures (ours or yours). Your desktop will never be dull again. Windows 7 makes it easy to express your personality with creative new themes and other custom touches…” This, at first, seemed a little bizarre. Did Microsoft actually pay someone to go around the world taking nice pictures to put into their Operating System? And if so how do you apply for something like that!? However actually using this feature I was able to put some of my better holiday snaps on a rotation for my desktop and then in turn a friend of mine inserted a ‘fruity internet picture’ in said rotation – all fine until family came round to see my holiday snaps from Italy – bad times…

Retooled taskbar

“…Since Windows 95, the taskbar has served as the go-to spot for launching programs and switching windows. Times and PC habits have changed. So in Windows 7, the taskbar has been completely redesigned to help you work smarter, cut clutter, and get more done. Improvements to the new Windows 7 taskbar include thumbnail previews of WebPages, documents—even running video…” Ok, I’m gonna get REALLY excited here as this is my one of my favourite features about Windows 7. The new taskbar is fantastic in its simplicity, if you have multiple web pages open simply hover over the icon on the taskbar and it will display all the windows you have open in a smaller, thumbnail format just above the taskbar. You can then move your cursor up onto any of the pages, which will change super fast on the actual desktop, and then you just click on the one you’d like to view and Voilá! The same goes for multiple anything really, if you have Windows Media Player open it will show the movie playing in thumbnail, multiple folders open e.t.c.  Making it unbelievably easy to navigate all open items – gone are the days of having 70 instances of things open on the taskbar, having them all clumped up together and being unable to read any of them. Good work Microsoft fellas – not something you hear often.

Improved gadgets

“…Gadgets, the popular mini-programs introduced in Windows Vista, are now more flexible and fun. Based on your feedback, we’ve done away with the Sidebar, so you can stick your gadgets anywhere on the desktop. Favourite gadgets can go anywhere on your Windows 7 desktop…” Now I never really liked the sidebar in Windows Vista I think mainly because it slowed start-up so much, used so much RAM and realistically I don’t need a clock in the top right when the time is displayed on the taskbar. Sure there’s some good add ons for monitoring core temps and RAM usage e.t.c. With more and more people making add ons, or Gadgets as they’re more commonly known, hopefully they’ll be more and more useful ones.