When I first started thinking about Free Software Magazine, I was feeling enthusiastic about the dream. I had Dave, Gianluca, and Alan willing to help me, I had established members of the free software community willing to help me out, I had writers volunteering their time and energy for free, and I had a generous offer from OpenHosting for servers, all before I’d proved myself. There was a sense of excitement in the air, and I thought maybe, just maybe, I could make this work.

The idea was simple: why not build my own little GNU/Linux based wireless network in a spare five minutes?

WiFi Maniac needs aspirin and emotional support

Firefox is more than just a web browser. It’s also a cross-platform arcade machine. No quarters necessary.

An ode to Ralph H. Baer

I owe much of my life to Ralph H. Baer. Oh, he doesn’t know it. He doesn’t even know me. But that’s how it goes in these days. Much of life is owed to strangers.

If you want a measure of success, I will give you a yardstick: wasted time. Or rather, leisure time. Ralph H. Baer has given many of us a legacy of time spent in front of a television, twiddling white squares around with a paddle. So it is Ralph H. Baer is a very successful man.

With internet privacy being invaded more and more by governmental agencies, advertising programs and statistical systems (not to mention ISPs gone bad), personal privacy would seem to be a lost cause. But all is not lost! Thanks to some great free software you can make your online presence private once again.

FlightGear is a top notch and highly accurate free software flight simulator. The software has no kill or be killed situations. Don’t expect arcade like dogfights and precision bombing. Such features are not included. However, with a large range of planes to choose from and with most of the world covered by accurate maps expect a realistic experience as near to a holodeck as software only can allow.

Everybody uses word processors, but very few people use them in the right way. Maybe it’s time you learned to use your word processor with… style!

Have you been planning on getting around to learning how to use the GIMP someday? Well now that the GIMP has had its tenth anniversary, it’s about time to start. In this article, I will walk you step by step through the process of making a web banner using the GIMP. Hopefully this kickstart will encourage you to do more playing on your own.

If you’ve ever spent hours at work doing mailings, cursed your printer for printing outside the lines on your labels, or moaned “There has got to be a better way to do this,” here’s the solution you’ve been looking for. Working smarter, not harder, with the OpenOffice label templates will save you time, effort, and (if you want) make really cool-looking labels.

Using the right tool for the job

As you notice from day to day use of Ubuntu, most tasks are easily accomplished. But what happens when you’re ready to expand your use of Ubuntu to include new applications, or connect to a home network and add new users? This brief guide shares the key steps necessary to create and manage other users, helps clarify some essential differences with other flavors, and provides tips regarding “root” user. Perhaps most importantly, these steps help empower the use of your Ubuntu system to become far more than just another desktop PC.

Understanding users in Ubuntu

Do you manage a website?

One of the things I love about using a large free software distribution, especially on a suitably large harddrive, is that you can sometimes just go exploring in your applications menu. It seems like there’s always something there I haven’t looked at yet. Jan Schäfer’s KImageMapEditor was one of these discoveries—and what a gem it turned out to be!

FreeBSD—it’s the other white meat. Perhaps you are a long time GNU/Linux user and have been curious about experimenting with the other half of Open Source, the BSD class of operating systems. The 6.1 release is just around the corner, the first batch of RCs (release candidates) are already hitting the FreeBSD mirrors and by the time this article hits the press, 6.1 will probably have been released. The time has come for the adventurous to forgo their penguins and get down with the beastie.

Introduction