I usually defend Excel come hell or high water. However, when it comes to regular expressions (regexes), even I admit that open-source LibreOffice Calc is superior: it treats them as native search rules, simplifying conditional tasks to a single, clean formula.
As Microsoft continues giving everyone reasons to drop Windows in favor of a more reliable and open platform, there's no better time to explore what Linux has to offer. Here are a few good apps worth your time if you've got a Linux computer to play with this weekend.
A Linux distribution known for its security and stability, Alpine Linux, has released version 3.23 with several improvements and upgrades to its package base. It's the first major point release since May, and it carries on support a wide range of computer architectures.
Let me be upfront: I genuinely love Obsidian. It's an incredible application with all the features you would need for note-taking. But, despite all the amazing things Obsidian offers, it had one big, persistent flaw that created a major roadblock in my daily workflow: the way it handles file navigation.
If you exclude certain companies like Peloton, the world of cycling technology is surprisingly open. It’s not perfect by any means, but there are enough open or open-ish standards for many different pieces of technology from different brands to interoperate with each other, from sensors and bike computers and even indoor trainers to some extent. This has also made it possible for open source software to exist in this realm as well, and the GoldenCheetah project has jumped in for all of us who value FOSS and also like to ride various bicycles from time to time.
GoldenCheetah focuses on gathering data from power meters, allowing cyclists to record their rides and save them in order to keep track of their training performance over time. It works well with sensors that use the ANT+ protocol, and once it has that data it can provide advanced analytics such as power curves, critical power modeling, and detailed charts for power, heart rate, and cadence. It can display and record live indoor-training data, and in some situations it can even run interval workouts, although not every indoor trainer is supported. There are no social features, subscriptions, or cloud requirements which can be refreshing in the modern world, but is a bit of a downside if you’re used to riding with your friends in something like Zwift.
All in all, though, it’s an impressive bit of software that encourages at least one realm of consumer electronics to stay more open, especially if those using bike sensors, computers, and trainers pick ones that are more open and avoid those that are proprietary, even if they don’t plan to use GoldenCheetah exclusively. And if you were wondering about the ANT+ protocol mentioned earlier, it’s actually used for many more things that just intra-bike wireless communications.
Do you listen to music on your Jellyfin server but wish you could close the year with a look-back on your listening history like Spotify Wrapped? I thought I was going to have to do without—until I found Jellyfin Rewind.
Linux Mint's development team made a blog post today announcing a nickname for the upcoming 22.3 release, as well as estimating the arrival date of the first beta release and listing some specific new features we can look forward to.
If you've ever maintained a configuration for an extensible text editor, you'll know it can become a full-blown software project. Making a disaster of it like I did means that adding a new feature fills you with dread. LazyVim tackles that problem with some awesome features, and I'll explain how.
Python's interactive usage modes are easy to take for granted, but to me, interactive use is one reason it's my favorite programming language. Here are the reasons why interactive Python is my favorite programming tool.
The developers of the popular KDE Connect application for desktop computers and mobile phones issued a security advisory this weekend stating you should stop using certain versions of the app on untrusted networks. A security flaw allows devices running those versions to interact with devices pretending to be ones you authenticated in the past.
The Pebble was the smartwatch darling of the early 2010s, a glimpse of the future in the form of a microcontroller and screen strapped to your wrist. It was snapped up by Fitbit and canned, which might have been the end of it all were it not for the dedication of the Pebble community. Google open-sourced the OS back in January this year, and since then a new set of Pebble products have appeared under the guidance of Pebble creator [Eric Migicovsky]. Now he’s announced the full open-sourcing of the current Pebble hardware and software stack. As he puts it, “Yesterday, Pebble watch software was ~95% open source. Today, it’s 100% open source”.
If you’re curious it can all be found in repositories under the Core Devices GitHub account. Building your own Pebble clone sounds cool, but perhaps the real value lies instead in giving the new Pebbles something the original never had, an assured future. If you buy one of the new watches then you’ll know that it will remain fixable, and since you have the full set of files you can create new parts for it, or update its software. We think that’s the right way to keep a personal electronic device relevant.
If you want a new Pebble they have a store, meanwhile read some of our previous coverage of its launch.
Obsidian is incredibly powerful, but all that power can be distracting. I've spent more time customizing my vault with different plugins than actually building my notes library. If this sounds familiar, it’s time to switch to one of these three user-friendly, free and open-source Markdown editors.
After writing small scripts in Python, I wanted to try to write a "real" command-line app. I decided to build a simple weather forecast app. I was surprised at how quickly and easily I could throw together something like this over a weekend. Here's how I did it.
Self-hosting is a great way to save money on subscriptions and take control of your data, but getting everything running smoothly on one system can be difficult, especially if you have incompatible dependencies.
If you're like me, you don't like unnecessary friction when trying to accomplish tasks on your Linux PC. The following desktop software is so useful to me, I want them to be running when I start using my computer so that I don't have to manually launch them.
The first time I gave money to a Linux project felt weird. I'd been playing with one distro or another for a while, never quite figuring it out. Then Ubuntu Linux launched just as I started college, and because we all had bad internet, they sent me an installation disc for free.
You've heard that the world's infrastructure runs on Linux, and how important Free and Open Source (FOSS) software is to just about all the technology we enjoy every day, but there are some (to bring out the old cliché) unsung heroes of FOSS without which your stuff just wouldn't work—and you should at least know their names.
Self-hosting your own services is one of the best ways to save money on subscriptions and increase your privacy. Since you're running the services on your local network, no one else ever sees the data.
Ever wanted to stop a specific app from going online—whether to protect your privacy or block suspicious activity? Me too—and that’s why I use Portmaster, a free, open-source network monitor that lets you see every connection your apps make and blocks anything you don’t trust with a single toggle.
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