Articles by Jack M. Germain

With countless high school and college students heading back to school at roughly this time of year, now is a good time to get acquainted with Zotero, a great cross-platform tool for collecting, organizing, citing and sharing research sources....

In the cloud storage competition for customers, a battle is raging over innovative software-only storage systems and wannabe innovators still hawking yesteryear's legacy hardware solutions. Dollars and performance are the battlefield stakes Nexenta, an open-source provider of software-defined storage solutions, is waging the fight with its flagship...

Paragon's ExtFS is a cross-platform application that can make using Linux much easier in multiple-OS platforms As much as I try to stay exclusively in the Linux OS world, every so often a work situation arises that puts the comfort zone of staying with Linux to the test....

"Enigma" may be the nickname of the latest release of the Netrunner Linux distro, but there's actually nothing enigmatic about it.

Cloud storage technology options, along with developing trends such as Big Data, are driving rapid industry growth. Cloud storage developed around three model options: Infrastructure as a Service; Platform as a Service; and Software as a Service. Merging with these cloud service models are technologies providing cloud computing space and cloud ba...

Looking for an everything-included Linux distro designed for people who are just transitioning to Linux? Need an OS specifically tailored for the needs of students? Then look no further than UberStudent....

KororaLinux has the potential to grow in popularity among users looking for a better, more user-friendly Linux distro that reaches beyond Fedora's enterprise appeal....

Porteus Linux is an almost perfect portable distro that gives you a choice of the KDE4, Razor-qt, XFCE or LXDE desktops in both 32- and 64-bit versions.

Shutterstock has a nearly insatiable appetite for data storage. From its inception, the company -- a global provider of licensed photographs, vectors, illustrations, and videos -- refused to pay higher prices just to stuff its storage needs into somebody else's cloud. Instead, the almost 10-year-old image-storing warehousing operation built its own server farm and created its own cloud software system at home...

BoxTone's enterprise mobility management platform is designed to bring Android security up to levels better-suited to the rigors of the business workforce, but in making Android enterprise-hardened, the company left Android's open source trappings intact As part of that EMM platform, BoxTone delivers its service in three categories of functionality...

The latest release of Linux Mint 15, nicknamed "Olivia," tries really hard to reach new design goals but is marred by a series of petty flaws.

Music management programs for Linux often leave me wanting more -- more flexibility, more file type options, more friendliness towards large song collections, etc. Guayadeque, on the other hand, is a music player that proves that less can be more....

SolydXKis a Debian-based Linux distribution that offers a choice of two desktops: Xfce and KDE. It is a very new Linux OS, but do not push this new kid aside assuming stability and performance need a lot of maturing....

Does it make good business sense to migrate corporate database software from costly proprietary platforms to free open source solutions or low-cost commercial open source replacements? The answer is a no-brainer, according to EnterpriseDB CEO Ed Boyajian....

After a hiatus of more than two years, the developers of Debian last month released a major upgrade. That surely came as good news to fans of this granddaddy Linux OS, but the new Debian 7 "Wheezy" may not be worth the wait if you are happily using more popular Linux options....

A thin line between traditional IT monitoring and management services and monitoring real-time operations divides what Zenoss offers its customers and what other vendors provide The IT monitoring space is becoming more crowded with proprietary and open-source software solutions. According to Chief Technology Officer Alan Conley, Zenoss offers a uni...

The Great Little Radio Playeris a perfect example of how great things can come in small packages....

Mozillux is a French Linux distribution that is leaner and more family-oriented than is typically found in young open source communities....

The Exaile music player hits a high note as a solid performer with trimmed-down features that make it elegant yet easy to use....

Midnight Commander is one of those original computing tools that keeps getting better with age. It may be old school, but its file managing capabilities keep it at the head of its class....