Linux

Well, Java is cross platform, granted. But if you want your application to look native to the user's desktop environment, you have to jump through a lot of hoops (and some of them are burning, too). Take icons, for example. Nowadays, an application is expected to use icons in menuentries and on the toolbar to increase usability. Nothing wrong with that, except that Swing does not ship with any. You have to provide your own and you have to bundle them with your application. For Windows and MacOS, that's ok.

Do you know what's funny about the movie "Plan 9 from outer space"? It's so bad that you wouldn't want to pay money for it and therefore nobody would try to sell it to you anymore. Yet, you just have to see it. Good news is, the movie is, like many others of that era, in the public domain now. Bad news are that you need to download it and are likely to end up with something that will play fine on your PC, but not necessarily on a DVD player.

Ever wondered, where GMOME's mailclient "Evolution" stores the passwords for mailaccounts? Me neither. At least not until today, when I learned, that the credentials for a certain account were only known to a certain Linux box. This computer had some kind of hard disk related hiccup, which trashed a few things, vital to evolution. This little incident pretty much required setting up the mail client from scratch again. Only problem here: For that, username and passwords were required, which were now inaccessible.

So, your Linux box does not run as smoothly as your friend's cheap new notebook and you want to improve system performance? Then here are some tips, what can be done to increase responsiveness without having to buy a new CPU or other hardware:

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