This program can do simple backups and syncs over a network or locally.It uses tar and rsync in the background. Mephisto Backup was made with the Java programming language. The key feature of this program is the ability to backup your system to an image and copy it to a Linux Live DVD for future restoration. The user can then take that cd and move his or her system to any PC.

One thing we have learned from KDE4 is that its not a good idea to make drastic change to a desktop environment that the users have been used to for a long time. Hopefully the Gnome developers will keep that in mind as they work on Gnome 3.0 release for next year.

Let's introduce a subject that I've rarely seen discussed on planets or forums: Canonical paid-for support. At Oxford Archaeology we have been paying customers for almost a year, and I think it is a good time to look back and see if it was worth it.

Dell has begun shipping their Studio XPS 13 with Ubuntu 8.10, though the option seems to be appearing and disappearing from their website.

Last week we published Ubuntu 9.04 vs. Mac OS X 10.5.6 benchmarks where we compared the performance of these two popular operating systems on a Mac Mini. With the OS X kernel currently being 32-bit but with support for 64-bit applications, we had used the 32-bit version of Ubuntu 9.04.

I’m a bit disappointed in the Dell’s build quality. I find the Mini 10 a bit plastic-y too. Apart from that, the Mini 10 has some really nice features.

TED Torrent Episode Downloader is a program that allows you to download the latest episodes of your favorite TV series thanks to a perfect combination of RSS and BitTorrent technology.

Recently I came upon a company called System 76 promising to bring pre-installed Linux hardware to the masses. At first I was a bit skeptical as I’ve seen this promise time and time again. So I requested review hardware thinking it would be nothing more than vapor ware. Surprisingly, however, the hardware arrived.