It’s been about three months since Microsoft released Windows 8, and people have had lots of time to hear about what’s new and decide whether they wish to upgrade. If you have decided to commit to the upgrade, you need to be sure that your system is capable of handling the new software, or else burn a useless hole in your wallet.

Over the last five or more years, there have been a number of different terms swirling around to describe computer hardware. Some of those terms include but aren’t limited to APU, CPU, and GPU. But for people who are confused about acronyms, it’s difficult to understand what a computer really has.

If you ask any power user for one good piece of advice that applies to any operating system, it would be to back up your files regularly. As much as technology can be helpful, it can also cause problems or even fail at the worst possible times. Therefore, it is important that you are able to identify different backup methods for your system. With Linux, you have a good amount of reliable options at your disposal, but it may not be quite as obvious as with other platforms.

There are plenty of online communities which can be found on the Internet – Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube are easily the most popular and recognizable ones. However, there are plenty of other gems online which could potentially impact your life in a substantial way. One of these communities for me has been Reddit. I love Reddit not because of its design or features, but because of the culture that exists there as well as the content which people find and post.

Making sure you have adequate security measures in place while working on your computer is beyond important, especially when you’re working with sensitive files in personal or workplace environments. There are numerous tasks you are advised to do, such as install an anti-virus program for Windows or correctly set up a firewall. However, those only [...]

There are a few ways in which you can access Clam Antivirus for numerous purposes. First, there’s a front end to Clam Antivirus which you can use to perform tasks graphically. It is called Clamtk and has been featured on MakeUseOf before. By installing the graphical front end, your package manager should also pull in the Clam Antivirus engine that it depends on. The other option is to skip the graphical interface and just use the Clam engine via the command line.

In the last couple of months, Steam has been getting a lot of attention. Not necessarily because of the games that it’s been carrying, but because of its expanding support of different operating systems. If you haven’t heard already, Steam has made official plans to support Linux, and has already made substantial progress with their beta Linux client. It really won’t be too long before the Steam client is stable.

Despite advances made by other operating systems, Windows still stands as the most used operating system in the world. And, as a Linux user, I respect your decision to stick with it as it does have a large ecosystem that both businesses and consumers seem to agree on. But just because you use Windows as your daily driver does not mean that you can’t experiment with other operating systems for any of your computing needs.

There’s virtually no place you can go without being in contact with Linux – it powers everything from regular computers to the most powerful servers to our handheld mobile devices. Most people who aren’t techies like us don’t even know what Linux is, nor do they know that Android runs using Linux. Whether you know it or not, Linux is everywhere, and that presence seems to only be increasing.

Sometimes, when you’re playing a game on your mobile device, you just want instant gratification — you want to get down to killing time by playing a couple sessions of a game which doesn’t require much thought, but is still stimulating to your senses. There are a handful of games which allow you to do this, but none are quite as simple as a game called Extreme Road Trip.

Whenever I think of pinball, I always think of the Space Invaders version of pinball which was installed by default on Windows XP. It was a fun game to play – and definitely more visually appealing than solitaire – and has therefore become a classic in simple computer games. Now that we’re overrun with mobile devices, there’s a lack of those old classics on these devices.

From my own personal experience, skateboarding isn’t an easy activity. It requires an enormous amount of balance, something which only some of us are blessed with. Therefore, for those of you who find skateboarding rather simple, don’t take it for granted that you won’t have the board slip out from right under your feet. If you’re someone who doesn’t have the balance necessary, have no fear.

Something that doesn’t appear often when it comes to mobile apps are sports games, which is weird because they aren’t (or in my opinion shouldn’t be) all that much harder to make than the many puzzle games available in both the Android and iOS app stores. Therefore, if you’re a big sports fan, it’s great to have a couple of games on your smartphone related to your favorite sports.

There are still plenty of people who use instant messaging networks to talk with each other, as it’s very quick to exchange messages or ask a simple question. In fact, there are plenty of corporations who run their own networks, to make communication between employees a snap. Therefore, it’s good to have a capable instant messaging client by your side so that you can keep in touch with just about everyone.

After playing a puzzle game for a while, you tend to get bored of it because it’s still the same despite increasing difficulty. So it’s a good idea to have a variety of puzzle games in hand to keep it interesting, and I have a great addition that I would recommend to your mobile puzzle game assortment.