Linux Voice Introduction

Linux comes with lots of tools, but the community gravitates to a much smaller constellation of preferred applications. For word processing, most users turn to LibreOffice, although several other word processing tools populate the repositories of the top Linux distros. For a web browser, most users turn to Firefox or Chrome. Gimp is the king of raster (bitmap) graphics tools for the Linux space, with Krita as a leading alternative, but is there more to the story? And shouldn't we, reporters and chroniclers of the Linux space, reach wider across the landscape to bring you the alternatives? This month, we take a look at Pixelitor, a free graphics editor that might not be as multi-featured as Gimp, but that's good news for users who have a more minimalist bent.

And speaking of alternatives, the ip networking utility has been around for years, and it really ought to be the go-to tool right now for network configuration and troubleshooting, but many users still consider it a second-tier alternative to classic utilities like ifconfig, route, and arp. In this month's issue of LinuxVoice, we explore the powers of ip.