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Microsoft is finally ending support for Windows 7 in January, meaning you won't get bug fixes or security updates anymore. If you're one of the final Windows 7 holdouts and don't want to get stuck with an unsafe system, you have a choice to make: upgrade to Windows 10 or switch to something else entirely.

If you don't like the direction Microsoft has taken with Windows 10, we understand. It's gotten better (and you can make it feel more like Windows 7 with a few tweaks), but its new approach to Windows as a Service means there will always be more of a focus on embedded advertisements, constant updates, and data collection. If you've been thinking about making the jump to Linux, now is the time.

Unlike Windows and macOS, there isn't just one version of Linux. Instead, Linux is packaged into many different distributions, or "distros," each with their own interface and set of features. One may use a Mac-like interface with a dock and an "app store," while others may use a more minimalist interface and require installing apps from the command line.

Exploring the bevy of Linux distributions out there is a fun part of the hobby, but for your first installation, you will likely want something popular and beginner-friendly, so it's easy to get help when you need it. That's why I recommend starting with Linux Mint.

There are a lot of distributions that aim to mimic Windows in layout and functionality, like Zorin OS, but they're on the smaller side, and you won't have as big a community to tap as you learn your way around. Ubuntu, on the other hand, is arguably the most popular distro on desktop PCs, but it isn't very Windows-like at all these days.

Linux Mint is a perfect in-between option: it's designed for beginners, offers a familiar desktop environment, and it's based on Ubuntu, so you can make use of the enormous Ubuntu/Mint community when you need help.

You're free to check out other distros instead, but I'll be using Mint for the purposes of this guide, and I recommend you do too. It's not my personal distro of choice, but it's great for new Windows migrants, and it's easier to explore other distros once you've nailed down the basics on a beginner-friendly system.

Head to Mint's download page and choose the 64-bit "Cinnamon" version. Cinnamon is the desktop environment I recommend for former Windows users, though MATE is also pretty Windows-like, even though it's a bit less modern. XFCE is ideal for old or low-powered PCs, thanks to its light resource usage.

Mint's download page provides a number of links depending on where you live. If you use BitTorrent, I recommend grabbing the torrent file, which will download much faster.

The installer will come as an ISO, or disc image file. To install it on your system, you'll need to burn it to a DVD (by right-clicking it and choosing Burn Disc Image in Windows 7) or USB flash drive. We're going to do the latter using a tool called Rufus. Install Rufus, open it up, and insert a flash drive that's 2GB or larger. (If you have a fast USB 3.0 drive, all the better.) You should see it appear in the Device drop-down at the top of Rufus' main window.

Next, click the Select button next to Disk or ISO image, and choose the Linux Mint ISO you just downloaded. Press the Start button, and if prompted to download new versions of Syslinux, click Yes. Note that this will erase your flash drive, so make sure there isn't anything important on there before continuing.

When it's finished, you'll see a success message and your flash drive will be named LINUX MINT. Back up your data, reboot your computer, and buckle your seat belts: it's time to install Linux.

As your computer reboots, you should see a message telling you to press a certain key to access the Boot Menu (usually something like F12). If not, you'll see a key to enter Setup (often Delete). Press one of those keys, and look for the option to boot from the inserted USB drive. (If you enter the full setup menu, it'll be in a Boot settings menu somewhere, and you'll have to exit the menu to reboot again when you're done.)

You will then be greeted by GRUB, Linux Mint's boot menu, where you can choose to boot into Linux Mint. If you run into any errors, you may need to Google around for a fix. I had to enable the nomodeset option for my graphics card, for example. Others may have to tweak or disable Secure Boot in the BIOS.

This installer is what we call a Live CD, where you can actually poke around and use the Linux Mint desktop before installing it. This will give you a chance to see if this particular distro appeals to you without it actually touching your system drive.

Once you're satisfied, double-click the Install Linux Mint icon and go through the wizard. Be sure to check the box next to Install third-party software, since it contains useful drivers and codecs you almost certainly want.

From here, you have a few options. You can wipe your hard drive entirely, erasing all traces of Windows and using Linux as your only operating system. (Make double sure you've backed up your data before doing this.) Alternatively, you can divide your drive up into two partitions and dual boot Linux alongside Windows.

This will allow you to reboot into one or the other whenever you want. Keep in mind that Windows 7 will be left insecure, so you don't want to spend too much time there. If nothing else, it's comforting to know you have that safety net during the transition before you remove Windows entirely.

Choose the relevant option from the Installation Type menu, and click Install Now. The process may take a little while, but when it's done, you'll get a success message. Click the Restart Now button to boot into Linux Mint and start getting acquainted with your new OS.

When you reboot, you'll be dropped into the Linux Mint desktop once againonly this time, it's installed on your PC. The basics are pretty familiar: click the button in the lower-left corner to see applications, manage windows from the bottom taskbar, and so on. There are, however, a few things in Linux that work differently than in Windows, with apps being the biggest.

In Linux, it's less common to download apps from the web. Instead, each distro has its own repositorykind of like a free app store, with a directory of popular apps. You can install an app from the repositories in one of two ways: from a graphical software manager (again, which looks like an app store) or from the command line.

To open Linux Mint's Software Manager, click the menu button in the lower-left corner and head to Administration > Software Manager (or just start typing "software manager," like you would in Windows). From here you can download plenty of free, open-source apps.

Some are Linux versions of their Windows counterparts, like Steam and Spotify, while others are open-source alternatives to common apps (Banshee is a music player similar to iTunes, Gimp is an image editor akin to Photoshop). You can browse here or search for apps using the bar at the top.

If you know what you're looking for, it's generally faster to install apps from the command line. And while it may seem intimidating at first, Linux still relies on the command line for various tasks, so it might behoove you to get comfortable with it. To install an applet's say the open-source media player VLCopen a Terminal window and run:

Sudo apt update

sudo apt install vlc

Let's break that down: sudo tells the system to run the command as root (or, as it might be called in Windows, as an administrator), apt is the name of Linux Mint's package manager, and update ensures the list of available apps is up to date.

The second command, which includes install vlc, is self-explanatory. You should run sudo apt update before installing any app, and you can replace vlc with the name of any app you want to install. If you aren't sure what the repository calls it, you can run sudo apt cache search vlc to see what comes up.

To uninstall an app, just run:

sudo apt remove vlc

This will remove the app, but not your configuration files, so if you decide to reinstall it later, your settings will still be there.

If you want to remove configuration files too, you can instead run:

sudo apt purge vlc

You'll also want to periodically update those apps, so you have the latest versions. You can do this, again, in two ways: from the graphical tool or from the command line. For the graphical tool, click the shield icon in the lower-right corner, which opens the Update Manager app. You can then click the Install Updates button to update all your software.

Alternatively, you can open a Terminal and run two commands:

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade

Again, the update command checks for new versions of your software, and the upgrade command actually upgrades all your apps. You'll want to run these two together, just like you do for installing new apps.

Those are the most crucial things to know right now, but take some time to browse around Mint's interface and its settings to see what it has to offer. The Welcome window that appears at startup can be a big helpits First Steps area will show you how to choose different desktop layouts, install multimedia codecs you might want, and install necessary drivers for your hardware.

You'll get the hang of the basics pretty quickly, but the Mint and Ubuntu forums are always there to help if you get stuck. Just be sure to search around, since there's a good chance someone before you has had the same question.

The rest is here:
How to Make the Switch From Windows to Linux - PCMag.com

Today, you can find different kinds of software that aim to speed up the leg work and paperwork of construction business. It includes estimate sheetand project management software. If you are going to search around, you will find all sorts of programs, especially estimating sheets.

Choosing the best estimating solution is crucial and it can significantly increase the efficiency and accuracy of the project. At the same time, it helps in efficiently managing the cost of construction and provides critical business details about the scheduling and project management. When it comes to making your choice, the following has to be considered:

Aside from the technical aspects of choosing estimate sheets for construction, another important thing to keep in mind is the cost. Of course, you would want something that is cost-effective. However, cheaper does not always equate to cost-efficiency.

A cheap product could cost you a lot; it is not the best fit for your business. So, aside from the price itself, you need to consider the depth of knowledge and application. The best one can help you save time and money, which will eventually increase the return on investment.

To help narrow down your choice, you might want to ask the opinion and recommendations of other construction professionals. They could surely recommend software and from there you can further narrow down the choice based on the specific needs of your business. As a business owner, you would only want the best for your business.

But even so, you could easily be bombarded with the number of options today. Many would rely on free software and theres nothing wrong with it for as long as it meets the needs of your business.

A word of advice alwaysgoafter for quality over quantity. Just because the software is cheap does not always mean it is a perfect choice. More than the price, you have to consider the design, built, and expert recommendation.

If you are unsure as to what to choose, the best thing to do is to read reviews online and ask for recommendations from the industry experts.

At the end of the day, your choice will be the one that matters the most. Always go for quality because, after all, you only want what is best for your business.

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Choosing a construction estimate sheet What to keep in mind - Business MattersBusiness Matters

Workers and employers alike are always searching for new and better ways to work and collaborate faster and more efficiently.

The success of video conferencing service Zoom after its blockbuster 2019 IPO has only underscored this trend, even as workplace chat app Slack continues to see growth even under the spectre of direct competition from Microsoft itself.

Against this backdrop, investors are only too willing to invest millions in promising young productivity software startups, particularly those working in the cloud computing and automation markets, where it seems that there's still a lot of potential to be explored.

"We're in the early innings of productivity software. That's why they're growing faster than ever," Jason Lemkin, an active startup investor and the founder of SaaStr, a company that helps founders build cloud software businesses, told Business Insider.

Those companies are benefiting from a larger trend, where the rise of the cloud means that workers, rather than the IT department, can pick and choose which tools to use. It means that upstarts can compete with major vendors by offering specific, useful tools that are better than the legacy options after all, that's how Zoom and Slack established themselves in the first place.

"De-bundling and this sort of best of breed approach is what's happenedwe've all been sort of spoiled by the amazing software experience we get on our iPhone and all the apps that we use in our personal life and we expect that now in enterprise," Rama Sekhar, a partner at Norwest Venture Partners, told Business Insider.

Workers are also increasingly looking to automate routine tasks and processes to free up their time to work on the more creative parts of their jobs.

All this means there's many different ways to tackle productivity by creating new tools to get work done, by measuring how useful those tools are, and by making sure all those tools can connect so you can automate away repetitive tasks.

Business Insider spoke to investors and industry leaders to compile the following list of the top productivity startups to watch in 2020 (valuations are taken from PitchBook unless otherwise noted):

More here:
13 productivity software startups to watch in 2020, according to VCs - Business Insider Nordic

LibreOffice 6.4 includes QR code generation

The LibreOffice team is testing the first release candidate of version 6.4, which is set for release at the end of January.

What's new in version 6.4? There are numerous fresh features; most are small, but they do include the ability to insert QR codes into any document. The Generate QR Code feature lets you enter a hyperlink (or any text) and generate a QR code with four options for complexity. A low complexity is better for long URLs while high has better error correction if there are errors in reading.

Another neat feature is called full sheet previews. This is for spreadsheets, and lets you specify that you want an entire sheet on one page in PDF export. In effect this is a "shrink to fit" option that is handy if you are frustrated to find that your spreadsheet has been broken into separate pages, ruining its appearance. If your sheet is hundreds of rows long though, it will be rendered unreadable, so use with caution.

When you select all the rows in a table in a word processor document, and then choose Cut, should it cut all the text but leave the table? Or cut the table? LibreOffice used to do the former, but now does the latter. In Word it would do the former, unless you specifically "select table". The new LibreOffice behaviour is probably what the user expects, but it is a tricky issue, particularly since if you select online one row and choose Cut, it only cuts the text, not the row. Table-editing controls have also been added to the Writer sidebar.

There are improvements in compatibility with Microsoft Office formats. Endnotes can now be shown on the last page of text as opposed to on a separate page, and SmartArt is more likely to import and export correctly, as are gradient backgrounds in PowerPoint.

The history of LibreOffice goes back to 2010, after Oracle completed its acquisition of Sun Microsystems. This included OpenOffice, an open source Office suite originally known as Star Office. Sun had picked up the Star Division, the company behind Star Office, in 1999, and published the suite as open source in an effort to reduce the dominance of Microsoft Office.

In September 2010 a group of OpenOffice contributors who were unhappy about Oracle's tight control of the project announced The Document Foundation along with a fork of OpenOffice 3.3, which they called LibreOffice. Oracle was asked to transfer OpenOffice to the new group but refused. A few months later more former OpenOffice contributors declared their support for the new fork.

The following year, Oracle decided that OpenOffice had no commercial future and in June 2011 transferred the project to the Apache Foundation, where it continues, with a claimed 1.6 million downloads of version 4.1.7, released in September. LibreOffice had the momentum though, and has been developed more rapidly.

2020 is therefore the 10th anniversary for LibreOffice and it is planning "a year long celebration."

Has LibreOffice succeeded? The software is popular and highly valued by users, and unlike Microsoft Office works well on Linux. It is free software and also lets you adopt the OpenDocument Format (ODF) in place of Microsoft Office formats. LibreOffice still has a place for organisations (not least the EU) concerned about retaining or recovering "digital sovereignty."

That said, Microsoft Office remains the business standard and today's battle is more between Office 365 and Google's G Suite, than between Microsoft Office and LibreOffice. Most Office 365 subscriptions bundle Microsoft's desktop software with email and other online services, making it hard for LibreOffice to break in.

LibreOffice then has not changed the software world, but it has perhaps made it a better place.

Sponsored: Your Guide to Becoming Truly Data-Driven with Unrivalled Data Analytics Performance

Read the original here:
LibreOffice 6.4 nearly done as open-source office software project prepares for 10th anniversary - The Register

A huge amount of the worlds audio has been digitized, but many veterans of the Analog Age still have out-of-print albums, lectures and other content locked on vinyl records, cassettes and CDs. Converting the audio to digital formats for personal use is much simpler than it used to be, though, thanks in part to gadgets that connect to a computers USB port.

In addition to making files that play on your smartphone or media server, digitizing your analog audio creates an electronic archive you can store online for safekeeping. The steps for converting your old recordings vary on the formats and equipment you have, but heres a general outline of the process and the equipment you may need.

No matter what type of analog media youre converting, you need software to digitize it. Capturing the audio to a computer has been a common approach for decades, and free programs to do the job include Apples GarageBand for Mac and the open-source Audacity (for Windows, Mac and Linux), which has its own guide for converting records and tapes. Commercial software is also available, like Roxios $50 Easy LP to MP3 or the $40 Golden Records from NCH Software.

Choose a digital format for recording. Uncompressed or lossless formats like WAV, FLAC and AIFF preserve more of the original audio for higher-quality sound, but compressed formats like MP3 create smaller files.

Follow the softwares instructions for importing audio. After you capture the whole album, you can use the program to slice up the recording into individual tracks, label the songs, and clean up hiss, pops and other noise.

If your stereo equipment is long gone but you held on to your old records for sentimental reasons, using a compact USB-based conversion turntable that connects directly to the computer is one approach. You may not have ultimate control over the recording quality, but its usually the easiest process to convert the vinyl yourself.

For the less technically inclined, ION Audio makes several conversion turntables, including the $110 Premier LP, which connects to the computer with a USB cable and includes its own conversion software. Audio Technica, Crosley and Sony also make USB turntables.

If you still have a turntable with a headphone jack or a port labeled line (or a stereo receiver with a phono input for the record player), a device called a USB phono preamplifier links your hardware together with audio and USB cables to pump the sound into the computer for recording. ART Pro Audio USB Phono Plus ($100) and Reloop iPhono 2 USB Recording Interface (about $100 in the United States) are two options.

For USB-based recording using older turntable systems without the headphone jack or line output, youll most likely need to include a separate phono preamplifier box to boost the audio signal as well. The $50 Rolls VP29 and the $66 ART Pro Audio DJPRE II are two models to consider.

No tape deck? Tape players with USB connections for the computer or flash drives can be found online starting at around $20. These devices can be quite efficient for digitizing old lectures, family history and other recordings.

If you still have a tape deck, check its jacks. A cable with a 3.5-millimeter plug on both ends or an RCA-to-3.5mm cable are common for connecting to a computers line-in port (if it has one), or you may be able to use a USB interface box like those used for digitizing vinyl.

Still have CDs you want to transfer but no CD player or computer disc drive? External USB-based CD players sell for as little as $20 online. Once you connect one, spin up those discs and import the tracks with Apples Music app for Mac, Microsofts Windows Media Player or another free CD-ripper app.

The do-it-yourself approach is not for everyone, but audio conversion services will happily digitize your old analog media for you for a price. This can range from $15 to $35 for each record or tape converted, but some companies include restoration and sound-cleanup services as well. Memories Renewed, Ever Present and DiJiFi area among the many conversion companies to check out.

While not a surefire solution for a fully digitized library, some unreleased and obscure recordings turn up online eventually, as did tracks from Jeff Buckley and Prince this year.

Continued here:
Get Those Records, Tapes and CDs Onto Your Smartphone - The New York Times