In some circles games are regarded as a distraction and a time waster. However, there are many benefits to playing computer games other than the obvious simple unadulterated fun that they offer.

The feature 9 of the Best Free Linux System Monitoring Tools, written in July 2009, highlighted our personal picks in open source monitoring software at that time. However, there has been significant developments since that article was published.

A rich internet application is a web application that resembles a desktop application in many ways, but is delivered by a browser, virtual machine or from a browser plug-in. The most popular platforms for rich internet applications are Adobe Flash, and Java.

A webcam is a video capture device that is either connected to a computer directly (typically by USB) or over a computer network. Many modern netbooks and laptops have a built-in webcam.

Linux offers excellent software for dealing with RAW files, for remotely operating cameras, importing and processing raw data, as well as software to read, write and edit camera metadata.

Server provisioning is a set of actions to prepare a server, taking it from bare metal to a functioning system complete with an operating system, data and software.

If you do not value the information stored on your computer, data loss may not represent a significant issue. However, for the majority of users, the loss of their data is likely to have profound implications, such as financial loss, time and effort, and emotional distress. Typically, users who are casual about data protection have not yet experienced data loss. However, it represents the most important thing on your computer.

A software synthesizer, also known as a softsynth, is computer software which creates digital audio. Computer software that generates music is not a recent arrival. However, with processors that offer multiple cores and faster clock speeds, software synthesizers can complete tasks that previously needed dedicated hardware.

A fractal is a geometric shape or quantity which displays self-similarity and non-integer dimension. The property of self-similarity applies where a self-similar object is exactly or approximately similar to a part of itself. If you zoom in on any part of a fractal, you find the same amount of detail as before. It does not simplify.

A tag editor (or tagger) is an application which allows users to edit metadata of multimedia files. Metadata is the data about the audio data. It lets information about the audio file such as the title, artist, conductor, album, track length, lyrics, embedded images, and other information be stored in the audio file itself.

We have written a range of guides highlighting excellent free books for popular programming languages. Check out the following guides: C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, CoffeeScript, HTML, Python, Ruby, Perl, Haskell, PHP, Lisp, R, Prolog, Scala, Scheme, and SQL.