On Windows, applications are most commonly installed through executables downloaded from the Internet, but on Linux, that's done through packages. While packages are treated quite similarly to software you can find and install on Windows, package management can be a significant hangup for new users of Linux because of things like dependencies, distro-specific quirks, and version control.

The popularity of sports has always been associated with a variety of sports games that were developed and released on consoles over the decades. Some of the most beloved games weren't focused on being simulations of real sports, but were instead arcade sports titles that greatly exaggerated the concepts of physical sports. Games like NBA Jam and NFL Blitz dominated arcades with how quick they were to get into and incredibly fun they were to play. But in the wake of their success back in the 90s, other kinds of arcade sports titles were made for home consoles, and even focused on different sports that didn't always involve the biggest American sports back then.

I'll go out on a limb here: if you have an RTX 30 or RX 6000 series GPU, you're probably considering a GPU upgrade. PC gamers have this unquenchable thirst for new hardware, mostly GPUs, that's renewed each time a new product generation arrives. Granted, your old GPU might look tame in comparison, but if it can still run the latest games at decent framerates, you might want to look at a monitor upgrade instead. A large population of gamers still ignores the importance of a capable display. Here are some signs your monitor has overstayed its welcome, and you should save for a new gaming monitor instead of a GPU.

This week, we're finally getting gaming handhelds with Xbox branding. Microsoft and Asus partnered to create and release the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X, which are Steam Deck-like handhelds with a tailor-made version of Windows 11 for on-the-go PC gaming. And while no first-party Xbox games come out on the exact same day as these handhelds, the general launch window lineup is fairly strong.

The laptop landscape is so vast at this point that it's easy to get lost in the sea of choices available. But if you're looking for something simple that will get the job done and last you for a while, the Dell 14 Plus is a good one to go with. It's got a sleek design, great specifications, at a price that's easy to afford. For a limited time, you can scoop up this laptop from Amazon for just $800 thanks to a steep discount. Plus, you get Amazon's 30-day return policy, which keeps things simple and easy if you don't like it.

NotebookLM is one of the few generative AI tools that has really impressed me, but this doesn't mean that it doesn't have flaws. There's a lot it does better than its competitors, including letting you set the sources you want to use.

There was a time when budget CPUs felt truly special. Getting most of the performance of a high-end CPU at a fraction of the price allowed countless PC builders to get started on their PC journey. Today, however, "budget" CPUs remain so only in name. The value has been eroding every year, innovative features are only found on high-end chips, and even APUs don't offer the value they used to anymore — it increasingly feels like the budget segment is scheduled for deletion pretty soon.

If you run Docker containers, accessing log files is part and parcel of the experimentation process. Every app, service, and background job you set up throws lines of code into a never-ending stream of code. You'll usually find me neck-deep in Portainer's log screen, trying to figure out why a particular container failed or didn't run. You can scroll through these logs or tail them in the terminal, but that's only helpful if you're actively looking at the terminal. What happens when a container fails mysteriously in the dead of the night?

Owners of Valve's Steam Deck have praised its sleep mode since the handheld first shipped to customers, and for good reason. The Steam Deck's sleep mode works differently from most other gaming handhelds and consoles, giving it another edge over the competition.

Google is making videos created with the AI filmmaking tool Flow even more realistic — and harder to identify as AI-generated at first glance. The company announced Wednesday that users can add in and change the shadows and lighting of their AI videos. The expanded editing features in Flow are tied to the Veo 3.1 update, also announced on Wednesday, which Google says does a better job of making a video based on the images submitted as a prompt.  Flow users will also be able to generate videos with audio using several of the tool’s new features. Users can make a video with audio based on three reference images that the company calls “Ingredients to Video.” Another feature, called “Frames to Video,” creates a video that bridges a starting image with an ending image, with accompanying audio. The “Scene Extension” feature lets you take the final second of a clip and add on additional generated video up to a minute in length, also with generated audio. Veo 3.1 costs the same as Veo 3, is available as part of a “paid preview” through Gemini API to developers, and is enabled in the Gemini app.  According to Google, Flow users will soon be able to remove “anything” from a video — the tool will restructure the background and scene to make “it look as though the object was never there.”

Running a home network that’s both fast and private takes more than just blocking ads. For years, I relied on Pi-hole to keep unwanted traffic out of my devices’ DNS requests. It worked well, but something about depending on external resolvers like Cloudflare or Google DNS never felt completely under my control. I wanted to bring that part of the process home as well.

NotebookLM is no doubt a powerful tool for AI-assisted research and note-taking, but it’s not the only option for building a context-aware knowledge system. If you’re looking for alternatives to Google that leverage your own documents to retrieve information, generate insights, provide summaries, and give suggestions, there are several productivity apps worth considering. And they each bring something a little different to the table.