How-To Geek

Every fresh Ubuntu install feels a bit like moving into a rented, furnished apartment. Everything looks good and works fine, but nothing feels quite like yours yet. One of the nice things about Ubuntu is that you don't have to spend an afternoon tinkering with GNOME extensions to make the desktop your own.

Is hotel Wi-Fi ever really good? Is it ever more than just a nuisance that needs to be endured? I can count on one hand the number of times I've arrived at a hotel and found the Wi-Fi satisfactory, and I'm used to having bad internet. But that (already low) number would drop lower still if I also take the ease of connecting to said Wi-Fi into the equation.

Pi-hole is one of those home lab services you quickly stop thinking about once it works. It blocks ads and trackers, handles DNS queries, and quietly does its job in the background. Then something breaks, and you realize how much of your home network depends on a service you have barely thought about. When DNS stops working, websites can appear offline even when the internet connection itself is perfectly fine.

A NAS runs around the clock, serving files, streaming media, and handling backups for every device in the house. Yet the drive I trust most spends nearly all its time disconnected. It sounds backwards, but keeping that copy offline solves problems no RAID array can. And here's why I think you should do that too.

Having a wall outlet with integrated USB-C charging seems like a fantastic idea, right? No wall adapter needed, just plug your device in and go! However, what seems convenient now might not be later as power requirements change, and that’s exactly why I won’t install a USB charging outlet in my house.

Most old PCs end up running a lightweight Linux distribution, but that path keeps narrowing as distros abandon older hardware. Haiku, the open-source successor to BeOS, takes a different approach, and its new R1/beta6 release makes a surprisingly strong case for reviving ancient machines.

A dedicated smart-home control panel makes Home Assistant easier to use. You can tap a screen to control your lights, check the weather, or adjust your thermostat without reaching for your phone. The trouble is that dedicated smart displays can cost considerably more than the hardware inside them.

Smart thermostats can learn your habits, but if your routine changes, you can't just tell them what's different and expect them to adapt. If a Large Language Model (LLM) were running my heating, I'd be able to do exactly that. I decided to let an LLM take control of my heating for a week to see how it compared to popular smart thermostats.

It's November, which means Netflix U.S. has an entire slate of new movies arriving on the service. Some of the notable licensed content includes Whiplash, Air Force One, Fury, and Bridesmaids. As for genre-focused content, there are a few nail-biting thrillers that should be saved to your My List.

When your Wi-Fi drops unexpectedly, what's your first guess? Mine is, naturally, to blame the ISP. Then, if I'm on my phone or something else portable, I'll start wondering about Wi-Fi dead zones.

Apple's 2009 "There's an app for that" slogan rings even truer in 2026. Anything you want to do, you'll find an app that's supposed to help you, and productivity apps are no exception.

Whether or not you find Google TV compelling on a TV, there’s a different form factor where it’s a genuine game changer—on a projector.

Your Samsung Galaxy phone is great for many things, but one of the best parts about it is how you can personalize and set it up for your convenient use. You may not even realize it, but one simple way to set up your phone for daily use is with its buttons.

KDE Plasma has been my desktop for years, and it earned that spot. But Plasma’s latest direction changed the math for me, and Xfce now fits the way I work better. Here’s where Xfce pulls ahead, where KDE still wins, and who should pick which.

An ESP32 development board can cost just a few dollars, making it a popular choice for DIY projects such as building your own smart home devices. The cost of the ESP32 itself doesn't tell the whole story, however. There are often additional costs that can be easy to forget.

The Google Play Store is the primary method of downloading Android apps on all Android phones. There are many reasons why you would want to install apps from sources other than the Play Store. Maybe you don't want to use a Google account, or perhaps you're using a de-Googled phone for privacy reasons.

Hard drives became expensive very quickly—over the last year or so, hard drive prices have jumped about 50%, and prices show no sign of coming back down.

I am a long-time Roku user, going all the way back to when it was a little square box that plugged into my TV with RCA jacks. I have several Roku TVs and a few streaming sticks as well. While there's plenty of competition out there, I've always stuck with Roku because it was simple and straightforward. I would turn on the TV, choose a streaming service, pick a show and start watching. I never wanted Roku to recommend shows to me or make decisions for me. I just liked the fact that it was an easy way to access my streaming services. In fact, simplicity was the biggest selling point in my opinion.

I used to use Google Calendar almost passively, mainly to keep track of bookings and recurring bills. Even though it's not a particularly clunky app, I didn't manage to make it work for anything else.

If you own a Pixel phone running Android 14 or newer, there’s a neat feature that allows you to turn it into a webcam for your computer anytime you need one, using only a USB-C cable. The setup is seamless; you can do it in seconds, and the feature works on all three major desktop platforms — Windows, macOS, and Linux.