How-To Geek

The Subaru Outback has long been one of the brand’s most dependable sellers, known for its rugged capability and practical design. But even established nameplates aren’t immune to changing consumer tastes. Following a recent redesign, the Outback is facing a noticeable sales slowdown as buyers react to its updated look.

I like open-source software not only because the apps are free of charge, but they're often better than their proprietary counterparts. Here are the ones that have replaced common proprietary apps for me.

I used to run Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 3B+. The experience was absolutely fine; for a couple of years, it ran my smart home without too many major problems. When I finally upgraded to a mini PC, there were some notable differences.

Linux Mint is a beautiful and efficient operating system that just works out of the box. This is both a gift and a curse. It's a gift because you don't have to tweak and optimize it. It's a curse because you rarely think about tweaking and optimizing it—which is a shame given there's a lot worth exploring. To help you get started, here are five extensions that can instantly supercharge your desktop and make you fall even more in love with Linux Mint.

I once used Ubuntu and followed its development with extreme excitement, like a kid whose favorite console and game are both available for free. Now, at best, I feel ambivalence. What happened along the way?

Netflix's documentary collection is a treasure trove of information for every viewer. Whether you're interested in historical events, economic concepts, or retellings of popular events, or you simply want to kick back and get your dose of true crime excitement, the options are endless.

Not too long ago, I urged you not to buy SATA SSDs as they're borderline obsolete. I stand by that: I don't think buying a new SATA SSD makes sense right now. But what if you already have one, or a bunch, just collecting dust inside your home?

Got a house full of smart devices but no smart speaker? Don’t fancy paying an additional fee to add Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa to your Home Assistant setup? You can do it on the cheap and reap some big privacy benefits.

Even if you're the biggest Windows fan out there, you'd have to admit that Microsoft left lots of gaps in Windows functionality for third-party software makers to exploit. Or did they?

Modern televisions don't have space for the large, front-firing speakers that you used to find on CRT TVs. If you're lucky, you'll get halfway decent speakers pointing down or out of the back of the TV. None of the arrangements make for a good listening experience, especially if you need to hear dialogue.

When you're chasing those perfect 3D prints, you probably focus a lot on dialing in slicer settings, getting your flow rates just right, and picking out cool filaments. But you might be overlooking a really fundamental, and possibly dangerous, part of your machine: the hotend.

When a file is no longer serving a purpose, it’s time to delete it, and you probably know at least one way of doing so. But there may be more ways than you realize, and each has its own advantages, quirks, and things to teach us.

A mini PC is a solid option for a home server. They're small, relatively cheap, and low-power. I use a mini PC as a home server, but there are several things that my old Dell OptiPlex PC does better.

Every Excel spreadsheet eventually starts to rot. If your workbook relies on ancient file formats, hard-coded values, and formulas that look like massive, multi-line blocks of text, you're running legacy code that's slowing you down. And if you don't future-proof it, it's a ticking time bomb. Here's how to spot the rot and modernize your datasets.

Samsung leads the world in making phones with screens that fold. Long before that, there was a time Samsung made a phone shaped like a point-and-shoot camera. There was also an even weirder time, when Samsung made a phone that was a projector—the Galaxy Beam. The early 2010s were not quite the right time for this phone. 2026 is.

The best thing about working with the terminal is just how efficient it can be. Imagine if someone gave you a thousand documents and told you to replace specific patterns of text inside those files. You could spend days opening those files in an editor and manually replacing the text inside them. Or you could run a single "sed" command and be done in a few seconds. It genuinely feels like a superpower the more I learn about it and practice it. Here are 6 things I learned that made the terminal less frustrating for me and sped things up at the same time.

The settings you use in your 3D printer’s slicer can massively influence the quality of your print. If you’re having trouble with failed prints, underwhelming print quality, or prints that are weaker than you expected, you should consider changing a few of these settings.

A sentiment long repeated in the computing space is that you should have a separate SSD for your OS and important apps, and a second drive for, well, everything else. But many people don't stop to think about why, and what the exact role of that secondary drive should even be.

Even though most Linux distros don't require as much time in the terminal as they used to, eventually, it is going to come up. If you're doing anything remotely, executing a long task, or even just multitasking, the default tools may not be enough. That is where tmux comes in.

Home Assistant is great, but it comes with a steep learning curve. It's understandable why the idea of letting an AI do everything for you is appealing, but it could have serious consequences.