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Sometimes, we have little tips and tricks that make life easier – but don't quite take up a full article. So today I've bundled a few practices that many Linux.com readers might find helpful. You'll learn how to control window behavior in KDE4, and make Nepomuk and Strigi be useful; and remove those silly proprietary U3 partitions from USB sticks.

For Linux desktop users, there are plenty of graphics programs from which to choose.

Airtime is the GPLv3 broadcast software for scheduling and remote station management. It supports both soundcard output to a transmitter, and direct streaming to an Icecast or SHOUTcast server. Web browser access to the station's media archive, multi-file upload and automatic metadata import features are coupled with a collaborative on-line scheduling calendar and playlist management. The scheduling calendar is managed through an easy-to-use interface and triggers playout with sub-second precision.

Read the tutorial at Free Software Magazine.

In June of last year Phoronix delivered the news that the Skype protocol was reverse-engineered and that there was already a working open-source code example for interfacing with Skype to send messages. While it seemed promising at first for potentially resulting in an open-source Skype client, the Microsoft-owned Skype vowed to take action. In the end they did go after the open-source / reverse-engineering work and now it looks like the project is dead, or at least terminally dormant...

PENNY-PINCHING landlords had better watch out. Their tenants could soon be armed with thermal flashlights that capture a colourful - and possibly incriminating - portrait of a room's temperature. The device comes from the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science, a non-profit group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that develops open-source tools to allow ordinary people to investigate environmental issues. A PLOTS team is working with a school-run project in Harlem, New York, to help tackle landlords who offer poorly heated apartments.

Do you like dancing, singing, playing guitar, piano..? Performous is an opensource software that make you improve your skills and have fun at the same time. No special hardware required, you may play guitar on your PC keyboard, sing on your laptop microphone and so on.

A new installation of Linux Deepin 11.12.1 does not have any of the network security applications that you find on Ubuntu enabled: A default installation of Linux Deepin 11.12.1, the latest edition, will leave your computer wide open for the bad guys to mess with. This tutorial shows how you can install IPTables, the Linux firewall application, ufw, a command line frontend to IPTables, and Gufw, a graphical interface for managing ufw, the Uncomplicated Firewall, on Linux Deepin 11.12.1. The idea is to enhance the network security profile of your Linux Deepin installation.

March 7, 2011. Today KDE released updates for its Workspaces, Applications, and Development Platform. These updates are the first in a series of monthly stabilization updates to the 4.8 series. 4.8.1 updates bring many bugfixes and translation updates on top of the latest edition in the 4.8 series and are recommended updates for everyone running 4.8.0 or earlier versions. As the release only contains bugfixes and translation updates, it will be a safe and pleasant update for everyone. KDE’s software is already translated into more than 55 languages, with more to come. The March updates contain many performance improvements and bugfixes for applications using the Nepomuk semantic framework.

Mozilla announced a deal with Latin American mobile carrier Telefónica Digital on February 27 to start shipping HTML5-driven smartphones by the end of 2012. Although the press release dubs the new platform "Open Web Device," many Mozilla watchers know it better as Boot To Gecko (B2G), a lightweight Linux-based system that uses Gecko as its primary (if not sole) application framework. B2G has been in development since July 2011, but it has advanced significantly since we last examined it in mid-August.

Ken Smith announced the availability of FreeBSD 8.3 release candidate 1 on 7th Mar, 2012. FreeBSD in an independent Linux distribution which support varieties of architecture like i386, ia64, arm, armel, mips, mipsel, sparc64, pc98, powerpc, powerpc64, xbox and many more.

Allowing small businesses to implement groupware with excellent backup and low maintenance costs

Stuck on Windows? No problem, you can still have some of the best GNU utilities courtesy of Gow (which stands for GNU on Windows). Gow is a lightweight alternative to the popular Cygwin collection of GNU utilities, and as such, it offers only the most essential tools.

Read the article at Free Software Magazine.

Sabayon’s Gentoo heritage might prove a difficult pill to swallow for some, but Russell Barnes explains why that definitely shouldn’t put you off Sabayon 8…

We share with you and interview with scientist, professor and author Hans Petter Langtangen about his well known book "A Primer on Scientific Programming with Python". We delve into the story behind the book, future plans and, as always, the importance of free/libre software in science.

Word on the street is that Google is planning to compete with Apple by coming out with its own Siri competitor. Called ‘Assistant’, the upcoming feature will bring a personalized, voice-centered ‘Do-engine’ to Android. Expected to release in fourth quarter of 2012, not much is known about it except from the fact that it will be more adept at finishing certain tasks rather than just searching for them. As we impatiently twiddle our thumbs for any official announcement to pop up from the search giant, we’ve come up with our own wish list for the exciting project. So, without much ado, here are six things we want from Android’s rumored Siri-competitor.

LAMP is short for Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP. This tutorial shows how you can install an Apache2 webserver on an OpenSUSE 12.1 server with PHP5 support (mod_php) and MySQL support.

With today's updates, Canonical updated the Ubuntu One user interface in the upcoming Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) operating system.

Here's a case to study for everybody who cares about Free Software teaching, open learning and open publishing: the Free Technology Academy (FTA) publishes online with open licenses all its Linux/FOss related courseware. Everybody can download them for free, no questions asked. TradePub gave the links to such downloads ONLY to people who provided personal information, then reused for advertising, profiling and other purposes. What to do? Please support the FTA formal request to stop such practices

Microsoft Windows to Go for Windows 8 is great idea, but instead of saving a desktop image to a USB stick, why not make the connection to the cloud instead? It's such an easy link, it's hard to believe Microsoft missed it.

I am proud to be a member of the Free Software community. I have found it to be a very open, and very tolerant, community that believes deeply in the South African concept of Ubuntu: the allegiance of people to one another. I find the tenets of the Free Software to be in sharp contrast to the uncivil discourse that dominates so much of modern society. Free Software has a lot to teach the world in terms of how we can all live together, and share our world in peace. In late March 2012, a large Free Software conference will take place in Abuja, Nigeria. Windows 8 has been generating a lot of buzz lately. Will Windows 8 drive disgruntled computer users to GNU/Linux? Extreme Tech writer Matthew Murray thinks so. Designer Marco Alici has used Blender to create a case design for the Raspberry Pi. The case can be created with a 3-D printer.