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I was lately impressed by a nice application I recently included in the 20 Essential KDE Applications article. I'm talking about BasKet, a full-featured and complete notes-taking application for KDE. I must say, one great piece, which makes way more than it's supposed to do. Highly configurable, with a nice interface and great functionality, BasKet is the best application for taking notes by far.

With a lot of fuss and a new downloads record, Firefox was launched just the other days, filling the headlines of all the news websites throughout the Internet. The interface itself didn't change much, except for a small change here and there, like the address bar. The add-on manager will show recommended add-ons, allowing you to select first from a bunch of add-ons you probable didn't even know they exist.

The article reviews 10 GTK applications which don't come with the GNOME desktop environment: GIMP, Banshee, Inkscape, Firefox, Deluge, XChat, OpenOffice, VLC, LinuxDC++ and Geany.

Amarok gained its huge popularity due to a vast number of features and very good functionality, like a complex collection management, support for iPod and several other MP3/OGG players, integration with Wikipedia, lyrics fetching, and another great number of features. The latest Amarok version, 1.4.9.1, is the most stable release in the 1.4.x series, and also the most fully-featured Amarok up to date.

I can't say exactly whether Konqueror is mainly a file manager, web browser, document or image viewer. Of course, it's mainly used for managing files in KDE and some also prefer to use it as a web browser due to better KDE integration and an obvious more responsive interface than Firefox. Konqueror is so many things that I really can't cover all of them in a single review. This article aims to review the most important features this multi-purpose application comes with, and the main ways of using it.

The best feature Songbird has is the integrated web browser from Mozilla, which allows tabs, the ability to enter any web address (for example you are not only limited to Wikipedia or Last.fm, you can search anywhere on the web for music), and it's completely configurable via the Tools -> Options menu. Songbird also benefits of an impressive number of add-ons, one of them being the Last.fm song submission.

An early look at Amarok 2 alpha. New features, interface, screenshots, what is the status of the development and how it behaves.

The article reviews the features, strong and weak points of three most popular web browsers on Linux: Firefox, Opera and Konqueror. Screenshots included.

A review of the new Opera 9.50. The big difference between Opera and the other Linux web browsers like Firefox or Konqueror is that Opera is closed-source. So, what benefits or advantages could bring a closed-source browser in the Linux world, you may ask. Well, they are definitely not advantages, but a thing is sure: Opera is a complete mature web browser which does its job very well.

KTorrent is definitely the most full-featured BitTorrent client for KDE. It is complete by any means and highly configurable, offering, among many other: search capabilities (with the results opened in a new tab and the possibility to add custom search sites), the possibility to create torrent files, pause/resume torrent downloading, system tray integration, detailed information about the torrents it downloads, a queue manager, various useful plugins. KTorrent has come to be probably the most complete BitTorrent client out there, being also fast and having an option to use low CPU resources.

Command line is known to be the most powerful way of doing things on Linux. Even though there are GUI tools for almost any task, doing them in the shell is most of the time faster and easier. Not to mention there are so many CLI tools out there, you only have to build a graphical interface in order to use them. It is also the most common way of spreading tutorials or helping new users, since it's less bandwidth consumptive (no screenshots, no explanations like 'go there, click on that, not that, the one below it'). This is a review on the most used terminal emulators in Linux.

I used this player for about three years and I love it more and more, with each new release. Statistics show around 60% of the Linux users prefer Amarok over any other audio player. 60%! That's huge. This article lists 7 reasons for which I think this is the most loved audio player. I preferred to leave out the more technical ones, and just focus on the highlights.

Banshee 1.0 was released a couple of days ago. Here's an article reviewing the most notable features of Banshee together with upsides and downsides of this GNOME audio player.

Since Amarok 2 is on its way with all the fuss around it and the currently stable 1.4.9.1 version will probably be the last in the 1.x series, I decided to make a review of the last stable Amarok. Debian Lenny will ship with this version (or any later version before Amarok 2), probably making it the most stable Amarok experience up to date.

These is a review of 20 essential KDE applications, plus several additions. Included are Amarok, KTorrent, Akregator, K3b, Konqueror, DigiKam and all the others. Screenshots are included.