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The way we use computers is changing, but Linux isn’t standing still. Tiny Core is a minimal Linux distribution that boots a complete live system for every day use. Its foundation and unique approach to the desktop helps it achieve certain goals like preventing system rot and ensuring your system is fresh every time it boots.

Nearly every desktop computer and laptop has some kind of office or productivity suite. Many of these have several applications in them that can be used together to replace a paper office, but the most common three applications are word processors, spread sheets, and presentation creators/viewers. On Win32 machines, there are several commercial suites that reign supreme, and on Macintosh systems iWork and MS Office are common (though NeoOffice is a close 3rd). So what options are available for UNIX/Linux systems? I have found there are six common office/productivity solutions for these platforms with which most of us are already familiar.

This year's Gran Canaria Desktop Summit represented the first time the GNOME and KDE communities have co-located their annual conferences in the same location. 852 free software advocates from 46 countries gathered together last month to discuss and enhance the free desktop experience at the first ever Gran Canaria Desktop Summit.

I used to think that 512 MB of RAM was enough to make the average Linux system very usable. But things change, and now I'm not even happy with 768 MB running Ubuntu 8.04.

802.11n is the hot new wi-fi standard, all faster, better, and less interfering with common wireless devices than 802.11a/b/g. But don't get rid of your old devices---give them new jobs. Eric Geier offers 8 great ways to recycle old wi-fi gear.

The following comment was posted in response to my business oriented article about the CentOS situation for O'Reilly Broadcast. It perfectly illustrates why I have made the decision I did: Peter Griffin wrote: "I've been running CentOS as a file/intranet server since 5.0 was released. I started becoming concerned during the protracted period that it took to get 5.3 out. Not about the "lateness" in getting 5.3 out, but the complete lack of security updates in the interim for my 5.2 system. This "No updates available" went on for over a month. My version of Firefox trailed behind Red Hat's by two versions."

We reviewed the FirePro V8700 1GB workstation graphics card back in March, but AMD has now introduced its evolutionary successor to this ultra high-end product, and that is the ATI FirePro V8750 2GB. The FirePro V8750 continues to be based off the ATI RV770 graphics processor, but is now backed by 2GB of 900MHz GDDR5 memory. Bumping the memory speed by 50MHz has raised the peak memory bandwidth from 108GB/s to 115GB/s. How well though does this $1,800 USD graphics card work with Linux? Well, we have all of the benchmarks in this article.

Developers who 'knowingly' ship buggy software may be held liable for damages. That might be good for users -- but a sloppy set of guidelines could hurt open source.

After acquiring On2's video compression codecs in a deal valued at approximately $106.5 million in stock, will Google simply turn around and open source them? It certainly looks that way. In both the press release and the blog post announcing the acquisition of On2, Google makes a point of saying that it believes "high-quality video compression technology should be a part of the web platform" - and that On2 is a means of achieving that goal.

Nationwide unemployment may be heading toward double-digits in the U.S., but among the skills that are in highest demand are those of a Linux sysadmin. That's partly due to the effects of the recession -- more companies are willing to experiment with lower-cost open source alternatives to proprietary software. Still, the good news is qualified: Many of those jobs can be done anywhere on the planet.

The Mac is fairly widespread among musicians because tons of professional programs run on it. Apparently Ubuntu can completely replace the Mac, however, as in the following story.

The OpenOffice.org team has been experimenting with a new user interface for the suite of programs, and they've presented the first rough prototype of this new interface, more specifically for Impress. The general gist? It's Microsoft Office 2007's ribbon interface. The ribbon interface raised quite a number of eyebrows around the world, with many wondering whether it would be wise to ditch the old established garbled mess user interface of menus and toolbars in favour of something completely new. It was all additionally surprising as Microsoft generally isn't the company to change a winning team.

Ekiga, formerly known as GnomeMeeting, is a videophone program similar to Skype. It’s free, open source, and has so far worked better for me than Skype ever did. Today, we’ll cover how to use Ekiga to conference Linux and Windows clients together.

Ubuntu has introduced a new Patent Policy to help developers and rights holders deal with software patent issues. With the Private Support, Canonical hopes to improve its revenue.

Open source isn't just for Linux users, there are many excellent free open source applications available, ready to run, for Apple Mac OS X too. Part 1 of this 2 part feature takes a look at alternative browser, mail, messaging, productivity and image editing applications.

The Mind Mapping In Linux course has been designed to be a basic overview of Xmind and how to use it in different scenarios to increase productivity in your projects planning process. Xmind is a free, open source, applications available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. This Course is designed to allow a complete computer novice to use mind mapping for brainstorming and project planning without any cost at all. That's why we chose to use Ubuntu Linux as our operating system and the free software application, Xmind.

When people think about adopting an Open Source solution, the first factor that comes to mind is the price: it is usually cheaper than proprietary alternatives. What a lot of people fail to consider is that there are a lot of other advantages to Open Source that can be much more important than the price factor. Let's have a look at a few of them...

The whole time the dispute between the CentOS developers was in the news development moved forward and patches were released. CentOS was never a one man show. It was perhaps in danger of forking or a name change but it never really was anywhere near point of death.

A Chapter 11 trustee has been commissioned to take over the business affairs of the SCO Group, which is threatened by bankruptcy. The trustee will work to guide the company out of the impending bankruptcy according to Chapter 11 of US bankruptcy code, but can also send the company into liquidation according to Chapter 7 and auction individual company assets to the highest bidder. With this order, the Bankruptcy Court in Delaware has removed SCO's executive board.

recordMyDesktop is a desktop session recorder for GNU/Linux that attemps to be easy to use, yet also effective at its primary task. It produces files using only open formats. These are theora for video and vorbis for audio, using the ogg container. This tutorial shows how to install and use recordMyDesktop on Ubuntu 9.04.