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If you like to customize your applications' appearance, then Firefox themes probably haven't impressed you. Although there are hundreds of themes available, typically all they allow users to do is change the icons and background color of your browser -- not too exciting. Personas for Firefox offers a new way to customize the browser. Though the project was quietly introduced last year, it recently moved into Mozilla Labs, where work has begun in earnest to give users more than just a way to change icons from blue to green. While right now Personas aren't much more than fancy skins, they're easy to change on the fly, and the prototype shows that Mozilla plans to give Firefox users more customization options than ever

It is time to wake up and smell the elephant in the room. Vista is struggling to achieve escape velocity. Microsoft finds itself the butt an international joke, but does not seem able to get a grip. The issue of choice of platform is once more up for grabs. Of course there is an alternative; a popular computing platform whose design attracts universal admiration. But although we all look forward to literally punching in the numbers, the Wii does not yet quite hack it (use of a dread phrase coming up) 'in the enterprise'.

When it comes to desktop publishing, a lot of people might think of big organizations producing newsletters, or your local boy scouts producing a fund raising flier. But the average person out there might not see where any kind of desktop publishing is really needed. Honestly, if you really look deeply, you might be surprised. There are a lot of great uses for desktop publishing. A lot more than people realize. What do we do when we want a good quality, free, open source desktop publishing program? You need to look no farther than Scribus.

The findings from the fourth-quarter 2007 Open Source Industry and Community survey is out. The authors say the results show open source is effective in combating trade deficit and that IT professionals involved in open source earn more than their more proprietary colleagues. Let’s check it out.

You've heard about Linux. It powers everything from servers to mobile phones, can be found in schools, governments, industry and homes, and a good chunk of the internet’s infrastructure is powered by it. CHOICE Computer’s Editor even runs it at home! Linux is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, and traditionally the domain of hardcore computer geeks. But that’s changing. The last few years have seen rapid development in the desktop sphere for Linux, so much so that it’s now emerging as a replacement for Windows. In this report we tell you all about Linux — what it is, the various distributions, where you get it from, and what its capable of. We also provide a tutorial on how to install Ubuntu Linux alongside Windows, so you can enjoy the best of both worlds.

Welcome to this year's 14th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! The release of Mandriva Linux 2008.1 last week started a small avalanche of distro releases that will keep us busy downloading and installing new distributions for weeks. But which of them will eventually become the "keeper"? One way to evaluate them all is to follow the development branches of the major distributions as they converge towards the point when they are declared stable and ready for deployment. This is the topic of today's feature story. In the news section, Debian elects a new project leader, ASUS releases a Software Development Kit for the Eee PC, gOS and Symphony OS continue to experiment with unusual user interfaces, and Darkstar Linux announces the availability of Disk Manager, a new utility for managing hard disk partitions. Also worth a read - a rare interview with Texstar, the founder of PCLinuxOS, and another with Jeremy Katz, a well-known Red Hat and Fedora developer. All these topics and more in this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly - happy reading!

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue 86 for the weeks April 6th - April 12th, 2008. In this issue we cover: Ubuntu 8.04 LTS archive freeze, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS LoCo Team CDs, Brainstorm update, Ubuntu UK Podcast #3, Euro-Parliament testing Ubuntu, and much, much more!

The GIMP team announced today the first release from the 2.5 development series. It is true that this version is unstable, but a little bird told me to give it a try and see what's it capable of. First of all, let me tell you that its interface is quite redesigned and I think that some users will have problems adjusting with it, but that's just my two cents. On the other hand, version 2.5.0 of The GIMP includes some hot new features, like the integration of GEGL (Generic Graphics Library) which will finally get support for higher color depths, more colorspaces and eventually non-destructive editing. But enough chitchat, and let's take a closer look at some of the new features and improvements to be found in The GIMP 2.5.0.

After failing to get any response from Linspire as to why they are not holding annual shareholder meetings, I asked them publicly to do so in my last blog, in a hopes that pressure from customers, partners and shareholders would encourage them to do the right thing. Their lack of responsiveness only heightens my concern with Linspire's present management and the company's future prospects. As a shareholder, seeing Linspire's new management destroying the company gives me great concern. This week I am working on my next blog which will outline the facts as to what Linspire has done since my resignation.

You will all no doubt be aware that a few months back I reviewed the original gOS, and I was enthusiastic about it. In my opinion, the original gOS was a great Linux distribution for the average computer user - someone who used it to write up a few documents, send a few emails, and surf the Internet a bit. With its emphasis on web apps, it was not only an ideal operating system for casual users, but was an indication of where desktop computing appears to be headed, with the real work being done "in the cloud", with the desktop just the front end for that. But now, gOS Space is here, and it's a radical departure from the original. So, once again I downloaded a copy and gave it a try.

Linux Advocate and Open Source Business owner, Ken Starks attended the Second Annual Linux foundation Collaboration Summit in his home town of Austin Texas this year. It was his first invite and what he comes away with may surprise many...and yes, those are real sharks.

The winner of the election is Steve McIntyre. I would like to thank all the candidates for their service to the project, for standing for the post of project leader, and for offering the developers a strong and viable group of candidates. Finally, I would like to congratulate Steve McIntyre, the Project Leader-elect, for his success.

Open source software benefits professionals in all industries: government, Internet, business, education, and even health care. Expensive software and subscriptions for anti virus systems, supporting electronic medical records and even phone or e-mail communications can put on a strain on small clinics as well as larger hospitals. Open source tools are free, highly customizable, and secure enough to handle the sensitive data that medical professionals often work with. Read below for our list of the top 100 open source software tools that benefit health care professionals.

New show format, now in HD, Cinelerra Tutorial #4 Rendering and Transcoding, guy makes music with his hands.

Even though the 4,000+ packages and ports for OpenBSD include just about every text editor you could want, the out-of-the-box installation includes just one editor. I bet you can guess which one it is. If you guessed vi, you win. If you didn't, what's wrong with you? I'm not saying you've got to love vi -- and it's perfectly all right if you hate it. But something as hard core as OpenBSD just says "you'll use vi -- and you'll like it."

Intel® Celeron 3.2GHz Processor, 80GB – 7200RPM Hard Disk Drive, 512MB DDR II RAM, DVD Rom drive.

[looks like another addition the the vendor database - Scott]

If you dual boot with Windows and Linux, and have data spread across different partitions on Linux and Windows, you should be really in for some issues. It happens sometimes you need to access your files on Linux partitions from Windows, and you realize it isn’t possible easily. Not really, with these tools in hand - it’s very easy for you to access files on your Linux partitions from Windows.

LXer Feature: 13-Apr-2008

In this week's Roundup we have a Gartner report stating that Open Source will quietly take over, a comparison of CrossOver Games vs Wine 0.9.58, Nine Improvements Needed in KDE and a couple of articles on Abiword. Microsoft is all over the news with the OOXML vote having taken place and they released 14,000 pages of code in an attempt to make the European Union happy, I have a funny felling it is not going to work. And Rob Enderle shows with up some FUD for your enjoyment.

I'll admit that I'm not a Marvel Comics fan (color me Vertigo), but this one's got me genuinely stumped: Iron Man is fighting the dark forces of Linux. That's direct from the writer's mouth, in fact.

[Equating Linux with terrorists. Ballmer must be wetting himself with delight - gus3]

Looking to boost the Web, Sun is working on a royalty-free and open video codec and media system, company officials said Thursday afternoon. "The main benefit is that you don't have that now and there are markets, key markets like the Web, that are in need for the Web 2.0 experience a foundation of royalty-free for the media element," for audio and video, said Rob Glidden, global alliance manager for TV & Media at Sun.