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Google has released a public beta of its Picasa photo organizer for Linux. The new release adds some important features for image browsing, image searching, and creative image export. If you haven't tried it before, now is the time. This beta release is a preview of Picasa 2.7, which will bring the Linux version of the application up to speed with the Windows edition. Picasa remains the only Google app which is unavailable for Mac OS X, a fact you can brag about to your Apple-loving friends.

The path to opening aGeek Ranch is not exactly straight. That is, each week there is one more strange thing that needs to be done. This week, it happens to be surveys. Not the measure the ground kind—we already did that—but the on-line ask questions kind.

So I'm sitting in the rather vast"press" corner of a CES keynote audience, waiting to see Paul Otellini, President& CEO of Intel, give a keynote. Two years ago I sat at an Otellini keynote here. As I reported inWhat's Intel up to with VIIV?, it was disappointing. Will this be different? Sure hope so.read more

Bug Labs, a company I never heard of before, is releasing something very cool for all the hardcore geeks out there. Is it a computer, a GPS device, or a camera? What if I told you that it is all that and a whole lot more. BUG is a modular computer system that will appeal to those who like to tinker around with things. It is a GPL device that has modular components to enhance functionality, and it is fully programmable.

Yesterday brought the alpha release of Wikia Search, a new engine built on free software and free culture values. For Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales, the release is a milestone in the realization of a long-held dream. However, as he tells Linux.com, Wikia Search is still a couple of years from maturity, with many of the details still to work out. "Philosophically, I'm a big supporter of free software," says Wales. "I've been interested in a streamlined, transparent search engine for a long time." Not only are free software technologies powering Wikia Search -- including Grub, the distributed Web crawler that Wikia bought last summer and whose code it immediately released -- but Wales is determined that "at every point where we find that there's an editorial decision to be made, we want to push that decision outside the company and into the community."

Due to popular demand, and just because it’s a nice KDE application that does a similar job as what I covered last time, I’m now going to show you Filelight. Filelight bills itself as a program that “creates an interactive map of concentric segmented-rings that helps visualise disk usage on your computer”. In essence, it’s a graphical program that helps you look at and understand how much space different files and directories are taking up on your hard drive.

Linus Torvalds rarely gives interviews, but there's a new one just out, available in both podcast and transcript form. Topics covered include his commitment to Linux on the desktop, his views on patent trolls, and his musings on matters as diverse as the Linux development process, including internationalization; cracking the code for Mobile Linux; GPL3; OpenSolaris, the future of Linux, and much more.

Call it a brilliant idea. Call it a crazy whim. Call it a stupid waste of time and money. I guess time will tell which one it is: After thinking about it for several weeks, this morning, I registered the domain names DiamondLinux.com and DiamondLinux.org. I think Diamond Linux is a great name — a prestigious name, packed full of all kinds of positive connotations.

I don't know you, but I often that the "usual Windows user" show me his photo album composed with the usual programs for video editing. I could use windows too, but I love to use Linux distro (particularly ubuntu). So I decided to learn how to use cinelerra and I discovered that, in spite of first impression, it's a software very easy to use. The envy of the Windows users is priceless.

GNU/Linux is bursting with information about the system on which it runs. The system's hardware and memory, its Internet link and current processes, the latest activity of each user -- all this information and more is available. And, despite such desktop tools as the KDE Control Center or GNOME's System Monitor, the easiest place to get all the system information available is still the command line. In many cases, you can view system information via specific commands. Some of these commands are written specifically to give information, while other commands that are mainly intended to alter the system in some way just happen to include parameters for viewing the current state of the system.

You may not consider yourself a political activist. Perhaps your initial interest in Linux had much to do with its zero-dollar price tag, reputation for stability, resistance to viruses, or huge software catalog. But, if you currently use it as your sole or primary operating system: why?

Lone Wolves is happy to announce the ODF-XSLT project. The ODF-XSLT Document Generator is a library written in PHP 5 that brings the full power of XSLT to your OpenDocument files. It enables you to use ODF files as if they were plain XSLT templates. It also includes a few extra parsing options that allow you to edit the XSLT parts of these ODF from within your favourite office suite. ODF-XSLT is developed by Tribal Internet Marketing and is released by Lone Wolves as Free Software under the GNU General Public License, version 3.

Board Chairman Laguna Becomes CEO, Former SUSE CEO Seibt Becomes Chairman, Former Nixdorf CEO Woebker Joins Board

This tutorial shows how to install and use alterMIME. alterMIME is a tool that can automatically add a disclaimer to emails. In this article I will explain how to install it as a Postfix filter on Debian Etch.

Today, a star is born. Everything you thought you knew about Linux is about to change.

As Christian Einfeldt of Digital Tipping Point recently noted, when Amazon published its Christmas wish lists, Linux devices figured prominently. And it seems like Linux is indeed all around us. Apple showed us Unix could look gorgeous; Nokia has used it as the basis for an open handset; Linksys opened up its routers to modders; and dozens of consumer devices rely on Linux at their core.

OpenMoko has revealed additional details about the upcoming second generation of the company's open-source smartphone. OpenMoko, which spun off of FIC last year, aims to create a unique, Linux-based mobile phone that can easily be modified, improved, and repurposed by individual users. The company has now released additional information about it's second-generation handset and plans to demonstrate it for the first time at a private gathering that will take place during CES.

Mozilla has announced that chief executive Mitchell Baker is stepping down in favour of chief operating officer John Lilly. Baker will remain as chairman of the open source non-profit organisation, but Lilly will take over effective operations immediately.

Linux creator Linux Torvalds says that the GPL2 (GNU General Public License) is still the best licensing option for the Linux Kernel. Torvalds has consistently rejected the GPL version 3 licensing scheme, released last year by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), for the Linux Kernel. Torvalds was speaking in the first of a new interview series hosted by the Linux Foundation, of which he is now a fellow.

A semiconductor firm announced a satellite-friendly, high-definition (HD) set-top box (STB) decoder chip that runs Linux. STMicroelectronics's STi7111 SoC (system-on-chip) is said to combine a decoder, network interface, and an integrated demodulator, enabling it to handle satellite transmissions as well as IP network input. The STi7111 is the latest member of ST's STi7100 series of SoC devices. It supports H.264, VC1, MPEG-2, and other video standards, and includes circuitry to demodulate both DVB-S (standard) and DVB-S2 (HD) signals. By integrating these functions, STB makers can reduce the cost and size of hybrid satellite/Internet-ready boxes, says ST.