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CentOS, Community ENTerprise Operating System, is a Linux distribution derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Not many would consider it a desktop distribution, but it could be configured as one, though it requires a bit more tweaking than other well known desktop distributions to just work. The latest stable version, CentOS 6, was released on July 10, 2011. This article started from an attempt to assess the suitability of CentOS 6 as a desktop distribution for new users. What follows is a 2-page writeup of my experience.

As a Linux user I know that I should revel in sparse user interfaces and command line driven applications, but for my day to day communications, I prefer Pidgin over XChat. It's just more pleasant to look at, and goes beyond just IRC chat. The problem with Pidgin and Gnome 3 is that it is hard to tell when someone is trying to get your attention. The little smiley face that gets displayed on the system tray icon is lost in Gnome 3, as the icons are now hidden in a disappearing bar at the bottom of the screen.

Amid the brouhaha around Linus Torvalds' unhappiness with GNOME 3, as well as the speculation that he may or may not be using Linux Mint, there's a glaring omission from the discussion. Specifically, Linus is one of us. Sure, he's the reason we're all here, but at the end of the day he's just another Linux user. After all, which of us hasn't changed distros or desktops, or posted our praise or displeasure on mailing lists or forums? Larry the Free Software Guy says we should afford Linus the same luxury of change which most of us seemingly take for granted.

The unity shell and the left hand corner of top panel was always a criticism and a headache from a design point of view. The daily builds of the unity 2D has a new iteration of the design now and is causing more criticism.

My editor at LinuxPro, Joe Casad, asked me if I wanted to write an article covering the differences between GNOME 2 and GNOME 3, but I declined (I was already working on something else). The reason for his request was this piece by my colleague, Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols, where Steven that talks about Linus Torvalds' intense dislike for GNOME 3. In the article, Linux suggests that a fork of GNOME 3 is in order. Here's a bit of a spoiler . . . Linus runs Linux Mint 11 for his personal desktop. A fine choice if I do say so myself, although I happen to like the KDE version.

A few weeks back when we did our list on the Top 10 Reasons to Switch to Windows, we were taken to task by a commenter for being too hard on the Microsofties. Well, as Three Dog Night said a long, long time ago, when it comes to Redmond, we find it “easy to be hard.” Anyway, this week, we’re taking that commenter’s advice and, in the interest of equal time, we’re going after our own kind, Penguinistas. So, here it is, just to prove that we don’t always pick on Windows, ten things that Linux users don’t understand.

While some folks dislike Apps in favor of the browser, the mobile experience will include both the browser and stand-alone app for some time to come.

We're past the era when every Free Software project is targeted at us hackers specifically. Failing to notice this will cause us to ignore the deeper problem software freedom faces.

Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3 development release comes with the default LightDM display manager login theme, but after installing recently available updates for Ubuntu 11.10 Alpha 3 Oneiric Ocelot! it has a new polished theme as we have seen earlier in this post.

When it's time to review your code base, assign your best architect to the task, and use high-quality code analysis tools to help you decide how to proceed.

With the release this week of the OpenGL 4.2 specification (and accompanying GL Shading Language 4.20 revision), the TODO list for the open-source Mesa developers just got a bit longer. Mesa / Gallium3D still lacks full support for OpenGL 3.0 and all of the revisions since that 2008 specification release...

Yes, it is now official, Canonical decided to replace Evolution Email and Calendar with Mozilla Thunderbird as the default email client and calendaring software for the Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) operating system.

This tutorial shows how to prepare a Debian Squeeze server for the installation of ISPConfig 3, and how to install ISPConfig 3. ISPConfig 3 is a webhosting control panel that allows you to configure the following services through a web browser: Apache web server, Postfix mail server, MySQL, BIND nameserver, PureFTPd, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, and many more.

While the Berlin Desktop Summit is still happening this week, happening next week in Vancouver, Canada is the Linux Foundation's LinuxCon North America 2011 event. This event is special, in particular, for it being the 20th anniversary of Linux...

Replacing QEMU 0.14, which was released back in February, is now QEMU 0.15. This new major update to this open-source processor emulator that's commonly used with KVM (the Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine) delivers on several prominent features...

Grab Tux Paint, make a cool drawing, win one of 3 OLPC laptops, one of 10 Sugar-on-a-stick and other awesome prizes! For kids age 3-12, contest ends Sept. 12. Judges are Linda Goin, Dmitri Popov, and Marguarita Sut. Turn your little penguins loose!

Keynote: How to make a toaster The third and final 'traditional' conference day began with Mirko Boehm, Claudia Rauch, Stormy Peters, Karen Sandler and Cornelius Schumacher meeting with members of the Berlin City authorities. The city officials wanted to get acquainted with the free and open source leaders involved in the Desktop Summit, because open technology is important to the local government (more below). Perhaps as a result of the beach party the night before, attendance was slightly reduced at the first round of talks, but picked up quickly. However, there was plenty of interest in the track that included social capabilities in free desktops. And of course, many participants are eagerly awaiting the rest of the week which is filled with meetings, workshops and BoFs. read more

Earlier this week, we were introduced to a new concept in intellectual property law: the European 'Community Design'. The Community Design is a sort of trademark on design, and sits halfway between a trademark and a patent. I decided to investigate what, exactly, the laws and regulations around Community Designs are, and what I found was shocking. Think the USPTO is bad? Wait until you learn about the Community Design.

While Mesa won't have OpenGL 4.2 support for some time, NVIDIA released an OpenGL 4.2 preview driver on Monday as soon as the Khronos Group had published the new specification. AMD yesterday has now released a beta Linux driver (of their Catalyst blob, nothing to do with open-source) that provides OpenGL 4.2 support.

LongoMatch is a sports video analysis tool for coaches and sports scientists, to assist them on making games video analysis. It simplifies video analysis by providing a set of intuitive tools to tag, review and edit the most important plays of the game. It allows to group plays by categories and adjust their the boundaries (lead and lag time) through a timeline.