As you might expect, GNOME 2.22, the latest version of the popular desktop, which was released last week, has some functional tweaks and new default applications. If the release has a focus, it is on utilities, ranging from added features in standard GNOME applications such as Evolution and Archive Manager to improved accessibility and a handful of new applets. Few of these changes are dramatic, but the overall impression is of dozens of small enhancements that nudge GNOME toward greater usability.

Introduced in Ubuntu 7.10 was install-time encryption support where using the alternate installer one can fully encrypt their disk in an LVM using dm-crypt. Unfortunately, the Ubiquity installer in Ubuntu 8.04 continues to lack LVM and encryption support, but using Ubuntu 8.04 Alpha 6 we have looked at the performance cost of this encrypted configuration on Ubuntu Linux. Rather than looking directly at the disk read/write overhead caused by the encryption process, we have provided some benchmarks to see how the real-world performance is impacted in both gaming and other desktop tasks.

A word processor, as you may all know, is a computer application that is used for the production (including composition, editing, formatting, and possibly printing) of any sort 0f printable material. It is considered as one of the earliest applications for the personal computer in office productivity.

Firefox 3 is in testing, with the latest build, beta 4, released Monday. Mozilla is aiming for a final release of its flagship product before the end of the first quarter of 2008. Let's take a look at the changes coming down the pike.

A while ago, Id Software released the source code for the Quake 3 engine. They did not, however, release all the maps and models under a free license, so at the time, you still had to buy the game to play it. No more! Thanks to the OpenArena project, there's a cross-platform Quake client with free models and maps.

A type of application software that functions as a personal organizer is called personal information manager (PIM). As an information management tool, a PIM's purpose is to facilitate the recording, tracking, and management of certain types of "personal information" such as personal notes, address books, significant calendar dates, reminders, email, RSS/Atom feeds, voicemail and more.

Every six months, the GNOME team prepares a new and revolutionary release of the ever popular GNOME desktop environment. Today, we are proud to introduce you to the latest and greatest features of an 100% FREE and open source desktop. Whether you are on a Solaris machine or the latest Ubuntu distribution, GNOME is there and with every new release it makes your life... Simply Beautiful!

Firefox 3 Beta 4 is about to be released (later today or tomorrow), as the twelfth milestone, in what already is the longest development time for a Firefox version since the initial Firefox 1.0 back in 2004. Fortunately, Mozilla has not been shy to set as many milestones as needed, and given the many new features and tweaks Firefox 3 introduces, it seems anything but sensible, specially considering it’s not only about Firefox but Gecko, the web page rendering engine and the Mozilla platform as a whole which affects the many products based on it.

If you are a social media hound you probably have a Flickr Uploader, a web browser chock full of extensions, maybe a Twitter client like Twhirl, and a slew of other tools for interacting on the web. Maybe it's time to consolidate all these tools into your web browser. That's where Flock comes in it's a web browser for the collaborative web.

Secret Maryo Chronicles is an open source PC game designed around the original Super Mario World side scroller that takes what was great about that old console game and brings it to the PC, dusts it off and tries to improve on it. While still not completely polished or fully matured, it does offer you a lot of gaming fun. So let's look at a little that it does offer you.

Linux gaming is all around us you just have to know were to look. One of my favorite companies is Introversion they make great games at a great price. They really care about the games they make and all of them have native Linux versions. Uplink is tons of fun let lose that inner hacker.

In the first Compiz Fusion update since last October, Compiz Fusion 0.7.2 was released this morning and accompanied by an update to Compiz. This Compiz Fusion update was not only the first in five months, but also it was the first in the 0.7 development series leading up to the stable Compiz/Compiz Fusion 0.8 release. Compiz Fusion 0.7.2 has a number of new plug-ins (11 total) and also some changes to the configuration manager.

Spicebird is a cross-platform email and collaboration client derived from Mozilla Thunderbird. If you are a fan of Thunderbird, but need more from it than the standard build provides, you may want to give this new bird a try.

Let's face it, the office suite options on Ubuntu aren't as good as they should be. (I'm going to talk mostly about word processing here.)

OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org has most of the features anyone needs, but it is big -- really big -- and slow. It's leaps ahead of Star Office 5.0, OO.o's predecessor when I used it years ago, but OO.o moves forward relatively slowly and is notorious for having very little community contribution. Most of the new code comes from inside Sun. It uses the ISO standard ODF file format by default.

When you want to customize the look and feel of your Linux desktop environment, you can find many resources for altering window managers and interface widgets, but working with icons has always been more of an issue. Now you can get help with icons from a new program called Tango Generator.

It is often mentioned that many games are not available on Linux. While several big titles are indeed missing such Linux ports, the Open Source community itself produced some impressive titles. Here is a short list together with some promo videos.

Back in November we started sharing some of the exciting features planned for the GNOME 2.22 and 2.24 releases, and now that the first GNOME 2.22.0 Beta release is planned for later this week, we have taken another look at the packages set for inclusion and the changes that have actually been made. While nothing groundbreaking will be introduced in GNOME 2.22 (compared to KDE 4.0 at least), this desktop environment does have some moderate changes worth noting.

Since the release of Nexuiz 1.0 in 2005, we have been tracking its progress as one of the leading open-source first person shooters. With time, this fast-pace game has picked up a nice level of artificial intelligence for its in-game bots, engine optimizations, single-player campaign missions, and a variety of technical advancements. Nexuiz has always been one of the leading open-source first person shooter games, and with the release of Nexuiz 2.4 yesterday it reaffirms that you don't need to be a major game studio -- or a game studio at all -- to develop a quality title and even for being a free software game it has impressive graphics.

It's getting to the point where I should just rename "April" and "October" on my calandar "Ubuntu!" because that's what it just boils down to. If you have any interest in the state of open source software then you'll know that Ubuntu tends to be the benchmark; the high standard that other releases are measured against (whether it's suitable or not).

Most portable audio players can play music encoded in the MP3 audio format, but some consumers also have music in Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MPC, or even WMA files. How do you change from one format to another when you need to? Here are some of the best audio conversion tools available in Linux.