If you’re a GNOME user I expect you’re more than familiar with the panels that come as standard with your desktop; if you use openSUSE you’re probably also familiar with the slab menu that Novell have developed. There are, however, several other applications out there that can extend and beautify your Gnome panels.

Gimmie

“Gimmie is a unique desktop organizer for Linux. It’s designed to allow easy interaction with all the applications, contacts, documents and other things you use every day.”

So, you’ve now taken the successful plunge and finally let the Microsoft nightmares fade into expensive and unpleasant memories.

You have your brand new, full-featured, Mandriva, Debian, or Kubuntu, free OS running your browser, email, and office, routines through a lovely KDE, or GNOME, desktop that’s simplicity itself to operate.

Next, you work out how to get all your free software repositories enabled and the true “Wow!” experience suddenly begins to hit you right between the eyeballs.

It appears this old argument is flaring up again. On Linux.com there was an article discussing some recent posts on the Linux Foundation’s Desktop Architects mailing list: Christian Schaller suggested Linus Torvalds should try using Gnome for a month and then report back on his experiences at the forthcoming GAUDEC conference in the UK. Inspired by this I’ve decided to take up the challenge – all be it in the opposite direction (and I won’t be reporting back at GAUDEC!).

Two days ago, I bought myself a DSLR camera; a Nikon D50. It’s a nice piece of hardware, and since it can do USB Mass Storage, there are no issues in using it with Linux. Well, not from the camera’s side, anyway.