It's the holiday season! Regardless of which holidays you celebrate, it's a good time to connect with relatives and absent friends. GIMP is a great tool for creating your own custom holiday cards; Akkana Peck shows how to do this using your own images.

There are plenty of charities in this world, many with noble causes. Some, probably more noble than the ones listed here. But if you’re like me, many (if not all) of these organizations and their causes have a special place in my heart. So here it is, the geek’s guide to giving this holiday season.

I read a recent post called “Why I Won’t Be Recommending Linux to Family this Holiday Season.” The funny part is, the real reason…he doesn’t want to take the heat for telling them to use Linux and have something go wrong! Wimp!

To save money this holiday season, you could break out the construction paper and rubber cement and make something really, um, nice; or you could take a quick cruise on the Web, download a few free applications, put them on a thumb drive and really make someone's holiday. It's your choice. No pressure. Put down the safety scissors, please.

Holiday shopping season is about to hit full swing, and personal computers already rank high on many people's wish lists. If you're going to give the gift of a new PC, should you consider giving one with Linux? If the receiver is a tech-savvy individual, it may be the perfect gift, and the growing availability of preloaded machines means setup headaches are easily avoided.

Are you the local computer boffin in your social circle? Tired of forever having to clean off that annoying fake super anti-virus 2010 trojan? Well, friends shouldn’t let friends run Windows. Be a friend to your friends.

The best part about being a grownup is you can be your own favorite Linux/FOSS geek and buy yourself nice things. Here are some cool gift ideas for this holiday season. Or any time of year, because excellent adult toys know no seasons.

Now that Microsoft is evidently going to try to ship Windows 7 for the late 2009 holiday season, I see this as a challenge to the Linux comunity.

MSN Messenger allows you to chat online, in real time, with family, friends and colleagues. It's faster than e-mail, more discreet than a phone call, and best of all it's free! MSN Messenger is more than just text, it's a great way to collaborate with co-workers or touch base with family and friends. Now runs on Linux with Wine!