"It’s that time of the year again, when you take a look at your life, decide what parts of it suck and then make a proclamation of change. Sure most resolutions don’t work out and resolutions probably aren’t the best way to make a lasting change in your life anyway. But even you don’t stick to your resolutions, they at least make you think about the things that need improving.

"The Pragmatic Programmers recommend learning a new programming language every year. I thought for a long time that this was a good idea, but didn't really act on it. Instead I'd dabble in a dozen languages a year. While this has built my intuition as to what various languages are like it has not made me a competent programmer in a new language.

Considering that I have been writing daily posts basically without missing a day for around a year now, there is obviously a lot happening in the world of Linux and open-source software. The question is: what do you want to happen in this upcoming year? Last year I asked for reader's Linux dreams, and received a great response, so this year I am doing it again.

It's become a tradition (and a bit of a running joke) for bloggers and tech pundits to declare that this year (whatever year you're in) will be The Year of the Linux Desktop. So in following with that tradition, I'm here to declare that 2010 will be The Year of the Linux Desktop, but not in the sense that many other bloggers have stated.

There's absolutely no denying that we're in a terrible economy right now. Unemployment is way up over the last year and consumer spending is down significantly. So what's a person to do for Christmas gifts this year? the gift of Linux!

Many distributions have special releases around Christmas and New Year. I was planning to look at some of these this month like last year's Ubuntu Christmas Edition. But instead I found a release that's useful enough to maintain all year around. ZenEdu is a Live distribution that packs a whole bunch of educational tools on top of the Slackware-based light-weight and zippy Zenwalk Linux.

If you're going to commit to something big, do it now when no one expects you to follow through ;)

Chances are, if you are installing Android onto a desktop system, you will want to make use of the higher resolutions that are available, since your desktop probably has a bigger monitor than the average mobile phone or tablet. Android is quite flexible in the resolutions it offers, and most Android apps can take advantage of higher resolutions.

Another year goes by without the "Year of the Linux Desktop" (whatever that means) but that doesn’t mean that Free software is standing still. What highlights have there been over the last year and what is still holding us back?