If you're looking for a solid drawing and image editing program for Gtk, have a look at Pinta. This week's point release brings several new improvements, a batch of new tools, and a facelift to the GUI. Modeled after Paint.NET, Pinta makes a great lightweight alternative to GIMP. It works on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, and has enough features to get all but the heaviest of editing jobs done.

Like most people I use Microsoft Windows and Office on my computer at work, and up until recently I had a similar setup for my home computer. But I recently changed to use the Ubuntu version of Linux and OpenOffice at home and and feel that both systems perform comparably.

Somehow, no matter how many “will 20xx be the year of Linux” articles get published every year, the moment never seems to arrive and why is that? Linux has been packaged into great consumer desktop OS’s for at least six years, and by that I mean that even a novice could use it.

Novell open source programmer Jonathan Pobst has released version 0.2 of his simple Pinta painting application for Gtk modelled after Paint.NET, adding a number of new features, including 5 new tools, 5 new adjustments and 5 new effects

Since our collection of Free and Open Source finance/accounting software for Linux has been quite popular, I would like to add 7 more to that list.

Autopackage is a distro neutral method of packaging up software for distribution to the Linux platform. It provides a sleek GUI for doing so and even installs itself from the first .package file you run on your system.

When talking about kernel scheduling and desktop responsiveness, it's common to hear people in the tech community talk fondly of BeOS, a desktop system which hails from the 1990s. BeOS had a well-deserved reputation for providing users with a polished desktop and smooth interaction, even when the processor was under heavy load.