Below are 8 minimal GTK2 themes for your Ubuntu desktop. To install them either follow the instructions given or use the ‘Appearances’ dialog from the ‘System’ menu.

Why the Ubuntu Firefox multisearch experiment in the alpha release of Karmic Koala was a bad and risky move on the part of Canonical.

Two weeks have passed, so it’s time for a Mandriva Cooker update again. There were lots of interesting changes in Cooker during this period...

Unlike KDE, Gnome is blessed with a lot of choice for music players. I had always ambled between different music players as I moved between Linux distributions over the years, but still I struggled to really meet my needs each time, so I thought I'd try all the major options and see which one really did suit me, having recently upgraded to Fedora 11.

PC-OS is a Xubuntu – based distro designed to make Linux as simple as possible. It includes proprietary drivers and codecs so the user can get the system up and running immediatly, while keeping lightweight and consistant to make the system as easy as possible.

If you are a Linux distributor, you have a number of possible ways to upset your user base. Breaking existing, well-established functionality is one of them. Another would be to install software which appears to be monitoring user activity behind their backs. Seeming to make money off of these activities will not help. Extra points are awarded for doing it all as a surprise.

The last few days I have been testing backup software to automatically backup my desktop Ubuntu system. I've only just got it set up, but rdiff-backup is exactly what I was looking for and seems to be working very well.

Our series on what new software users can expect to find in Karmic Koala come October continues. Today we take a sneak peak at the shiny new additions to Ubuntu’s installer ‘Ubiquity’.