In the proprietary production world, what matters about a copyright is who owns it. In the free production world, however, who owns a copyright is relatively unimportant. What matters is what license it is offered under. There is a very simple rule of thumb about the best license to use: use a 'free,copyleft license'

Okay, before I begin writing about plasmoids, we have to get one thing straight – what on Earth is a plasmoid? A plasmoid is an applet developed with KDE’s new Plasma application development environment. More information about Plasma can be found at its Web site.

One of the pleasures of Linux is that you can try out different distributions to see which one works best for you. You like Ubuntu, but you want to fine tune the desktop engine? OK, try Kubuntu with its KDE desktop then. Some worthwhile distributions, however, don't get as much attention as they deserve. So, here's my list of five great distributions that you might want to try.

I wanted to set up a friend's iPod on Linux. The iPod was supplied in Mac format and must be re-formatted.

Using Windows as a free software enthusiast is isn’t always easy but often people don’t have a real choice and nothing can be done. But that doesn’t mean you have to abandon free software altogether salving one’s conscience. I’ll leave Firefox out of the List.

I applaud Canonical for pushing Ubuntu beyond the desktop — up onto servers, and down onto mobile devices. But I’m starting to wonder: Can Ubuntu really gain traction on Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs)? Or put more bluntly: Does the world really need another mobile device operating system?

Coordinated by Google, the Android platform has been finally released into the market!

At the Audio MC at the Linux Plumbers Conference one thing became very clear: it is very difficult for programmers to figure out which audio API to use for which purpose and which API not to use when doing audio programming on Linux. So here's my try to guide you through this jungle: