I've been distro-hopping a bit over the break and have arrived at my new favorite flavor of linux: Mandriva. Since getting started in linux, I pretty much stuck with my first love, Linux Mint, but after an unsuccessful switch to the new Mint 6 (Felicia), I had to abandon ship.

Back in September we talked about the possibility of America's Army returning to Linux with the 3.0 release. One of the America's Army developers mentioned that it's a possibility and there may be a way to get the client restored and updated on Linux. It looks like America's Army 3.0 for Linux is still a possibility

Graphical Twitter clients are a dime a dozen these days, but what if you want to use the ubiquitous micro-blogging service from the terminal? On machines like Linutop or netbooks, running a graphical Twitter client is a waste of precious resources, so a command-line tool like Twidge can come in rather handy.

Last year CES practically seemed like some sort of Linux show. It seemed like every company had their own netbook - based on Linux, of course. At the time, the Asus Eee PC was just fairly new and people were just realizing its success. In short: it was an exciting time for Linux. This year is not like that.

So, the season of giving has just come and gone, and you’ve received a Linux-based netbook—the popular new class of ultra-cheap, ultra-portable computer. By definition, netbooks are very limited in what they can do; they’re primary meant for accessing the web as well as some moderate office and multimedia use.

Taking baby steps to become more familiar with a new operating system can be as simple as revamping the OS already in use on your computer. It begins with unlearning Windows-born behavior to free up your mind for a new way of doing things.

As 2008 has proven - draconian digital restrictions management (DRM) does not stop people from illicitly using computer games. Spore, whose DRM was so bad they got ratings bombed on Amazon.com, was the most pirated game of 2008.

With the start of CES, I have needed to play some unusual video formats, including some that I couldn't even get to work on Windows or OS X. In these cases, I have turned to a trick I have heard before: use VLC.