Linux Mint 7, based on Ubuntu 9.04 “Jaunty Jackalope”, and planned to be released in May 2009, will be codenamed “Gloria”.

Within a few months of beginning with Linux, it became obvious that I was one of those who have severe difficulties settling on a distribution. This situation presents some unique challenges, but generally, I've found there are more benefits than drawbacks. While I may have favorites, or be more familiar with some distributions than others, they all offer a little something different.

In most modern Linux distributions, network configuration is handled by NetworkManager, a desktop-neutral service that seamlessly manages connections. It leverages D-Bus and HAL to provide a standardized programming interface through which higher-level applications can interact with network configuration and expose networking functionality to the end user.

Some time ago, I talked about the possibility that, if Wine was perfect, you could simply migrate Windows user's applications directly into Ubuntu automatically. Obviously, that is far from reality today. Perhaps that sort of thing would be possible in the future, but, right now, there are just too many issues. There is another way to do something similar, though.

One of the cool things about custom distributions of GNU/Linux is that they usually have better "eye-candy". However, it's not really that hard to provide your own. If you are setting up a multiple boot system, the GRUB boot menu will be an important startup step; remarkably enough, it is possible to include some graphics even as early as the boot menu.

This is the first time that I'm reviewing GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), and it's definitely long overdue. As the open-source image editor of choice, the feature list of GIMP 2.6 is very long, and despite its status as a free application, it's as feature-packed as any commercial application.

I had a client who needed an official SSL Certificate and had an account at godaddy.com. I have to confess, I really did not want anything to do with godaddy.com, based on their advertising methods and responses students and clients had made about them, nothing criminal just hard to get things done or changed.