How would you like to be able to customize the layout of the Google homepage? How about add better video controls and a download button to YouTube? Or set a profanity filter that works across all websites? Maybe remove all the “What type of leafy vegetable are you?” quizzes from Facebook? These are very few of the things that can be done with Greasemonkey.

I use gnome as my default desktop at home and at office. However, my machines have alternate desktop enlivenment such as kde or xfce installed. I use it to test out features of these environment. The normal way to switch to a different desktop is to log out from the current desktop , select a new session form the gdm login window and login again.

Over the next few months new versions of the major operating systems will be released: Mac OS X v10.6 (Snow Leopard) sometime in September, Windows 7 on 22 October, and Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), also in October. Let’s not forget about FreeBSD.

While working on my own book for Apress, Free Software for Creative People, I've also been typesetting a 240 page poetry book by Richard McKane using Scribus, for the publisher Hearing Eye. Years ago I used to use Quark Xpress for this sort of project, so I was pleased to find out that free software can now do the same job.

One authentication server you could use is called FreeRADIUS, an open source project, developed under the GNU General Public License Version 2 (GPLv2). It is actually the most widely used RADIUS server in the world.

Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (known by the acronym ALSA) is a Linux kernel component intended to replace the original Open Sound System (OSS) for providing device drivers for sound cards.

GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program was updated today to version 2.6.7. GIMP 2.6.7 comes with lots of bug-fixes and it contains an important fix for using GIMP with the latest GEGL and babl releases.