If even the most imaginative desktop background is starting to bore you, it’s time for a change. xdesktop waves allows you to change your desktop into a water scape. You can add rain and storms or just drag your mouse to liven things up.

Launching a program by clicking

with your mouse can have a few

disadvantages. Users lose their

way in nested menu structures,

and desktop icons can become

hidden behind windows. The

Apwal program launcher makes it

easy to launch with a click.

Linux’s text display still suffers from legacy issues, but it is well on the way to

recovering. This article explains how Fontconfig, X, and Gnome work together for

a brighter future.

A well chosen font is the perfect addition to your

Linux experience. KDE provides a number of tools

that help you cook up a really tasty alphabet soup

with very little effort.

The new Gnome desktop adds a variety of applications and applets. Under the hood, Gnome 2.10 is more robust.

WMI is a lean and fast window manager with good

support for keyboard control.

If you tend to collect information and then forget where you put it, a

KDE tool called Basket may be just what you need. Basket is a

handy container for documents, notes, images, sounds, graphs,

spreadsheets, and other files you may want to find later.

If the KDE Kicker is not graphical, or spectacular enough for your taste,

you can dress up KDE with KoolDock or KXDocker.