"Recently a blog post entitled 'Why Desktop Linux is its own worst enemy' has come across my feed-radar a few times. It's yet another in the long line of 'Linux ain't ready yet' jeremiads and it doesn't really say anything new yet it got on my nerves. Why?" Ryan Cartwright at Freesoftware Magazine is on fine form with this wonderfully splenetic broadside. Read the full tirade at FSM.

"Linux App Finder's mission is to catalog useful GNU/Linux programs and provide a great resource to discover new apps". The programs are organized in categories to browse the collection. It has an alternatives page to find an equivalent Linux app to replace your Windows or OS X app when you make that switch. The app's page has user submitted screenshots and a research section where links to reviews for that app is provided.

The ability to run both console and graphical programs securely on a remote system using SSH brings you a great deal of freedom. When the communications link to that remote system has high latency, however, running interactive programs such as a text editor on the remote machine can become a real test of your patience. The bcvi project lets you edit files on a remote system using gvim (or another editor) on your local desktop machine to avoid the latency.

A recent post about Firefox and my general view of corporations and organizations has caused a bit of a stir. It even caught the attention of Asa Dotzler. He said "It's really hard for me to believe that either have the free and open Web at heart when they're actively subverting it with closed technologies like Flash and Silverlight." But are they really subverting it? Where exactly is the line between serving the consumer and subverting the web? I think the W3C should share in this blame.

Neil McAllister raises questions regarding Web development skills in an era of constant innovation. Sure, low barriers to entry give underdog technologies ample opportunity to thrive without the backing of name-brand vendors. But doesn't this fragmentation of the Web development market put undue pressure on developers to specialize? The result is a crisis, McAllister concludes, one in which maintaining a marketable skill set and hiring for a particular Web project gets more difficult as the state of the art changes on an almost daily basis.

An ancient (at least 33 years old) stack-overflow bug has been discovered and fixed in yacc, thanks to a new malloc() implementation by Otto Moerbeek. More info and a complete description of the bug can be found here.

Computerworld interviews Stephen C. Johnson, the brains behind YACC Yet Another Compiler Compiler: The compiler was developed some 35 years ago and is still going strong today through various incarnations. Asked what he is proudest of in terms of YACC's development and use, Johnson said: "I think computing is a service profession. I am happiest when the programs that I have written (YACC, Lint, the Portable C Compiler) are useful to others. In this regard, the contribution YACC made to the spread of Unix and C is what I'm proudest of." And would he do anything differently? "I'd try harder to find a notation other than $1, $2, $$, etc. While simple and intuitive, the notation is a source of errors as grammars evolve."

This article introduces the Google Calendar Data API, demonstrates how you can use it to browse user-generated calendars; add and update calendar events; and perform keyword searches. Also, it illustrates how to integrate data from the Google Calendar service into a PHP application using both SimpleXML and the Zend client library.

The Linux desktop has come a long, long way, but there are still times when I have to use the command line. (I am a hardcore user, after all.) But even though I'm used to typing, spending hours upon hours with my fingers at the keyboard, I still grow tired of typing the same commands over and over. To reduce that tedium, I always add aliases to my .bashrc file.

Quicksilver users can breathe a sigh of relief. "Today, our pal, Tim Gaden of Hawk Wings, posts on the availability of a bug fix release of Quicksilver that's come out in the last few weeks. He also points to a thread on the QS Google Group that suggests Quicksilver's auteur and flippered mystery bot, A1c0r, is currently hard at work on a substantial rewrite."

Do you want to build your Web sites faster and cheaper, but still leverage industrial-strength technology? You can do just that using Grails and Apache Geronimo. In this article, you will see how easy Grails can make Web development and how easy Geronimo can make Grails deployment. Also see how a Grails application can leverage the resources and services provided by Geronimo.

If you walk into a BestBuy this week you may spot some new software peeking out from the shelves. Yes, Ubuntu is now available as a spiffy boxed set in stores and on-line.

360Desktop is a software that extends the Windows desktop into a panaromic desktop, with unlimited space. In addition, "it allows users to easily grab their favorite web content from across the web, and put it right on their expanded desktop". Demo of 360Desktop in action.

This article walks you through the steps of retrofitting a Web 1.0 shopping site with Ajax techniques. In addition to Ajax techniques and best practices, you learn how Ajax can improve your user experience through principles of progressive enhancement, usability, and user experience design.