An increasing number of computer users are turning to online applications instead of ones on their desktop, With the emergence of online applications that have no desktop equivalent, and mobile devices that are browsers in your pocket, things are looking up. But what about free software?

Are you still using a web browser to access your favourite online applications? Why not do things the easy way, and make those applications part of your desktop with Prism.

Opera Widgets, unlike most other browser plugins, can be downloaded to serve as browser-independent desktop widgets. These are managed through Opera Widget Manager, so the Opera process remains open (without running the browser). This tutorial explains how to use Opera Widgets as desktop widgets on Ubuntu 11.10.

Screenlets are small owner-drawn applications (written in Python) that can be described as “the virtual representation of things lying/standing around on your desk”. Sticknotes, clocks, rulers, youtube, gmail and more. Screenlets are free opensource software released under GPL License. Screenlets use GTK2 & Cairo for drawing and windowing.

With the newest version of Screenlets, 0.1, you can now run not only Python Screenlets but also Google Gadgets, other web widgets, and web applications. If you want to get started with Screenlets, I’ve previously written a guide about installing and configuring it: OS X-Like Widgets with Screenlets on Ubuntu.

"...Two new technologies, which has been recently introduced, suggest an online direction for Eclipse. While it's possible that none of them is adequate, this is a strong indication on the future of the platform. I don't think that the desktop version will fade away in the near future, from the same reason that desktop office applications are still with us.

"Google has become, for the majority of Americans, the index of choice for online information. Through dynamically generated results pages keyed to a near-infinite variety of search terms, Google steers our thoughts and our learning online. It tells us what words mean, what things look like, where to buy things, and who and what is most important to us.

Online desktop (some call it online operating system, or WebOS) literally means putting the whole operating system online and allow users to have their own desktop where they can access anywhere in the World with an Internet connection.

For a long time desktop widgets have been a way to provide useful, although usually simple, applications that sit on the desktop and out of the way. KDE has taken these desktop widgets to a whole new level with Plasma. In this tutorial we will look at how to get a simple Plasmoid created using Python.