Things in my personal world of Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 are starting to work themselves out, but it hasn't exactly been a smooth ride on my main laptop.

Neil Patel of Canonical recently posted an outline of the new user interface concepts that Gnome developers envisioned during the “Gnome User Experience” conference in Boston a couple of weeks ago. But are the concepts a good move?

A few weeks ago, Jack Wallen published a comparison of recent GNOME and KDE releases in which he claims that the desktop flame wars in GNU/Linux were about to reignite, and that KDE would emerge as the loser.

One thing we have learned from KDE4 is that its not a good idea to make drastic change to a desktop environment that the users have been used to for a long time. Hopefully the Gnome developers will keep that in mind as they work on Gnome 3.0 release for next year.

A few weeks ago, Jack Wallen published a comparison of recent GNOME and KDE releases in which he claims that the desktop flame wars in GNU/Linux were about to reignite, and that KDE would emerge as the loser. It was not the most technically accurate of articles, and the claim of renewed desktop wars was news to me.

Lucas Rocha, on the behalf of all GNOME developers worldwide, has just announced the release of GNOME 2.28.0.

News that Microsoft and Yahoo have finally agreed a formula for their collaboration comes almost as a relief after what seems like years of tiresome on-off negotiations. I think it's necessary to distinguish between short-term and long-term effects.

So, you want to pimp up your Gnome 3 desktop? The good news is that Gnome 3 is incredibly customizable. The appearance of the icons, mouse pointers, window decorations and the Gnome 3 Shell itself can all be altered to suit your tastes, and web sites like Deviant Art have a huge range of themes to choose from.

Gnome 3, due for inclusion in Ubuntu 10.04, will mark the first radical change to the Gnome Desktop since it's inception thanks to it’s “new” interface ‘Gnome-Shell’.