With graphical user interfaces becoming more and more friendly and easy to use, new users of GNU/Linux and the BSDs can now get their daily work done without having to tinker around (very often) with a terminal.

We're taking a little departure this week from our sometimes successful attempt to be non-distro-specific, and looking at a neat little program that runs on Debian and Ubuntu flavors (including Ubuntu-derivatives, like Mint).

In contrast with most of its competition, Damn Small Linux (DSL) is an operating system where megabytes are still meaningful. Compare that to Windows Vista’s minimum 20 gigabyte footprint and the line in the sand becomes obvious.

I've found myself falling in love all over again with various KDE apps as I use their KDE4 incarnations. One of those apps is Gwenview, by Aurélien Gâteau. In KDE4 one of the common goals shared by various development teams was to improve the look, feel and usability of our apps. Did Aurélien succeed? Now it certainly looks better. But is it as functional? As easy to use?

GnuCash is a personal finance and accounting application created to keep you crazy organized. It can do simple things like recording expenses and take care of register transactions, but it can also handle tracking bank accounts, income, and a slew of financial instruments and derivatives.

e Ubuntu Linux distribution now includes virtualisation software Parallels in its partner repository. The move by Canonical, commercial sponsors of Ubuntu Linux, is a first for Ubuntu as Parallels is a commercial package and not free to use. However, by including Parallels in the partner repository Ubuntu users are able to easily install it should they want to use it. Installing Parallels using the Ubuntu package management tools will make it much simpler for users to install the software rather than installing from the command line.

A short while ago I wrote a review about Open Movie Editor. Essentially this review was written after a couple of hours testing various video clips and assessing the functionality within OME. Now, I can write about what OME is like on a real editing assignment.

Recently I was given a DVD full of PAL DV material and asked to create a compilation from the individual clips. A fun little project that should only take a day or two. Open Movie Editor was the obvious tool for the job.

The good news I can report is that even after 10 to 12 hours of constant video editing, OME is still a very stable piece of software.

They are four applications designed to serve different purposes: A web browser, a music player and organizer, another that does the same for video, and a word processor for screenwriters. Yet they share one thing in common: All were built with a Mozilla-based toolkit, either the Gecko Runtime Environment or its successor, XULRunner. Both toolkits use the same codebase which runs Firefox.