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LinuxMint, being a true consumer OS just like Ubuntu, took Gnome 3 Shell experience to a newer and better level. I think the best Gnome 3 Shell experience is the one provided by LinuxMint 12. I think the biggest USP of LinuxMint 12 should be the awesome Gnome 3 Shell experience.

I heavily recommend LinuxMint to all those users who want to try Gnome 3 Shell with all the available extensions working out of the box. I heavily recommend all current LinuxMint users to upgrade to the latest version. Just clear all the doubts you have about Gnome 3 Shell. Accept the fact that we have to move forward, make way for newer and better technologies. Accept that it is no more Model T, its Ferrari and you will enjoy the LinuxMint drive.

My verdict: LinuxMint is the best Gnome 3 Shell implementation.

The 'traditional' Ubuntu user is being marginalized by such fan-boys in the same community that he built, and he is looking elsewhere. He is looking at LinuxMint. He is looking at Fedora. He is looking at openSUSE.

One of the areas where LibreOffice needs massive changes is layout and design of the suite. There are some developers and designers who are working on 'possible' design changes to the LibreOffice. That doesn't mean that the LibreOffice team has made a decision to change the UI. The good news is unlike Microsoft's Office's Ribbon interface which is an aweful waste of spcae, LibreOffice design team is looking at more sensible approach.

Lubuntu is what it is intended to be: a light weight Ubuntu-based OS. While Lubuntu is targeted at low-powered devices, such as netbooks, I found Unity to be more appropriate on devices with smaller screens. Global Menu gives more space to work. At the same time Unity + Global Menu is a recipe for disaster on Desktops – making Lubuntu more appropriate for main Desktops and laptops.

After playing with Gnome 3 under Fedora 16 and openSUSE 12.1, which made me a happy GNU/Linux user. I tried to see the issues people have with Gnome 3, most issues are not about 'status-quo' these issues are genuine so I looked at the alternative and tried to see how suitable is the second most popular Desktop Environment, KDE, for a Gnome user. I am writing this review as an average user. Advanced users know what they need - they are like mountaineers, they don't much care about such things. So, let's see how good is Fedora 16 KDE for an average Gnome user.

Turkey's Ardic has developed a 65 inch tablet running on Android which can give Microsoft's surface run for money.

This is the favorite time of the year, it's like Christmas for a GNU/Linux user. This is the time of the year when most Linux distros release their latest versions. We have already played with Ubuntu 11.10, Fedora 16 and today openSUSE 12.1 arrived. I have been casually using openSUSE 12.1 (RC) for a while and am quite comfortable with it -- a compliment as its coming from a long-time Ubuntu user. If I look at my pattern I have been switching between Ubuntu 11.10, Fedora 16 and openSUSE 12.1 quite a lot recently. My Google + page is full of my experiences with these three OSes.

Greg KH is not happy with Gnome 3. When I met him during LinuxCon and interviewed him (the interview is coming soon), and asked about Gnome 3, he said he was still running Gnome 2. Now, he has tried Gnome 3 and he is not a happy user. He was not as 'harsh' as was Linus Torvalds when he called Gnome 3 Shell a holy mess and said someone should fork it.

The government is now mulling plans to popularize FOSS within the government and beyond. DIT (The department of information technology) of the center government is now seeking advice from the International Center for Free and Open Source Software, Kerala.

"Barnes & Nobel has exposed Microsoft's extortion plan which means from now onwards no company will sign any deal with Microsoft. The Exhibit D of the letter filed by Barnes & Noble gives a "a long detailing of the incredibly insignificant patents Microsoft has the nerve to use against Android, claiming control of the entire operating system with what is pretty much a handful of stupid patents no one really needs or which are so trivial that the fees it claims become outrageous.""

openSUSE 12.1 comes with the new GNOME Shell 3.2. Notifications are much nicer, you can now configure your online accounts in one place and Shell handles multiple-screen setups better. Among the features is color management, something GNOME shares with KDE where openSUSE is the first to integrate the Oyranos color management system. Also new from KDE is Apper, an easier-to-use PackageKit front end.

Firefox 7 was released only a few months ago and Firefox 8 has already arrived. Technically speaking these version numbers have become irrelevant ever since Firefox adopted Chrome-like rapid release cycle. What's hard is to stay updated with the latest version of Firefox, if you are using GNU/Linux. Under Windows/Mac you can simply download the latest version and install. But with one trick you will get an upper hand over Windows and Mac user -- something their operating systems can never match.

The ColorHug is a small device which can measure the displayed colors very accurately. It is extremey portable as you can plug it to the USB port of the computer and hold it against the display. The device will help you caliberate the colors of your screen, thus showing the 'true' colors of the objects that you see on your screen.

Fedora 16 was released a few days ago and I was looking forward to this release. I used to be a Fedora user in the early days, when I had more time to play with my PC. Ever since I switched to Debian and then Ubuntu, I just fell in love with apt-get's smart dependency resolution. I was finally out of the RMP hell. I did dabble with Fedora here and there, once in a while but 14 and 15 were both quite unstable for me. So, I distanced myself from Fedora.

Be happy developers, B2G is not designed to be another platform. It is actually a project to extend what developers can do with the web, especially on mobile devices. Even apps like phone dialers can be created with HTML5, B2G aims at bringing the web to the palm of your hand so that the web developers are no less than those developing OS-specific stacks. B2G is not intended for applications that will only run on B2G or Firefox, but on any device with HTML5 capabilities, including desktops. After Adobe shut down Flash for mobile devices admitting that HTML5 is the future, it seems Mozilla was far ahead from the beginning, eh?

I have some good and bad news for you. The good news is Linux Mint 12 is shipping with Gnome 3 which means you will get to you the ‘best of the breed’ desktop environment. The bad news is as we were expecting that Linux Mint will maintain the same user experience of Gnome was not entirely true.

Yesterday we published about Linux Mint's secret project for Gnome users and Clem's claims that soon they will overtake Ubuntu. Seems like he spoke too late. Today Linux Mint has broken the 6 year old record and replaced Ubuntu as the most popular Linux-based distribution on Distro Watch. Linux Mint sits on top with 2199 and Ubuntu slides to the second spot with 2011 rating.

Linux Mint is doing something which was expected from a project like this, yet we never thought of. A way to embrace never technologies without having the user to relearn everything or to lose some features or functionality.