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If you are not running a KDE system, the representative icons of the Oxygen theme that I am referring to, are shown in the image below. They are too sharp to the eyes.

That is why I prefer icons from the ROSA theme. They are much smoother and a lot more polished than those from the Oxygen theme. If you agree, and want to install or use them on your machine, this article shows you how.

Nothing boosts productivity like an application or piece of software that makes if very easy to get your computing tasks done without fighting your way computer all the way. And I am always in search of such applications. In the past few months, five such applications have come to my attention.

The third and final beta edition of Mageia 2, a desktop Linux distribution derived from Mandriva Desktop, has been released. The first and only Release Candidate is expected on May 2, with the final, stable edition slated for release on May 15. So, what does this release has to offer? Aside from the usual new features and bugfixes, Mageia 2 beta 3 features a new desktop design.

This is the Moscow-based outfit’s desktop distribution that uses the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment, a low-resource usage desktop environment that the release announcement states “is guaranteed to work on machines with 256 MB of RAM and will likely work even with less amount of memory.”

Do not take that literally, because a base installation with nothing running uses that amount of RAM. With Firefox running (two tabs open), usage jumps to over 350 MB of RAM.

Fedora 17 GNOME beta, as well as the beta of the KDE, LXDE and Xfce Spins, were released yesterday – almost two weeks past due date. This, however, is not highly unusual for the Fedora project. Unlike Ubuntu, their release schedule is not cast in concrete. They are more interested in getting stuff that works out the door, instead of shoving something out to meet a set deadline. Even for a beta release.

Besides a complete set of office productivity application that you will find on most office suites, Calligra also comes with two graphics applications (Krita for drawing and Karbon for vector graphics) and a project management application named Calligra Plan.

ROSA Desktop is a Linux distribution derived from Mandriva Desktop and developed by ROSA, a technology outfit based in Moscow, The Russian Federation. ROSA Desktop 2012 beta is the first pre-release edition of what will become ROSA Desktop 2012. It is supposed to be a Long Term Support (LTS) edition, with a 5-year support period.

Given that the status of Mandriva is still a big question mark, it is good to see activity coming from the folks at ROSA. This article is a short review of this beta release. A detailed review will be published when the final edition becomes available.

The other feature worth writing about, is ROSA Media Player, or ROMP. It is a media player with a feature you will not find in Totem or other media players in other Linux or BSD desktop distributions. It is actually a fork of SMPlayer and was first released in November 2011.

The application I am referring to, is called KLook. That is “look” prefixed with a “K.” What KLook does, is give you the ability to view images, text files (.txt), listen to audio and play video files from one application in a slideshow fashion.

Currently, it can be used to view images in png and jpg formats, listen to audio and video files supported by Phonon, and view text files. Support for reading PDF files is just around the corner. Starting KLook is pretty simple. Just select the files you want to view or play and press the Space bar on the keyboard.

Installation involves downloading and installing Jitsi’s .rpm package from here. After you click on the package link, the window shown below should open. Rather than opening it in Apper, Fedora’s graphical package manager, save it to your home directory.

So Fedora 17 beta was supposed to have been released on April 3. Today is April 5 and we are still waiting. But that is the way it is with the Fedora project. Release dates are not set in concrete. They will release something when it is ready, not to meet a predetermined release schedule.

You will find one of those new features in System Settings, the hub for most graphical administrative tools in Ubuntu and GNOME 3 desktops in general. The tool or application is called Privacy. What it does is not new per se, but new in the manner it executes them.

Where other VoIP services and clients send data in the clear, Jitsi sets itself apart by making use of ZRTP to set up secure communication with SRTP, Secure Real-time Transport Protocol. Version 1.0 was released on April 3. This article shows how to install it on Debian, Linux Mint, Ubuntu or any other distribution derived from Debian.

Jitsi offers several advanced communication features, including secure video calls using ZRTP, conferencing, chat, file transfer, and cross-platform remote desktop sharing. It is available under the LGPL license.

And that is what this tutorial is all about. Very briefly, with screen shots to clarify, but detailed enough for a new user to get the whole picture, it describes the different user account types on a desktop using the GNOME 3 desktop environment, Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu-based distributions.

DEFT is a Linux distribution that is based on Lubuntu, itself based on Ubuntu Desktop, and loaded with the “best free and open source applications dedicated to incident response, cyber intelligence, computer forensics” and designed for use by the military, law enforcement, private security professional and IT auditors.

After spending some time messing with it, I can say very confidently that it is just about the best feature in GNOME 3.4, and if you combine it with Deepin Linux‘s built-in screen grabber and image editing tool, you have two very good reason to consider using a distribution that ships with a modified GNOME 3 desktop.

Protecting your computer from network and physical attacks should be at the very top of your computing to-do list. And if you are new to Pear Linux Comice OS 4, a Linux distribution derived from Ubuntu Desktop, the network security aspect has been made a little bit easier for you. The network security angle is what needs a little attention.

GNOME 3.4 was released today. Like any software update, it comes with a lot of new features and expected bug fixes, but will they be enough to make you a fan?

A distinguishing feature of the Comice OS 4 desktop is the Dock, which is powered by Docky. By default, it is always visible, but it can be tweaked to auto-hide and reappear on mouseover. This tutorial shows how it is done.