This year (2010) marks the 10th anniversary of a lot of things: Tuvalu’s entry into the United Nations, Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, and the debut of Windows ME, for example. But much more importantly, 2010 marks OpenOffice.org’s tenth year of existence. To celebrate, here’s a look–literally, because there are a lot of screenshots–at how OOo has evolved throughout the decade.

The big news out of the Ubuntu world this month is the radically refurbished look introduced to accompany Lucid when it’s released in April, replacing the orange-brown “Human” theme that Ubuntu users have known and loved–or not–since 2004.  Here’s a look at the new face of Ubuntu, with an attempt at abstract thoughts related to it.

A couple weeks ago, we took a look at Lubuntu, a lightweight Linux distribution based on Ubuntu.  Since then, the operating system has undergone major changes that merit a revisit of its features.  Here’s a second look at the Ubuntu variant that just might replace Xubuntu.

I wrote recently about legal concerns involving multimedia patents on Ubuntu, and how to obtain licensed codecs without breaking the law.  But I didn’t give much thought to the philosophical side of the issue.  That’s an important topic in the Ubuntu community, so I’m catching up with it here.

Ubuntu is way easier to install than certain other operating systems.  But it would be even greater if I could select which applications I wanted on my new system before the Ubiquity installer goes about its business–an idea that was proposed recently on Ubuntu Brainstorm.  Here’s why it should go through.

If the American government invested as many resources rounding up violators of software licenses as it does fighting “terror” (and no, I don’t mean the Jacobin variety), I’d have been put away long ago, because all of my Ubuntu systems use patented multimedia software that I didn’t pay for.  But I’ve recently realized that it doesn’t have to be this way, and that legal codec support is easily available.  Here’s a look at some of those options.

For a long time, the Ubuntu family has had three members–Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu (sorry Edubuntu; we’re not counting you).  But that may change, with a new project, Lubuntu, vying for official endorsement by Canonical.  Here’s a look at Lubuntu, and thoughts on what its future may hold.

These days–in contrast to ten years ago–the world has plenty more Web browsers than it needs. And yet I can’t find one I’m happy with. My continuing search for a browser I get along with led me recently to try Opera, a seasoned but still largely obscure player on the browser scene. Here’s what I thought of it.

Last spring, the world changed forever when VirtualBox implemented support for 3D acceleration in Windows and Linux guests.  I have a tendency to be behind the curve on world-changing events, so I didn’t found time to play with this new feature until a few days ago.  But what I found made me really happy.  Read on for the details.

I just finished configuring a Vista laptop for my brother, who needs to run some Windows-only applications for college. Whenever I find myself compelled to deal with proprietary operating systems, I’m reminded why I use Ubuntu. Here’s a short list of some of those reasons.