When we’re kids, we learn stories of the past from our grandparents, often involving their parents and grandparents. How many of you remember those stories? What about the names of the people involved? Those of you with your hands up, are you into genealogy?

I’ve been working on it for a couple of years now, and I just love this program, GRAMPS. GRAMPS stands for “Genealogical Research & Analysis Management Programming System.” That’s a mouthful, though, so it’s GRAMPS. GRAMPS is available for Linux, Windows, OSX, BSD, and Solaris, but the Linux versions are generally the most up-to-date. If you’re using one of the other OSes, there is a live CD available.

Transmission is a free and open source bit torrent client that runs natively on multiple operating systems and is available in many languages worldwide. Transmission is very lightweight and probably one of the best bit torrent clients around. Transmission was first released on September 15th 2005 and has came quite a long way since its first release.

If you use Ubuntu then you will most likely know of Transmission because it is the default bit torrent client.

There are thousands and thousands of applications available for Linux, and even more being developed as you read this. As much as I love Linux and Open Source, sometimes you happen to love a Windows application so much that you wonder if only this was available on Linux I would completely switch. It has happened to me in the past when I would switch over into Windows to play Counter Strike and Half Life and some people also wanted Photoshop on Linux because the GIMP requires some adjusting to on the interface.

When you think of Linux, you probably think of open source software and security, but not gaming. Most people think if you are into gaming, Windows is your only option. A few years ago this might have been the case but not anymore.

So, if you are a Linux power user, or just prefer Linux, here are a few of your options for playing games on your Linux box.

Who loves eye-candy? Don’t be afraid to raise your hand. Right, so, to all you out there thinking Linux is nothing but command line, or at best GUIs like this one from GNOME 1.0 (circa 1997):

I’ve got to say, think again. When I started using Linux two years ago, that was what I expected. I installed Damn Small Linux in Qemu on Windows just to check that it was not restricted to the command line. A few months later, Compiz popped up, and well, two more years, a fork called Beryl, and a merger later, Compiz Fusion is here. A lot of you have probably seen Compiz Fusion and been (rightfully) fairly impressed by it. I’ve used it to make others give Linux that second thought. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a video to show what Compiz could do a year ago:

For instance, drag a window and the window wobbles. Compiz also has plugin support which means that you can add more such effects to decorate your desktop’s look.