I've been using and advocating free software for around six years. When studying and then working as a freelance writer, migrating an office seemed so simple -- draw up a list of comparable programs and, over a reasonable period, move your staff across. But over the past few weeks I've been trying to use Ubuntu Gutsy on my desktop PC in a Windows-based office, and whilst most things work just fine, it's far from the seamless integration I was hoping for.

There are some things a free desktop just can't do without: a web browser, music player and, oh yes, clipart! Looking at the selection available by default on a standard Linux install, you might begin to envy your colleagues who use Microsoft Word, and then you notice their snazzy font selection. Well worry no more, for two projects are here to supply all the illegible fonts and amusing stick men your hard drive can keep track of.

Like any large organisation, the GNOME Project faces a formidable challenge in maintaining an effective Web site. Trying the balance the demands of promotion, documentation, and community coordination is made all the more difficult when you only have volunteers to do the work. But over the past year the GNOME community has developed and begun to execute a well-defined process to refocus and rejuvenate its much-neglected Web presence.

A battle over Open Document Format (ODF) and the treatment of open standards is taking place deep in the bureaucracy of the European Commission. The information came to light during aKademy, the KDE world summit, in Dublin last month.

KOffice has seen a huge surge in exciting feature development in the past year, putting it in the same league as free software giants such as OpenOffice.org and The GIMP, and even surpassing them in places. With version 1.6 due out this Sunday (October 15) it's timely that Krita, KOffice's painting application, is now leading an effort to develop a fairly boring feature, an open graphics file format.

With a customer list that includes Opera, Skype, German Brockhaus Encylopaedia, Google Earth, Adobe Photoshop Album, and the KDE Project, Trolltech is obviously a successful company. It has grown each year since it was founded by selling products that compete with free-of-charge alternatives such as Java and .Net. It now sponsors several free software developers who share all of their work with the community under the GPL. Let's take a closer look at a company that makes money from free software.

Software is a tool, a compilation of code that directs computer hardware, a program that empowers people to work more productively. Before Richard Stallman founded the GNU Project, many outside of hacker communities would have reasonably asked: why on earth is the ethics of software distribution philosophically interesting?

Usability has always been a controversial aspect of free software development, but one that is becoming increasingly important along with the uptake of GNU/Linux distributions in businesses and homes. Developers' discussions about usability are often marked by shrill accusations and defensive responses. Implementing usability suggestions can mean giving up months of feature-building. But according to a few developers and usability experts working on KDE, bringing usability experts into the hackers' work processes can be a big help.

After failed experiments with Slackware, a few years of SUSE, and a brief flirtation with Debian, I've been working and playing on Gentoo. I don't care for endless optimisations, and I'm not especially bothered about the bloat of a few unnecessary extra features, nor do I enjoy waiting days to update KDE -- so why do I like Gentoo? Simple: Portage package management, the hands-off approach to configuration, the excellent documentation, and the unsurpassed community support forum.

The Free Software Foundation Europe has announced a new Fellowship program to defend freedom in the digital age. Loosely modeled on the US-based Free Software Foundation's Associate Membership program, the FSFE hope to attract both more finances and activists to support their work. At a time when the free software movement is under a variety of threats, both legal, political and market-based, the FSFE hope that its Fellowship will be seen as "a call to arms."