Last month's release of the KDE 4.4 desktop environment restored the faith of many after what has been something of a roller coaster two years. Even the most loyal KDEians found that loyalty stretched by the debut of version 4.0 in 2008. Reassessing, and with hindsight, I think it's fair to characterize the whole saga as both a cautionary tale and an admirable example.

According to the peekabot project's Web site: "peekabot is a distributed real-time 3-D visualization tool for robotics researchers and developers, written in C++. Its purpose is to simplify the visualization needs faced by a roboticist daily—using visualization as a debugging aid or making fancy slides for a presentation, for example.

You often may need to compare one version of a file to an earlier one or check one file against a reference file. Linux provides several tools for doing this, depending on how deep a comparison you need to make.

When using multiple systems the indispensable tool is, as we all know, ssh. Using ssh you can login to other (remote) systems and work with them as if you were sitting in front of them. Even if some of your systems exist behind firewalls you can still get to them with ssh, but getting there can end up requiring a number of command line options and the more systems you have the more difficult it gets to remember them. However, you don't have to remember them, at least not more than once: you can just enter them into ssh's config file and be done with it.

Even with modern Linux distributions, the inconsistency with onboard audio devices makes using headphones and microphones a hit-or-miss venture. When things work, they work great, but when things don’t work, it’s generally tough to get them going.

RedNotebook is a nifty little diary application. According to its Web site: RedNotebook is a graphical diary and journal helping you keep track of notes and thoughts. It includes calendar navigation, customizable templates, export functionality and word clouds. You also can format, tag and search your entries.

Part 1 of this series introduced arpeggiators in general and profiled the QMidiArp application. This week we conclude our survey with a look at two more arpeggiators for Linux musicians: Hypercyclic and Arpage.

What do you think each Linux distribution is "best for"? You can only pick one selection for each distribution (which, by the way, we know is going to be difficult). We'll compile results and share them in an upcoming article. Make sure your voice is heard!

For a few years I have been trying to create a "distributed cluster storage system" (see below) on standard Linux hardware. I have been unsuccessful. I have looked into buying one and they do exist, but are so expensive I can't afford one. They also are designed for much larger enterprises and have tons of features I don't want or need. I am hoping the Linux community can help me create this low cost "distributed cluster storage system" which I think other small businesses could use. Please help me solve this so we can publish the solution to the open source community.

In my last article I looked at performance loopers for Linux. This week I begin a 2-part review of similar applications called arpeggiators.