After months of me promising Steam would be coming to Linux, it's finally here. The early verdict: it's pretty great! The installer is a simple pre-packaged .deb file for Ubuntu (or Xubuntu in my case), and the user portion of the install looks very much like Windows or Macintosh. In my limited testing, I've found the Steam beta to be at least as stable as Desura.

I'm often compared to the Absent-Minded Professor. I take it as a great compliment, because in the movie, he's brilliant. Unfortunately, when people refer to me as him, it's the "absent-minded" part they're stressing—not the "professor" part.

Anyone with an iPhone probably is familiar with the AirVideo application. Basically, it's the combination of a server app that runs on your Windows or OS X machine, and it serves video over the network to an AirVideo application on your phone. It's extremely popular, and for a good reason—it works amazingly well.

The folks over at http://www.iheartubuntu.com recently put up a challenge to the Linux community to get Netflix to work natively under our beloved OS. Thankfully, Erich Hoover stepped up to the challenge and patched the Wine Project in a way to allow Firefox/Silverlight to be installed and actually work with Netflix's DRM'd Silverlight!

I have a new day job, and as part of the hiring package, I was issued a smartphone. I'm a little bitter that it doesn't include a tethering plan, but that doesn't upset me nearly as much as the lack of Wi-Fi analysis apps. See, my new job issued me an iPhone. I really like the iPhone (it's true, I can't lie), but in order to scan Wi-Fi, I'd have to jailbreak my phone!

Two things happened in 1993: I attended my first year of college, and I played a lot of Scorched Earth.

Every year for our Readers' Choice survey, the venerable tool rsync gets votes for favorite backup tool. That never surprises us, because every time I need to copy a group of files and folders, rsync is the tool I use by default.

I have a huge collection of NASA photos taken from the Astronomy Pic of the Day Web site (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html) stored in a folder in my Dropbox. No matter what computer system I'm using, I rotate those images on my background, getting a virtual tour of the universe on every screen.

Last month, I showed you an awesome audiobook player app for Android, but I didn't share my frustration in getting the audio files on to my phone. When I plugged my phone in to the computer, I couldn't get the SD card to mount, no matter what settings I changed.

I've reviewed plenty of simple text editors designed for writers. For my writing, I really desire only a few features: Support for plain text. Spell Czech. Running word count.

Every time my paycheck is direct-deposited, I contemplate purchasing a Chromebook. Long gone are the days of the CR-48 laptops with the clunky interface and frustrating usability. Although I never quite seem to pull the trigger and buy a Chromebook, thanks to the developer Hexxeh, it's possible to run the Chromium OS on a wide variety of hardware combinations.

The concept of standalone Web apps isn't new. Anyone using Prism with Firefox or Fluid with OS X understands the concept: a browser that goes to a single Web site and acts like a standalone application—sorta.

Task management programs are commonplace in our busy lives, but it seems that every system lacks something. Google Tasks is nice, but it lacks the features of a more robust task management system. Remember the Milk is nice, but it charges for some of its features. Many standalone task management programs are great, but they don't sync between devices.

If you're the type of person who installs Ubuntu's server edition, you're also likely the sort of person who knows how to configure network settings. For most distributions, especially those based on Debian, the process is a bit strange, but familiar.

Although AutoCAD is the champion of the computer-aided design world, some alternatives are worth looking into. In fact, even a few open-source options manage to pack some decent features into an infinitely affordable solution.

I am an impulse domain buyer. I tend to purchase silly names for simple sites that only serve the purpose of an inside joke. The thing about impulse-buying a domain is that DNS propagation generally takes a day or so, and setting up a Web site with a virtual hostname can be delayed while you wait for your Web site address to go "live".

Whether you love Apple products or think they are abominations, it's hard to beat iPods when it comes to audiobooks. They remember your place, support chapters and even offer speed variations on playback. Thanks to programs like Banshee and Amarok, syncing most iPod devices (especially the older iPod Nanos, which are perfect audiobook players) is simple and works out of the box.

One of the great things about independent game companies is that they realize Linux gamers exist—and we're willing to spend money. Frozenbyte is the indie game developer that brought us Shadowgrounds, Shadowgrounds Survivor and Trine. Frozenbyte was kind enough to send me a review copy of its newest release, Trine 2.

In 2006, the family computer on which our digital photographs were stored had a hard drive failure. Because I'm obsessed with backups, it shouldn't have been a big deal, except that my backups had been silently failing for months. Although I certainly learned a lesson about verifying my backups, I also realized it would be nice to have an off-site storage location for our photos.

Plex always has been the Mac-friendly offshoot of XBMC. I've never considered using an Apple product for my home media center, so I've never really put much thought into it. Things have changed recently, however, and now the folks behind Plex have given the Linux community an awesome media server.