If I can't use my desktop for some reason, I just "rough it" with my notebook these days. For example, earlier this year when the air conditioning went out, my desktop was generating too much heat and making everything uncomfortable, so I lived off the notebook for a bit. Hooked up the keyboard and monitor to the…

@Rob Oakes: It's a bit late for this, but I thought you might be interested. I recently found that you can modify the fullscreen text width in LyX through a setting.

@das7002: Probably, I have an odd mix I've collected over the years. Many of them are ancient, and a lot of them have limited character sets (alphanumeric, uppercase only, etc.). Mostly TrueType with a few bitmap fonts I keep around.

@das7002: 23G? How many fonts is that?

@HeartBurnKid: Agent of R.O.A.C.H.: That's what I do and what I was going to mention.

@damis648: Ugh, yeah. You're supposed to be able to set them up as separate X screens too, but nvidia's drivers are quirky about supporting that well.

@Knight.Tim: Out of everything I've tried for both Windows and Linux*, I have to say my favourite player is Amarok 2, though Clementine (a fork of Amarok 1.4) is worth an honourable mention. They're both Linux apps, but they have Windows ports as well; more on that later.

@TheWhisper: No problem. I got curious about early appearances when reading some of the complaints and found something else that's interesting: it was added to the Jargon File somewhere between 1987 and 1990. The first reference still viewable online is in the June 1990 one (jarg211.txt), and it's not in the 1987 one…

@torgreed: Good point about the .app extensions. That actually dates back to the days of NeXT, and GNUStep (which tries to follow NeXTStep/Cocoa design) still follows that convention on Linux, too.

@soulfinger: The interface thing isn't a deal breaker or anything, I just mentioned it because it detracts from the experience initially. It's a bad bit of first impression: "Apple can't manage to make a decent native UI? Bullshit"

@Whitson Gordon: It might be jumping to the other accounts because of away status, or maybe bumping the AIM icon when clicking the name. That's how I first found out you could target a specific account. ;)

@Khoi Pham | ph15h: The unemployed angle is perfect! You can maybe talk them into meals, laundry, maybe fill your gas tank if you had to drive there. Little things like that can help save you money in a tough time while not pissing off the extended family by asking for cash. ;)

@Khoi Pham | ph15h: One resource you could use for figuring this out is Microsoft itself: [technet.microsoft.com] - it's for 7 but there is info for XP and Vista too.

@Whitson Gordon: Account preference is based primarily on order listed (the XMPP lightbulbs and MSN butterfly icons on my shot, for example), so if you just click the name it picks the highest priority (leftmost) one that is available. Works great once you get the priority right, since it always uses the one you want…

@AndiC: Yeah, that's what I was doing, basically. I'm thankful for it all, but the list I gave is the stuff I either use constantly or would miss horribly if it weren't around. My personal list of MVP stuff, the apps that make my time on the computer better. :)

@MonkeyBiz: I normally wouldn't feed the troll but your word choice is perfect. I set Ubuntu up for my grandmother a few years ago and she's had no problems with it because she doesn't muck about with things and doesn't do much more than read email and webpages.

@Khoi Pham | ph15h: Stop being a doormat and start being a BOFH; you'll end up saving time even if you keep helping them.

@Whitson Gordon: Try Kopete instead of Pidgin if you're still using KDE a lot. The default UI settings are a bit garish but it's highly configurable (attaching a small cap of my setup) and it integrates well with other parts of KDE, such as krunner and KDE's address book.

@Dabamasha: Linux is the OS, GNU is the userland. Meaning the GNU part is a collection of standard programs (or apps) on top of the Linux kernel.

@kellanpan: If you use vim, you can get syntax highlighting, and even if you don't understand the more advanced uses of vi, you can still get basic editing rather easily. Just remember that vi has modes. The default mode is used to give commands, not input. If you want to type, you press "i" to enter "Insert mode",…