As Linux moves into the desktop, users want to connect their digital devices to their Linux computers, and, well, at least have something happen. Long associated with difficulties in dealing with devices, Linux has come a long way. Quite a few devices such as cameras and music players, work immediately. All you have to do is plug them in. Linux has supported SD and Compact Flash cards an card readers for a long time, and USB support in Linux keeps getting better.

Once you connect your devices, the next step is to do something with your pictures, music and files. For digital cameras, you’ll want to manage and organize your photo collection.

On Linux, two applications really stand out for working with photos: F-Spot and LPhoto.

A recent development, F-Spot presents the type of user interface you'd expect from a digital photograph manager. You organize your photographs into photo albums, each of which appears on the left-hand side of the Outlook-styled F-Spot window. Available atwww.gnome.org/ projects/f-spot/, F-Spot is a relatively new application, as reflected by its low version number, 0.1.0. Even so, F-Spot shows a lot of promise. SUSE Linux includes F-Spot.

Written in C#, the language of Microsoft's .NETefforts, F-Spot runs on top of the Mono infrastructure which runs .NET applications on Linux. Windows .NET applications often use Microsoft'sWindows.Forms library for creating the user interface. F-Spot, though, uses the Linux GTK li...

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