Here are some easy tips to make your Linux desktop run even faster.

• Give up the wallpaper Try right clicking on the desktop and selecting the "Configure Desktop" to find an option to use a plain color instead of a photo wall paper. Ubuntuclips.org has a video walk through of this task.
• Disable File Previews UbuntuClips shows you how to do this for Ubuntu.
• Avoid OpenOffice OpenOffice is powerful and easy to use. It's also a memory hog. Consider Abiword for basic word processing and Gnumeric for spreadsheets. You could still install OpenOffice, but only launch it if you need it. In Ubuntu, the abiword-plugins package adds support for more file formats, making it easier to work with Word and OpenOffice files.
  

Unlike Windows and Macintosh, there are many distributions of Linux software. You can think of each one as a separate brand, which packages things a little bit differently to create a unique identity.

This creates innovation as the different distributions push each other to be the best, but it can make a difficult choice for a potential Linux user.

Ubuntu is currently most popular over all, and seems to be most popular around Richmond, Indiana as well.