Well as far as Linux software it can sometimes be a pain for neonate users to set up video chat. Now it seems Google has come through to make it super easy.

According to the brief announcement on the Google blog, “Voice and video chat for Linux supports Ubuntu and other Debian-based Linux distributions, and RPM support will be coming soon.”

I just installed Gmail Video chat on my Ubuntu 64bit system and it appears to work well.

So I had a Blackberry. I came to hate the Blackberry and dearly wanted to upgrade. Unfortunantly a new Android phone like the Evo was not in the budget.

So where did that leave me? Well I went looking over Ebay and Craigslist and did some wheeling and dealing to get a phone with a Linux OS that’s extremely hackable.

And I came across the Palm Pre. Sure it’s currently a platform that floundering In the wake of Apple, Google and others but it met the price and freedom requirements I was looking for at the time. I was already familiar with webOS from my wifes Palm Pixi and gave the Pre a shot.

I will make no excuses that Palm has been floundering and this can be seen in it’s app store selection. This is where the modding community has helped to make the Pre something still worth having. If you or a friend have a webOS phone but don’t have Preware installed then you are missing out. Over 50% of my applications come from the homebrew community that Preware gives me easy access to.

Preware is a package management application for the Palm Pre much like a package manager on Ubuntu or other Linux operating systems. Users can install any package from any of the open standard package feeds on preware.org or add a repository of their own. While a user can install all these packages manually Preware makes managing them and keeping them updated much easier. If you want to install Preware their basic install guide can be found here.

So while I didn’t end up with the exact phone I wanted… Preware has helped me to have a highly customized Linux Phone with a custom kernel that’s over clocked while I was at it.