New features and below-ground tweaks make the Gnome desktop lean and free of legacy ballast.

3D design applications are somewhat an anomaly among Linux. Sweet Home 3D proves that good, free programs now exist in that market.

Akonadi is the magic word for data storage for the KDE 4 desktop. Unfortunately none of the KDE 4 apps really use it. The KDE address book, KAddressBook, should become the first to do so.

This past weekend the Wine project released a new version of its Windows emulator. Apart from the numerous obligatory bug fixes, the release includes improvements to the Direct3D 10 API and an initial support for the Open Audio Library (OpenAL).

The KDE project's Sebastian Kügler dreams of a desktop that melts, like silk, into the Web. In a writeup to KDE developers he promotes Project Silk for better Web integration.

Since Nokia's takeover of Trolltech and the increased presence of Qt, the KOffice suite has been gaining prominence on mobile devices. Developers have been working on new import opportunities of Microsoft Office formats.

The Nero company has its latest Nero Linux 4 available now for download for $20.

An increasing number of Linux desktop users also run a Mac, and although the Mac has a lot of great programs, Linux has a lot of apps you can't get natively for the Mac.