In his blog, Canonical coworker Jorge O. Castro announces his so-called "b-sides" of Ubuntu, software that didn't make it into Ubuntu's standard installation.

Professional users are always searching for an edge. Whether you work with Linux as a webmaster, programmer, system administrator, or security consultant, you know the best solution depends on finding the right tool for the job. We thought you might be interested in the following new products and updates.

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.