Ubuntu fans that have slight problems with their current version 9.10 might want to look at Linux Mint. Version 8, a.k.a. "Helena," is now ready for download.

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.

Installing openSUSE on a USB stick hasn't been a problem since version 11.2. But using the stick for more than installation media requires a little trick.

Ever since the Ubuntu One cloud service played an important role in Ubuntu 10.04, a new prototype of a KDE client has become available. A port to Fedora is also in the works.

Phonon in KDE 4.4 now supports PulseAudio. Ubuntu 9.10 users can install a new version of the sound server via Launchpad PPA.

Bryce Harrington is agonizing over the nontrivial task of delivering a working X server for Ubuntu. On the Ubuntu desktop mailing list he speaks of a flood of bug reports and appeals to improving the situation.

Joachim Breitner wanted to know how much time he was spending on his system, so he wrote Automatic Rule-Based Time Tracker, or Arbtt. The program is now installable from the Debian unstable archive.