KDE 4.2 Beta1 (a.k.a. "Caterpillar") provides a new user experience: messaging, wallpaper via plug-ins, and Vi input mode for KWrite and Kate.

In May 2008 at Linuxtag in Berlin, Nat Friedman had presented SUSE Studio, with which you can build your own Linux distro with just a few mouse clicks. SUSE Studio images are now available for the Eee 701 PC.

The OpenBSD project has released version 4.4 of the free Unix derivative. New in this version are drivers for Intel and AMD chips, and support for platforms such as UltraSparc IV/ T1/ T2 and Fujitsu SPASRC64-V/ VI/ VIII.

After much advance notice and successful pilot projects it is now official: From 2009, Russia will provide its high and primary schools with Linux software. Around 1500 schools will be converted this year.

In his keynote at the Qt Developer Days 2008, Matthias Ettrich covered the upcoming versions 4.5 and 4.6 of Qt due to release the beginning and end of 2009, respectively.

The KDE project wants more contact with its users: After the recent work on a User-Wiki, KDE has now opened a user forum, complete with forum software published under GPLv3 license.

After a few beta versions and months of news blackout, Nvidia has now released a robust version of its proprietary graphics card driver for Linux. Driver version 177.80 is to include 25 enhancements, among them the highly awaited support for GeForce GTX series cards.

The French Linux distributor Mandriva has released its Linux edition of the same name in Version 2009.

A new bugfix for KDE 4.1, codenamed 'Codename', has been released by the KDE community.

The upcoming Ubuntu 8.10, alias Intrepid Ibex, is now in beta.