Even though Ubuntu 9.10 is officially completed, developers managed to slip in the new beta version of Apache CouchDB that stores addresses, notes and bookmarks.
About-information from developer profiles, desktop searches in online forums, an interface library and update notification of web page content bring the concept of a social desktop a step closer to reality.
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.
GNOME 2.28 provides a few new features and improvements to well-known functions and components. So the GNOME Epiphany browser now uses the sleak WebKit that makes apps such as Google Chrome work faster.
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 Secunia security firm has found multiple vulnerabilities in the popular ffmpeg multimedia framework that is the basis for most Linux media players.