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.
Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, wants a more elegant and user-friendly Linux-Desktop for it's users. In a full blown statement at this year’s OSCON, Ubuntu grounder Mark Shuttleworth proclaimed: ‘'The great task in front of us over the next two years is to lift the experience of the Linux desktop from something that is stable and robust and not so pretty, into something that is art'’.