There are plenty of remarkable open-source applications on the way this year. Quite a few projects are quietly (or not so quietly) working on major releases or significant upgrades that they aim to make available sometime during 2009. I've rounded up 25 of the most notable here.

The natural extension of the “Etymology of a Distro” blog would be delving deeper into Open Source project’s etymologies. Indeed many readers already suggested that. Here are 20 Open Source applications and the interesting (and not so interesting) stories behind their names...

Now that you've seen all the big names and launches of 2008, it's time to give a nod to the apps that didn't get the attention they should have this past year. If you're sick of hearing about Firefox and the iPhone and Gmail and Chrome, you're in the right place.

While the new release sports only a minor increase in version number, it does feature a few significant improvements.

Steve Ballmer has recently sent a memo to every Microsoft employee. Ballmer's memo leaked really quickly (I wonder if he expected it). After swallowing the corporate-madness part (but that's allowed: he's a "mad" corporate leader after all), one particular passage really grabbed my attention.

You think, text-console programs look boring? Then run them in an environment that looks more interesting.
AKFAvatar can be used as a wrapper for text-console programs.
It can be used to make simple demos and much more…

Version 0.15.1 is out since sunday.

I got lots of emails from people asking me what are my favourite apps to install after I get a new Linux box up and running, so here they are:

The following is a list of about 100 of the best OpenSource Applications, that actually help make Linux more usable for people. It is my hope that this list shows potential Linux users that there really is a large, effective, productive and usable range of free, OpenSource applications. For existing Linux users (like myself), I think this will provide a great resource in finding applications that may better suit your needs, or just for fun! Needless to say, this is just some of the thousands of applications available! I develop web sites, so this list tends to focus on applications which support that type of work.