Maverick Meerkat will drop the Mono-based F-Spot image organiser in favour of Shotwell, reducing the number of Mono-based apps in a default Ubuntu install to just one. Change is afoot. Ubuntu developers have already said that Chromium will be the default browser in the Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) 10.10 release and now news is in that Shotwell will be the default image organiser in Maverick Meerkat.

Reasons for true optimism as Mono drifts further away from GNU/Linux

Debian a step closer to Mono independence, whereas Ubuntu does not quite tolerate Mono criticism

One reader's thoughts about the advantages of putting Gnote in the next release of Ubuntu GNU/Linux

Constructive suggestions for Canonical to save disk space and also remove a controversial dependency that slows Ubuntu down

Tomboy does not fancy Gnote; Jo Shields keeps promoting Mono in Debian and Ubuntu

Richard Stallman's advice against Mono (by default) has made the front page of Slashdot where it received over 700 comments, which is exceptional even for Slashdot. The updated summary also links to an overview of Gnote...

Gnote was started on April 2009 with the goal of providing a Free Software implementation of Tomboy that doesn't rely on Mono.For our testing purposes, I installed Gnote 0.5.1 on Ubuntu Jaunty through a personal PPA. I would love to see it packaged in Ubuntu officially in the near future.

Tracking attempts to push Banshee into Ubuntu by default