In the tech world this phenomenon is known as “software bloat” or “feature bloat.” It's a well-documented problem and a frequent complaint about Windows OSs—Vista in particular. In addition to being buggy, the extra features tend to bog down your system by demanding more processing power and memory. Computer-makers: Don't load up operating systems with features and then make us sweat to figure out how to get rid of the fat.

Enter Audacious, a fork of the similarly-fated Beep Media Player. It works with Winamp Classic skins, satisfying my inner Microsoft fanboy. It can play back MP3 plus a slew of other formats. It's got a little bit of effects processing, some Last.FM support, and a whole lot of visualization plugins (like Paranormal!). Install this player, young grasshopper, and go terrorize ShoutCast with your listenership.

Back in June of 2005 with the ATI Linux 8.14.13 driver release was a new installer to more easily facilitate the installation of this binary graphics driver using a graphical interface for a generic setup or generating distribution-specific packages (at that time Red Hat was the only officially supported distribution).

Alexandria is an application for Linux allows you to sort and track your book collection. It makes it easy to manage your collection by allowing you to sort items into multiple libraries (for example, books at your office, in your home, or elsewhere), and adding books is as simple as entering its ISBN. Once you've setup your collection, you can even export it to an HTML file, to share with other users over the web.

Recently there have been several posts on different blogs about changing the name of Ubuntu and it's derivatives Kubuntu, Xubuntu and Edubuntu to things like Ubuntu GNOME Edition, Ubuntu KDE Edition, Ubuntu XFCE Edition and Ubuntu Educational Edition.

Now Ubuntu 7.10 is making it's way to Dell's XPS 1330 laptop and Dell takes the Ubuntu initiative to Spain.

Starting today, customers in Germany, United Kingdom, France and now Spain can purchase Ubuntu Linux 7.10 with built-in DVD playback on the XPS 1330n (in addition to the previously-released Inspiron 530n desktop system. U.S. customer will have to hold on a week or so.)

Dell thanks the Linux community for the support and states that the purchases and the community's commitment is the driving force behind this expansion. Hope more OEM manufacturers join soon and offer true choice beyond Microsoft stranglehold to their business

More laptop computers preloaded with Ubuntu Linux are coming from Dell Inc. in response to demand from potential customers around the world.