The open source world of ubuntu and gnome can be exciting. To switch things up I'm going back to native applications instead of webapps. For email, Evolution (was gmail client). For IM, pidgin (was gmail talk). For RSS reading, liferea (was google reader).

also, KDE4 is supposed to be finished in December. it has a new hardware management layer above the HAL. It uses QT4. It supports desktop widgets through Plasma.