SUSE Linux 10.1 Alpha 2 is ready for testing. Improvements and updates over alpha 1 include KDE 3.5 Beta 2, GNOME 2.11.1 (according to the announcement that is; 2.12.1 is more likely), smartpm, and OpenOffice.org 2.0 RC3. This alpha is available for x86, x86-64 (AMD64/EM64T), and PowerPC. Download locations, including torrents, are listed in the release announcement.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 has been silently released to servers. It can be found here. OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute. Update: Here's an interview with OOo's community manager, Louis Suarez-Potts.

Lacking permission from the Debian project to call itself Debian anything, the Debian Common Core Alliance has agreed to change its name to the recursive DCC Alliance. Ian Murdock responds to the matter.

Here is a very serious offer from Andrew Edward McCall for any PowerPC programmers out there. He is offering a Laptop to anyone that can port Haiku to the PowerPC platform. "Haiku on PowerPC isn't going anywhere, this is due to me being unable to patch gcc and not having enough time to work on it. If anyone has time and experience and would like to work on porting Haiku to the PowerPC architechture, but needs equipment, I will send them out a Apple 'Wallstreet' PowerBook G3 to work on for free."

Eben Moglen, the general counsel for the Free Software foundation, discusses issues surrounding the GPL 3 licence in this mini-interview. Moglen also talks about his feelings on the Creative Commons licence set, and how the kernel developers may approach the new GPL.

Just shy of Firefox's first birthday party, the Mozilla Foundation celebrated the 100 millionth download of its Web browser Wednesday. "This is a great milestone. Our massive, worldwide community of grassroots marketers and users - not to mention the developers - have helped to put out a product that's really kicking butt," said Asa Dotzler, the Mozilla liaison to the SpreadFirefox community.

Although open source software comes with lofty (and sometime altruistic) ambitions, some developers worry that the model just doesn't present a practical plan for the future of the software industry. Shawn Shell argues that proprietary software is here to stay — for a lot of good reasons. Why should you bother with looking at open source software though? Isn't it safer to stick with Microsoft and the other big corporate software designers? David Chisnall helps us to distinguish between proprietary (sometimes referred to as "predatory") software and its open source counterparts.

Think installing Mac OS X and a suite of applications, documents, and settings on a single Mac takes all day? Imagine doing it on ten or a hundred or a thousand Macs! Fortunately, tools like Apple Software Restore and NetInstall have allowed administrators to do it a little bit faster, and now Apple has provided an even more amazing tool that gives administrators the ability to roll out hundreds of custom Mac OS X installs in a couple of hours!

Steve Ballmer wants you to know one thing: He never throws chairs. Elsewhere, here is a mini-review of the Windows Vista Build 5231, discussing interface, WMP, tabbed browsing and more.

The recent release of Novell SUSE Linux 10.0 has elicited strikingly different reactions from a pair of reviewers -- Alan Canton, president of a software consulting company, who is experiencing SUSE for the first time; and eWEEK.com columnist Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, a seasoned SUSE user.

During yet another press event, Apple introduced new PowerMacs and PowerBooks as well as a new photo application called Aperture. The fastest new PowerMac holds two dual-core G5 processors at 2.5Ghz each, while the two lower-end models have one dual-core G5 at 2.0 or 2.3Ghz. The dual-core G5s have 1MB L2 cache per core. The 15" and 17" PowerBooks now have 1440x960 and 1680x1050 resolutions. Aperture is post-production photo software built for professional photographers.

A lot of misinformation about the OpenDocument digital format has started to appear in the mainstream media and interest groups. Answers to many questions on the topic already have appeared, but they are written by techies for techies. This article is different, however. You can print out this one and pass it on to everyone, regardless of their computer skill level.

"This year marks the 20th anniversary since Children's BBC began using the familiar format of sitting a presenter behind a live camera in a small continuity suite, dubbed the 'Broom Cupboard'. Prior to this move in September 1985, and for several years after, the BBC used Acorn kit to produce their broadcast graphics and animations.For a happy trip down a long memory lane, we caught up with Chris Poole, who produced the early ident graphics using a BBC B and later an Archimedes which ran RISC OS."

The generics support in the Java programming language is the most significant syntax change in its history. This article highlights how Eclipse has responded and the changes wrought by generics to the Java language. It shows how to take full advantage of generics within Eclipse, including support in Quick Assist, Quick Fix, refactoring, and project preferences. It also shows some subtle and important aspects of a fully generic language.