In the last few days, KDE developers have been actively discussing usability issues for KDE 4. Here are some thoughts, and some more are here. What do you think?

A new scripting tool targeted by a virus writer will not be part of Windows Vista, the next Windows client release, Microsoft announced Friday. Instead, the software maker is looking at delivering the command-line shell tool, code-named Monad, as part of its next major server operating system release, a Microsoft representative said. That release, code-named Longhorn Server, is due in 2007.

So, you are not sure what makes a Linux distribution a good desktop Linux but you know it when you see it, right? Perhaps but perhaps not. So, what does it take to be a good desktop Linux distribution?

The big themes seem to be networking and minor annoyances, with a secondary focus on iChat and Mail, which always seem to have problems in the first release of a major Mac OS X version. It’s those changes—along with improvements to Tiger’s disk repair tools—that we’ll focus on during this inside look at Mac OS X 10.4.2.

UIMA 1.1 is a pure Java SDK that supports the implementation, composition, and deployment of applications working with unstructured information on Linux. Version 1.1 has been incorporated into IBM's enterprise search product, WebSphere Information Integrator OmniFind Edition, Version 8.2.2. UIMA Annotators can now be deployed into WebSphere II OmniFind for semantic search solutions. Here's a helpful user guide.

Read a long review titled "Mandrake Revisited: A Lycoris user revisits the OS he left years earlier". On a separate note, Linux Format issue 70 presents a Gaël Duval interview.

The CEO of cluster software vendor Scali takes issue with Microsoft's clustering options. Scali is demonstrating a new, major upgrade to its Scali Manage and Scali MPI Connect suites at next week's LinuxWorld Conference & Expo.

For those of you who just can't get enough Mighty Mouse news, here are a couple of tidbits: An intrepid tinkerer bought a MM, only to take it apart for all the internet to see. Also, WSJ tech oracle Walt Mossberg takes a look at the MM and compares it to Microsoft's latest Mouse offering. His verdict? "Stop the presses: Microsoft has beaten Apple on hardware design, at least in this one case."

This article covers the various forms of wireless data transmission, and addresses the main security problems in WiFi today.

Geronimo provides integration with third-party components through its unique GBeans feature. Apache Geronimo team member and committer, Jeff Genender, demonstrates this feature by showing you how to build and configure a third-party open source project with a GBean that integrates the OpenSymphony Quartz scheduler into Geronimo.

The news that Apple is going to switch to Intel processors shook up the computing world. Many users and developers were eager to publish their opinions on the switch. However, one group of people were totally neglected during all this: resellers. Today, we feature an interview with Wim Schermer, first Dutchman to own a Mac (in 1984), and co-founder of one of the biggest Apple retail stores in The Netherlands, MacSupport. We discuss the switch to Intel, and much more.

AppleInsider is reporting that Sony's PlayStation 3 gaming console will support Apple's Mac OS X Tiger operating system. "Sony is expected to offer optional hard drives for the PlayStation 3 with potential memory capacity of 80 or 120 GB. It remains to be decided whether the standard version of the PS3 will come complete with a hard drive. The operating system has also yet to be clarified. The integrated Cell processor will be able to support a variety of operating systems (such as Linux or Apple's Tiger)."

In a recent blog posting, Internet Explorer's lead program manager Chris Wilson revealed many of the technical improvements that Microsoft will add to IE 7.0 for its final release. Almost all the improvements are related to bugs in IE's implementation of CSS. Many of these bugs aren't fixed in the currently available IE 7.0 Beta release. Wilson's post raises some serious questions about IE 7.0.

MontaVista Linux claims that is has narrowed the real-time gap for Linux. The embedded Linux maker announced that is has successfully developed native, hard, real-time developments for the Linux kernel.