After AKAImBatman's wildly popular (and heavily criticized) look at what the future of the Linux Desktop might look like, Mr. Batman has decided to write a followup article where he attempts to clear up many of the misconceptions readers have about the original article. In addition, Mr. Batman uses the second part of the series to give technical details about how some of the concepts might be implemented.

This article describes in detail what to expect from Sun when it comes to the SPARC platform. The 8-core Niagara chip, now planned for early 2006, is the most impressive: "In practical terms, what Niagara delivers is a chip that consumes about 56 watts that has about the same performance on infrastructure workloads as a four-way SMP rig of Xeon processors or a two-way setup using dual-core Xeons. These Xeon setups will consume hundreds of watts per processor."

GNOME 2.11.5 has been released. As with the Linux kernel, odd-numbered versions indicate development releases. Download: platform, desktop, and bindings.

With the uptake of IP telephony continuing apace and the proliferation of IP devices in general, has the time finally arrived for an old concept – power over Ethernet (PoE)? For certain deployments of IP based technology, PoE is not only cost effective but arguably essential.

Microsoft is making big promises about Longhorn and other product development, but will it deliver? InformationWeek spoke with company execs about initiatives in security, server operating systems, storage, convergence and more.

The rules of C++ are designed to guarantee that type errors are impossible. Casting, however, subverts the type system and can lead to pesky errors in compiled code. This chapter explains why it's a good idea to forgo casting as much as possible in C++.

Despite Microsoft's claims that its .Net platform is sprouting its own ecosystem and is undergoing substantial adoption in the industry, some say the adoption of open-source opportunities appear to outpace .Net.

The picotux 100 is the world's smallest Linux computer, only slightly larger (35mm×19mm×19mm) than an RJ45 connector.

Some weeks after Neal Walfield implemented POSIX semaphores for libpthread, Marcus Brinkmann has now implemented SysV shared memory for the GNU Hurd in glibc, based on some earlier work done by Neal. This was probably the last commonly used POSIX feature missing in the Hurd, and having shared memory available will make several programs work much better.

Microsoft has acknowledged that it is working on a patch for a potentially serious security hole in fully patched versions of Windows XP Service Pack 2.

A denial of service vulnerability reportedly affects the Windows Remote Desktop Protocol. Either disable RDP or make sure you have a firewall enabled for port 3389 until a fix is available.

Django for Python is the most recently announced of what is becoming a long line of web frameworks inspired by Ruby on Rails. Others that have popped up include MonoRail for .NET & Mono, Subway for Python, Trails for Java, Catalyst and Maypole for Perl. In the context of all these rails derivatives, this article on "Could Rails have been built without Ruby?" is an interesting read.

Anders Hejlsberg is not resting on his laurels. He's off solving a new problem: Finding a way to query XML and other data using .Net-based programming languages.

The latest issue of The GNOME Journal features thoughts about marketing GNOME, a review of RSS feed readers for GNOME, a short preview on modeling with K-3D, an introduction to F-Spot, an introduction to Foresight Desktop Linux, and a review of Robert Love's 'Linux Kernel Development', 2nd Edition.