Novell's latest release of SUSE Linux, SUSE 9.3, demonstrates Novell's continuing commitment to delivering polished, off-the-shelf Linux distributions for the desktop and professional markets. October 2004, which is when the previous version of SUSE Linux was released, seems like only yesterday. So what's new--and, perhaps, why should people care?

After five years of development, Free Pascal 2.0 is ready. With the new compiler, its authors believe they are ready to become a larger open source development platform. In the MS-DOS world, Pascal was one of the major programming languages and is by means of Borland Delphi an important programming language in the Windows world. In the open source world, Free Pascal is the leading Pascal compiler and while open source is a bit biased using the C language, the Pascal language has a lot to offer to open source programmers.

The last time Microsoft made a major change to its operating systems architecture with the 32-bit release of Windows 95, it staged massive launches around the globe. For its most recent evolution, to 64-bit computing, the software giant adopted a more restrained approach.

Dell chairman Michael Dell has cast doubt on the potential of Linux on the desktop, and also distanced himself from his own investment company's $99.5m investment in Red Hat. "The Linux market started on the server and it's stayed on the server," he told a select group of journalists in London.

Have a look here for an appliance-like desktop environment.

Linux consultant, Tom Adesltein, has begun a short series for Linux Journal online which offers a number of suggestions for tweaking the performance of the Linux desktop.

Developers on the Windows compatibility project Wine have been forced to abandon an important feature due to the existence of a Borland patent.