Jozef Mak recently made a noteworthy proposal for achieving better integration of Open Source graphic applications, which has been positively received by the three communities he targeted: GIMP (for photo and image editing), Scribus (for desktop publishing), and Inkscape (for vector graphics editing). This has sparked a bit of discussion in our communities and brought up several ideas for improvement.

Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 Release Candidate 2 has been released, more info here.

The second beta release of Mandrake Linux is now available for download: there are cosmetic improvements in MCC and a new ALSA with source mixing (at last). Other distros would need to get the CVS version of ALSA to get dmix working automatically with the ALSA drivers.

As I have browsed this site and others like it, I have often seen comments like "The only way to secure a Windows box is to not connect it to the Internet!" and "How can you stand to use Windows when you have to run tons of apps such as spyware removers and spend hours trying to keep it secure?" Some people have even gone as far as to say that it is literally impossible to secure Windows. Well, I'm here to tell you that not only is it possible, it's actually quite trivial! It requires very little effort and you can do it without running a buttload of security apps and without spending a dime.

FOX is a platform independent GUI toolkit by Jeroen van der Zijp. v1.4 has some exciting new features.

For over six years I have been hunting for a Linux distro that would allow me to replace my Windows installation. I've tried many versions of RedHat and Mandrake, and more recently, Gnoppix, Kanotix, Ubuntu, Fedora, and Knoppix. In my evaluations, I would start with high hopes that the latest and greatest distro would install smoothly, support my hardware, and create a genuinely usable system, but none of them really worked--until now. I recently came across the first distro that satisfied all my requirements: Ubuntu.

Linuxtimes.net has published a 4-page article on Arch Linux, the promising Linux distro.

The first in a series of articles about Mono. This article explains how to install Mono and shows how to compile your first Cross Platform application.

Lycoris boasts that it is going to make you "Throw away Windows for good and get hooked on the best ever release of Desktop/LX". The flashy website and bold statements make it seem like a dream come true. Is it? TuxMe takes a look at whether it's all true or just marketing mumbo-jumbo.

Aqua Data Studio 4.0, the popular multi-platform DB front-end, is released and it's adding many new features. Aqua Data Studio is free for personal usage. In other interesting multi-platform commercial releases, Lost Marble recently released Moho 5.0.7 (screenshot, running under my Novell Linux).

More recent builds of Apple's Tiger operating system have recently surfaced along with a coinciding Java software seed.

Microsoft is on track to release the first full test version of the next major Windows release by the end of June, a Microsoft executive told CNET News.com on Monday. Also, Microsoft this week will reaffirm its promise to have Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 finished by the end of the quarter and its intent to have "Avalon" and "Indigo" subsystems available for Windows XP and Server 2003 in the near future.

Microsoft says developers that stick with its tools can have their cake and eat it too. Elsewhere, Microsoft is considering the release of source code for a popular tool used to build Windows programs.

Samba 3.0.10 has been ported to SkyOS today. All configuration is done through a plugin in the System Manager, making configuration very simple, with just a few mouse clicks.