Mandrakesoft just released Corporate Server and Corporate Desktop. They come from a specific development effort to make them "enterprise-ready". The two products feature longer development cycles and a 5-year maintenance span. Read the press release.

Games Knoppix is an entertainment-oriented version of the popular Debian-based LiveCD known as Knoppix. The idea behind Games Knoppix is excellent -- a LiveCD that you can give to your friends to show them some of the more frivolous aspects of GNU/Linux. Disappointingly, however, many of the games on the CD do not work, many more are duplicates of the same game, everything is in German, and there are driver problems with both the 2.4 and 2.6 kernel options. Linux.com has the review.

Matchbox is a base environment for the X Window System running on non-desktop embedded platforms such as handhelds, set-top boxes, kiosks and anything else for which screen space, input mechanisms or system resources are limited. Version 0.9 was released today.

Newsforge has a interesting interview with the Debian project leaders on the new debian release planned to be released in a short while

OSNews "sat down" with Linspire CEO Michael Robertson for a Q&A about his company's efforts as the banner-carrier for Linux-on-the-desktop. We discussed the upcoming Linux Desktop Summit in San Diego and the perceptions and realities of the obstacles to widespread desktop Linux use. Linspire also extended a special offer to OSNews readers: a free download of Linspire and a 30 day CNR subscription, so put yourself in Granny's shoes (not literally, please) and give it a try. Correction: The free offer expires on January 15.

#2 US Telecom company SBC has a new set-top box with Tivo-like DVR and music and photo access capabilities. "Owners will be able to control the box remotely over an Internet connection, which will also provide access to streaming music and video downloads through SBC's deal with Yahoo. SBC said future enhancements will allow the box to be controlled through a Cingular wireless phone, and allow SBC's local phone customers to see caller ID and call logs on their TV sets." With TVs acting more like computers, and computers acting more like TVs, what will it look like when they meet in the middle?

AWLP - (Alptekin's Wireless Linux Project) is an open-source wireless software project that turns a Slackware Linux machine into a dedicated web-managed wireless access gateway. It has pretty much all the features you would expect from an off-the-shelf wireless access gateway. Description, detailed installation instructions, screenshots and downloadable source tarballs can be found at http://awlp.sourceforge.net

A reader reports: I was trying to raise some money to start a Linux technical support website by selling Debian GNU/Linux and Fedora Core CD's on eBay and suddently after a month all my items were pulled and my account suspended. I received this message from ebay as reason: "As a matter of eBay policy, recordings on CD-R (including CD-RW and DVD-R) may not be listed on eBay, unless the seller is the copyright owner and states this in the item description. This policy also means that even lawful reproductions on CD-R are not permitted on eBay." This link was also provided.

A long-time Gnome user takes a week to try out SimplyMepis to see what all the hubub is about. The result is not only a favorable look at a capable Linux distro, but an examination of the state of the Desktop Environment landscape, and the areas in which KDE can tempt even a dyed-in-the-wool Gnome fan.

The second release candidate of FreeBSD 4.11 is now available, more info here.

In the first big news of 2005, according to Think Secret, "Apple will launch its new iWork '05 productivity suite at Macworld Expo, Think Secret has learned. The software, code-named Sugar, will include Keynote 2 as well as a new application, Pages."

PPCNerds has some news on the new images of the GNU-Darwin project now available, and includes a few screenshots.

Castle have announced a promotional offer which will bring the cost of a RISC OS 5 computer below the £1000 UK mark for the first time ever. This will no doubt allow many more eager users to upgrade to the 32bit version of the operating system running on brand new, fast hardware.

Oracle Database 10g is the first database designed for grid computing and now it's on Mac OS X.
Another source notes that Oracle is using the Xserve RAID in its own datacenter.