GNOME 2.9.3 Development Release is now available, more info here.

According to an article at DesktopLinux.com, the first public beta of Opera 8 is available for free download. It adds voice input/output and a host of other niceties. Key new features include improved RSS handling, fit to window or paper width, a start-bar for easy access to the most commonly used functions, and automatic update checks. The beta release supports Windows only, but a general release is scheduled for early 2005.

A Chinese company has released sample code that exploits new vulnerabilities in the Windows operating system. The LoadImage function and Windows Help program are both affected.

The third Release Candidate of the new version 4.2 of Xfce is now available for download. This third Release Candidate provides several bugfixes over the second Release Candidate. Also see the graphical installation wizards and changelog.

Autopackage, a Linux distribution neutral binary packaging framework has released a new version. New features include: First API stable release, Self contained Installers, Multi architecture support, Better documentation, Support for internationalisation, Support for Gconf schemas, A brand new graphical management software for easy uninstallation of autopackaged apps. A 1.0 release is expected by Feb 2005.

BBC's research and development team has released yet another open source project for network testing. Dubbed the Kamaelia project, released on Tuesday, is designed to simplify the creation and testing of new protocols for large-scale media delivery systems. This follows earlier efforts like the open source dirac project to create video codecs tailored towards streaming.

With efficiency as its driving goal, a consortium of European research institutions and open source software companies have paired up to manage the complexity of large scale, modular projects by establishing a program called EDOS, Environment for the Development and Distribution of Free Software.

Japan's biggest mobile phone carrier, expects to complete on Wednesday a $3 million investment in Linux software development company MontaVista Software, a DoCoMo spokeswoman said.

Ubuntu Linux has posted a series of international screenshots of their 4.10 LiveCD (thanks to OSDir.com).This includes Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and French screenshots. Additional languages are soon to be added.

Aaron Siego, one of the KDE developers, recently posted a very public rant against porting OSS applications to proprietary platforms like win32. I, a self professed zealot for all things FOSS, strongly disagree with Mr. Siego. The linked article is my rebuttal to his statements.

The folks over at Codeweavers have released Crossover Office 4.1. Having tried this one myself, I can tell you it seems a pretty major improvement, running several of my Windows apps formerly unusable under Linux.

Following the opening up of CVS access to contributors, the Fedora project has announced pre-extras, a preview release of the Fedora extras repository. The distributed "global filesystem," or GFS, acquired by Redhat and later open sourced, has been integrated into the Fedora development tree recently as well.

OpenZaurus 3.5.2 has been released. Supported devices for this release are all available Sharp Linux Zaurus models except the SL-A300. It appears to be primarily for bugfixes and package updates.

Sun Microsystems is focusing on Opterons and Solaris x86 for a good reason. Sun has figured out a way to make x86 hardware cheaper than anyone else. Sun is hoping that by leveraging its cost advantages the company will be able to ensure the success of its x86 hardware and Solaris.