This is a message from Patrick Volkerding in regards to his thoughts on Gnome and Slackware. It was originally posted on the Dropline Gnome Forum. Editor's note: Pat has made similar comments to me as well regarding Gnome's bugs and maintainance problems.

Larry Ellison embraces Linux, but don't expect open source databases from Oracle any time soon. (Part Two of six part interview).

Having prepared the FreeBSD 5.2 Netboot server, we can begin to configure our diskless workstations. Let's prepare the kernel and add it to the two-part filesystem (accessible for reading only and accessible for reading and writing) and finally create rc-scripts.

Montavista Software has submitted patches to the linux kernel mailing list which aims to convert the Linux kernel in a real-time operative system.

When experienced Java developers hear about Groovy, their first reaction is often, "Oh, no, not another scripting language for Java." Ian Darwin had the same reaction, until he took a good look at Groovy. Elsewhere, metaprogramming with and without J2SE 5.0.

This article, and the second installment that follows next week, can be considered the fourth and fifth in a series covering Ruby programming on Mac OS X. However, unlike the first three articles of this series, this tutorial can be used as a standalone piece. You only need some knowledge of the Ruby programming language with a little prior experience in Xcode to understand the content found here.

SkyOS Beta 8 was released last week to beta testers, along with a small patch released a day later to fix some issues (updatable by the SkyOS update system). Beta 8 of course includes re-enabled networking, along with a few networking applications (Gaim and Links, with more to follow). Beta 8 also includes an updated ISS with integrated video (allowing for features such as video preview in viewer window), updated GCC to 3.4.0, Blender 3D CGI application and many bugfixes. Up next: USB.

A die-hard PC user's perspective on Macs, by AndandTech.

The developers of Vector Linux have announced that work has started on a next release, version 5.0.

Tom Adelstein seems to know a lot about Sun and sets out here to give the whole story behind Sun and Red Hat's disagreements.

In the second of a three-part series, David and Brad build on their first article on R, a rich statistical environment, released as free software. R is both a strongly functional programming language and a general environment for statistical exploration of data sets. Now that our data is shipshape, we will delve into the functionality of the language.

The first beta of Mandrakelinux 10.1 for AMD64 and Intel EM64T is available. More info here.

Winter has ended in Melbourne but I'm not the sort to venture out without at least a sweater. However, the cold doesn't seem to bother Theo de Raadt as Sam Varghese sit in the lobby of the city's Duxton Hotel, a day after the end of the annual summit of the Australian Unix and Open Source User Group.

Freddie Kavanagh, Novell's chief technology officer for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, gave attendees an update on the progress of Open Enterprise Server and Novell Linux Desktop, the two major products intended to bring together Novell's legacy customers with technology acquired from Ximian and SuSE. Both are expected by the end of this year, although Novell expects OES to make more of an immediate impact than the desktop.