Service Pack 2 for Windows XP has finally been released and is now available for people to download and install on their systems. The file, at just over 265 Megs, is a hefty download yet is packed with new updates well worth getting. Microsoft's new focus on security is paying off, but the company still has a long way to regain its customers' trust, according to the company's security program manager.

Rich Burridge is shedding some light as to what happened around the time that Sun was supposed to use OpenSTEP as its next-gen API/GUI for SunOS/Solaris.

The security industry has matured quickly over the past few years with penetration testing becoming one of the norms for organisations adopting best-practice processes. Loosely defined as the process of actively assessing an organisations security measures and completely reliant on consultancy services, security manufacturers have been eager to bridge the gap between product and service and more importantly to reap the benefits of additional profits. Story is here.

As I'm sure many have noticed, there's been a flurry of articles recently regarding the Linux desktop and the direction it "needs" to go in. A few have been insightful and offered up valuable information regarding the future of desktop computing. Most, however, have been painfully ill-informed or even confrontational. After sitting back and watching the fighting break out in the trenches, I decided to pen something from the opposite side of the fence.

LinuxGazette for August is released and includes articles --among others-- like: "Fvwm", "How To Enable Desktop Icons for Lightweight Window Managers", "White Box Linux Kickstart Tricks", "Securing a New Linux Installation" and many others.

The first release candidate for KDE 3.3 is available from the mirrors.

This article describes best practices for managing system resources for Sun Ray users. Based on an actual customer scenario, this article provides recommendations for integrating and using the Solaris Resource Manager software to fairly distribute system resources when users insert and remove their smart cards from Sun Ray desktop units.

Continuing the series of articles previewing KDE's World Summit, aKademy (running from August 21st to 29th), Tom Chance interviewed Matthias Ettrich, the founder of the KDE project, the creator of the LyX document-processor, and an employee of Trolltech. At aKademy he will be talking about how to design intelligent, Qt-style APIs. He discusses about his thoughts about the status of the KDE project, its achievements, and what he is looking forward to in aKademy.

David Uhlman has put together a Gnome tips article much of which will be appearing in the forthcoming gnome hacks oreilly book. In other news, check out the extended application ranking we implemented for Gnomefiles.org.

E/OS is a graphic operating system which can execute programs from Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS, IBM OS/2, MSDOS, and Linux. This version run as a live CD, and supports DOS, Windows, and Linux emulations.

This Freshmeat article proposes a new technique for how desktops can integrate console applications.

Whereas the Java language has won over an entire generation of programmers with its commitment to exactitude and extensiveness, Groovy heralds a new era of programming on the Java platform, one defined by convenience, expedience, and agility. This article shares an informal introduction to the proposed addition to the standard programming languages for the Java platform.

The July issue of the Syllable Development Newsletter is available, featuring updates and progress from Syllable, the open source desktop OS, over the past month. Highlights include a new 3DFX driver, major ATerm updates and UI principle discussions. Good progress is being made.

Red Hat's Christopher Blizzard found that Pango is significantly slower than XFT (which itself is not a speed demon either) resulting on slower desktop Gnome/GTK+ software perfomance. The Pango maintainer, Owen Taylor, says that he's been opposed in the past to creating a fast path for latin text because it means that the non-english code paths won't get nearly as much testing. However, Owen now said that if we can find him a clean patch that would do it, he might take it and that "would make the entire desktop faster". Elsewhere, the Gnome Foundation has put up a Desktop Integration Bounty.