KDE and GNOME, the open-source software projects that together form the face of most Linux installations, have undergone revisions that boost their usability and enterprise readiness - advances that build the case for Linux as a viable alternative to Windows on mainstream corporate desktops.

Hewlett-Packard, one of the most aggressive promoters of Intel's Itanium family of processors, is 86ing its line of workstations that use the chips. The decision by the Palo Alto, Calif.-based computing giant will likely be interpreted as a large symbolic blow to Itanium's fortunes.

A top Red Hat exec has attacked the open-source credentials of its sometime business partner Sun.

This article does a roundup of the Linux support to G5 machines. Elsewhere, Macworld's initial benchmarks on Apple's new iMac G5 show that the machine is 35 percent faster than the previous G4 model. "As you could probably guess, the new G5-equipped iMacs out-performed than their G4-powered predecessors," writes James Galbraith.

Userful corporation is taking on the public access computing market with software that enables a Linux PC to connect up to 10 monitors, giving each user the experience of being connected to a standalone computer. The Canadian company’s “1-Box” approach lets up to ten users can browse the Internet, send email and run applications from one computer. The strategy eliminates the need for servers and networking equipment, save significant money on hardware and is deployed in several libraries in that country. The company also gives some environmental impact savings on ewaste and energy due to their solution. Read full story. Elsewhere, Linux takes a step toward desktop acceptance.

Version control systems are a tool close to any programmer's heart and a lot has been made of advancements in Subversion, but there is another version control system out there that completely redefines the boundaries of how such a system should work. Tom Lord is the author of the Arch Revision Control System. OSDir interviews Tom on the story behind Arch and just how different it is from what you're likely using today.

Lycoris is a great distribution if you've never used Linux before. However, it focuses on the familiar, preferring commercial applications to lesser-known free alternatives. Lycoris offers an easy introduction to Linux, but the limited range of software included means the distribution is probably best suited to first-time users, says PCWorld.au.

Watson developer Dan Wood has posted an update on Sun's Java version of his popular Mac OS X application. "I am sad to say that it looks like Sun doesn't seem to be focusing on getting the port of Watson released any time soon," writes Wood on his blog.

The Finnish Amiga Users Group is pleased to demonstrate the best of the both worlds at its annual meeting this coming Saturday: AmigaOne running a new AmigaOS 4.0 beta and Pegasos II running MorphOS 1.5 beta.

The long awaited 1.0 release of SharpDevelop is here. It is a good replacement to VisualStudio (the .NET framework comes for free, so you can develop for .NET on the cheap). Elsewhere, the twin brother of SharpDevelop, MonoDevelop for the Mono framework released version 0.5.1, a bug fix release.

ArsTechnica interviews the leader behind the OSX Camino browser project, while O'Reilly has an article about the OSX utility browsers you never knew about.

Trolltech has announced the availability of the second Qt 4 Technical Preview. Key highlights include support for AT-SPI, bringing accessibility to the Unix and Linux desktop for people with disabilities.

Running out of ink? The Apple online store carries several varieties, as users of the company's next-generation operating system may soon find out.

Sometimes you just need to show that you are doing something, even if you can't say how long it is going to take. One effective way of illustrating this state is to display a cyclic animation. Building your own progress bar is probably the easiest part of this column; understanding how to use it in your own applications is the real trick. This article describes how to create a visualizer, using the Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 release, which enables you to customize the way data is displayed when you are debugging through managed code.