As a dedicated reader of OSNews.com and a VP of Technology for an IT firm that specializes in utilizing Open Source solution for small business, I have been amazed at the rash of some reviews on the various distros of Linux and their failure to really help readers make a choice on what they should use or try. Linux has really matured in the desktop arena and in alot less time than Windows took to do so.

The XFree86 core team has announced that it is disbanding. What does this mean for the pending XFree86 4.4.0 release which was going to be out in January? (currently the latest version is 4.4-RC2). We hope that someone puts a release together to give something new to users before freedesktop.org's XWin server comes out at the end of 2004 or early 2005.

"Any systems around the world have been possessed by penguins and dead rats. It would be nice to exorcize these evil spirits, but this can be difficult without physical access to the machines in question. Thanks to a new depenguinator, it is now possible to upgrade Linux systems to run FreeBSD 5.x without requiring anything more than an SSH connection." Read it here.

GWN is featuring an interview with Daniel Robbins, Gentoo founder, as part of their weekly newsletter.

I have been using Windows in its various guises for the past 10 years. I am comfortable with Windows. It has served me well. I am a happy Windows user. However, unlike a majority of Windows users, for the past 5 years I have harboured a secret passion - an unfulfilled desire. Since 1998 I have wanted to own an Apple computer.

Japan, China and South Korea are reportedly planning to jointly develop Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), the next-generation Internet standard, a move that will challenge the U.S.-dominated market for current IPv4-based Internet technology.

A1-Electronics reviews the latest version 9.0 from SuSE of their Linux operating system.

Intel and Microsoft are gearing up to move toward the first major overhaul of the innermost workings of the personal computer--the boundary where software and hardware meet--during 2004.

The Microsoft eMbedded Visual C++ 4.0 tool delivers a complete desktop development environment for creating applications and system components for Windows CE .NET-powered devices.

When the technology community considers Linux, we know what sets it apart from the competition. But if you were to ask the average consumer, few could give you a legitimate answer other than maybe it doesn’t cost anything. (However there will always be those that look in vain for the free beer everyone keeps talking about.) Editorial contributor Doug Dingus offered the following opinion piece to osViews which proposes some interesting ideas to help differentiate Linux to consumers by way of hardware rather than just software.

What follows here are ways to speed up boot times in 10.3.2. They are not without problems, so you must use at your own risk. There are two threads on the Apple Discussion boards that are worth taking a look at to solve the slow boot problem in 10.3.2.

Opera now has a preview download of their new version, 7.50 available. New main features include RSS Newsfeeds, Opera Chat, Many improvements to the mail client, spell checker (not yet working on systems not using the lastest version of aspell), Menu/toolbar clean-up, new toolbar configuration dialog and more. Additionally, you can buy one Opera desktop license at regular price and send one extra gift certificate for Opera for any OS to a friend for free.

Seeing the power of Linux, I wanted to continue using it, but I wanted to be able to use it without too much hassle. I was a huge fan of RedHat, and was very upset that I would have to start using a different system. The only home systems out there that were big were Lindows and Xandros (at least the ones most spoken of) and they were not what I wanted. Lindows always logging you in as root, and Xandros being (originally) too expensive. I decided to go with this Lycoris Desktop/LX that I had read up on because it seemed the only system that was worth looking at because it wasn't too dull or too bubbly, as are others. Here is what I have enjoyed about the system, and things I have found wrong with it.

This useful tutorial-article will explain how you can move your FreeBSD installation from one hard disk drive to another.