A few weeks ago we published an article titled "The Great Mac OS X 10.4 Wish List", detailing a few personal wishes for the next version of OSX. Later I learned that quite a few Apple engineers read the article and so it felt good that the time spent writing the article was not just a voice in the void. A reader emailed me a few days ago asking me to do the same for other OSes and DEs. So here is my personal wish-list for a future version of Gnome. Please tell us about your own Gnome wish list in the comment section provided.

Mozilla 1.6b is a beta development version for the popular OSS browser. Mozilla Thunderbird 0.4 was released recently as well.

These papers were written against FreeBSD 4.x systems but should be equally applicable to 5.x systems on almost all counts: "Compiling and tuning the FreeBSD kernel" and "Performance tuning FreeBSD for different applications".

While the second Service Pack of Zeta 1.0-RC1 is out and about, Argentinian Zeta fans have published two interviews with YellowTAB's Bernd Korz here and here.

A debate has started in the Linux kernel mailing list about the ide-scsi module. The cdrecord guys want it up while Linus points out that the module is "bad" and it imposes a number of problems to users. Our take: I've been hit by most of Linus' points: from the 'silly CD numbering' confusion, to the need to have two LILO entries to load ide-scsi or not in order to either burn a CD or be able to watch DVD.

Linux news is getting more and more exciting, and somehow, managing to get less and less interesting. Why? Because the speed of development is getting so rapid that it's hard to get excited for each upcoming release, keep your system completely up to date, and even remember what the current version of your favorite distributions are. This breakneck pace of development means good and bad things, but I have a few ideas about how I expect it to turn out.

The first milestone in the Xouvert roadmap has been reached. The first version of the new replacement X-server features patches from different places around the net and a cleanup to the default X-tree.

This is a development release leading up to GTK+ 2.4. Changes since GTK+ 2.3.0 consist of numerous small bug fixes and enhancements, with a special focus on the new GtkFileChooser. Glib, Pango announcements. On other Gnome/GTK+ news, Gnomemeeting 0.99 was released today too (review).

This is the third in my series of reviews for Debian-based commercial distros that might be appropriate for SOHO use. The first article covered my exploration of Lindows, the second one focused on Libranet, and this article covers a recently released distro called MEPIS.

ActiveState today announced the release of Tcl Dev Kit 3.0. The solution includes new features for the rapid development and delivery of professional quality Tcl applications, and sets a new bar for developer productivity and performance for in-depth code analysis, management, debugging, and deployment.

Sun is challenging Microsoft on a new front: the consumer market. Believing its Java Desktop System is "a more effective home and retail solution," the company is negotiating with major retailers Wal-Mart and Office Depot to include the desktop on consumer PCs. Elsewhere, Sun strikes software deal with the United Kingdom: Government to implement Java Desktop, application infrastructure in public sector.

Anaconda-enabled Sarge install images are now available here.

A proposal for the handling of MIME types was published by Red Hat's JRB.

A 20-year IT consulting veteran and author of "The Unix Guide to Defenestration" offers the second in a series of four articles that examine the state of computing as he imagines it will be five years from now. Last week's article was on Microsoft's vision for its future software. This week, he looks at where the Unix and open source alternative is likely to go and, next week, at the hardware both groups can expect to have available to run their software. The last of the series will look at the impact these changes are likely to have on the IT industry itself.