The next generation XFce is now out, v4. Read the release notes, the press release and download.

The KDE project has just released KDE 3.2 Alpha 2. Among other KDE new releases, you will find KOffice 1.3 beta4 and KDevelop 3.0 Alpha 7.

DesktopLinux.com recently caught up with Tom Adelstein, longtime Linux advocate and consultant, to find out what he has learned while spearheading initiatives to facilitate Linux adoption. Tom shares the grass roots efforts that have offered him an insider's view of what is propelling Linux toward critical mass and the desktop. He shares his view of Linux "from the trenches."

BlogD features a preview article of the upcoming Mac OS X Panther 10.3. Elsewhere, PathFinder 3.0 was released. PathFinder is a very interesting and innovative alternative to OSX Finder file manager.

In an interview with LinuxQuestions.org, Jeremy Hogan, Manager of Community Relations at Red Hat, explains what the Fedora project is (and isn't), the importance of OEMs for Linux, how Red Hat has managed to become profitable, what direction Red Hat is headed in and what his take is on being called the "MS of Linux".

Several readers submitted a ZDNet UK story in which head of PalmSource mentions that they may be interested in making a lager, laptop-sized device. There's more on this, and some commentary, at NewMobileComputing.

Cliff White recently posted some re-AIM multiuser benchmark results comparing the stable 2.4.23-pre5 kernel against the 2.6.0-test5 and 2.6.0-test5-mm4 development kernels. In his conclusion he makes reference to earlier scheduler tests posted by Mark Wong saying, "Short summary: we mostly rock."

Some of the nation's leading computer science and network security experts issued a report warning that computers and critical technological infrastructure worldwide are increasingly vulnerable to attack because of the security practices and dominance of Microsoft software in desktop computing. UPDATE: Microsoft chosen as exclusive Homeland Security contractor!

IBM and open-source Java software company JBoss Group are in discussions to spearhead a Java standardization effort aimed at cooling off the growing popularity of Microsoft's C# language. On other Java-related news, BeOS might see a full implementation of Java soon.

"Club members and contributors should have exclusive access to the download edition ISOs. For others, ISOs will be freely available world-wide by the end of October", MandrakeSoft said for their upcoming version of Mandrake 9.2. Mike Kestner has released an update to Gtk#, version 0.11. The EU Parliament approves Software Patent Legislation, but not for all cases. The Czech site Root.cz has a good round up (in Czech) of that's coming on GTK+ 2.4 and 2.6 (the file selector shown there is just a mockup, not the final). Python 2.3.1 is out: this minor release introduces a number of enhancements. Seagate ships first PC operating system pre-loaded on value-priced hard drives: Lindows. According to sources close to Microsoft the latest date set for Longhorn to go to manufacturing by is Aug. 15, 2005.

FreeBSD Release Engg. Team's Murray Stokely has put together a 4.9-BETA ISO image for i386 with the latest package build.

LinuxGazette features interesting articles on their issues for August and September, including an article introducing the assembly language.

The popular alternative web browser from Opera Software today reached version 7.20.

A few months back Jag wrote this article on OSNews about my travails in my first encounter with Linux. Now, that Jag has been using it for a while, he has written a new article detailing steps required to convert an out-of-the-box Red Hat 9 system to a working and useful desktop system. Linux veterans will probably not find anything surprising here, but for someone trying Linux for the first time, this should save a significant amount of time and effort.