To Push Desktop Linux, Radical Shift may be Required

"For Linux to reach the ordinary user, it has to offer more than good office suites and The Gimp and other free software implementations of common applications. Most people won't make the move just so they can keep doing what they did before. Security and freedom mean a lot to a few of us, but they are not enough incentive for the vast range of Average Schmos. And we need those Average Schmos; the median is the message." Read the editorial at OReillyNet.

XFce 4.0.1 Released

Xfce is an easy-to-use and easy-to-configure environment for X11 based on GTK2. A priority is adherence to standards, specifically those defined at freedesktop.org. This version has various small bugfixes including panel and window manager fixes. New translations are available. French documentation has been added.

Is Novell-SuSE deal a brilliant Big Blue power play?

As Novell CTO Alan Nugent told ZDNews yesterday, notwithstanding a $50 million injection from IBM, his company's decision to acquire Linux distributor SuSE was backed by a significant amount of market and technical rationale. But legally speaking the move may go down in history as pure chess brilliance on behalf of IBM and Novell in one of this industry's most notorious power struggles.