"SuSE Linux 9, the latest release from Nuremberg, Germany-based SuSE Linux, was released at the end of last month. I put SuSE Linux Professional through its paces, and found it to be the most user-friendly Linux distribution on the market. It's not a "must" update for users of previous versions, but it does have some nice perks." Read the review at NewsForge.

MenuetOS, the popular hobby OS written in 100% assembly x86 that fits in a floppy disk, had a new version, 0.75. Changes include a Gateway and PPP support; Dns, Chess etc. clients; Rtl8139 driver. New screenshots added to the site.

Red Hat and Novell are moving into an area where Microsoft is more vulnerable: Enterprise computing. Although many businesses run their computers on Windows, Linux is still a powerful presence in the Web-server market, and most enterprise computing is moving to a Web-based model.

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.

"So anybody who thinks they want to be in the intellectual property innovation business needs to ask, 'How do I differentiate myself from this thing?' It has to be through innovative work and through integrated innovation. The non-commercial world doesn't move that fast. Linux is a clone of UNIX. Linux hasn't blazed the trail, new approaches to security, new approaches to program development. Even program development in the UNIX world, the sort of trail-blazing, is quite broadly being done by BEA and IBM and Sun and the Java crowd. But at the end of the day, it's about innovation. It's about competing. And it's about building up enough of innovative intellectual property to have a good business." Ballmer told Always-On.

Subpoenas are flying in the high-profile lawsuit between the SCO Group and IBM, as both companies try to buttress their legal claims by turning to third parties for information. SCO said Wednesday that it has filed subpoenas targeting six different individuals or organizations. Those include Novell; Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel; Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation; Stuart Cohen, chief executive of the OSDL; and John Horsley, general counsel of Transmeta.

"One of the biggest barriers has been that there is no standard way to authenticate and identify the various players in the delivery chain," Sun group business manager Sai Allavarpu told TechNewsWorld. "All of this is done in a privacy-friendly manner because it is baked right into the specs."

ZetaNews is reviewing several aspects of YellowTAB's Zeta R1-RC1 OS. Screenshots included. BeOSJournal.org also features some mp4 videos of a previous Japanese introduction of the OS.

Last week, Softier made news with one of the first native ports of Linux to a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) architecture, introducing its "MediaLinux" and "MediaBIOS" for TI's DM64x DSP platform.

Xandros today announced the release of the of Xandros Desktop 2.0. With a strong user focus, Xandros Desktop 2.0 offers a graphical environment that's easy to use, and installs with 4 clicks of a mouse. Based on Debian Linux 4.0 and a Xandros-enhanced KDE 3.1.4, Xandros Desktop 2.0 provides seamless compatibility with Microsoft Windows programs, including MS office and MS networks. Read more for pricing and for the free download trial edition.

The new X Server developed under the sponsorship of freedesktop.org is aiming at replacing XFree86. Some code will be re-used but the core will be rewritten by Keith Packard and others. The new X server features full support for transparency, and has window-level image compositing among other things. Check out the screenshots (one more added, now there are four shots).

Many sites reported on the Desktop Linux Consortium Conference that took place yesterday and here is a round up: NewsForge article, Dot.KDE.org's and Infoworld's. In the context of Linux on the desktop, SuSE CEO Richard Seibt confirms ongoing support for KDE.

"Mac OS X 10.3, better known as Panther, was released by Apple a little over two weeks ago. I've been using it for over a week now on my iBook and I'd like to share some of my thoughts about the changes that Panther brings to the table." Read the review here.

This edition's education article focuses on the Maine Learning Technology Initiative, which may be the largest deployment of laptops in the world. Two elements that make this an extraordinary deployment is the fact that the laptops have been distributed to 7th and 8th grade students and that they are iBook laptops running OS X. Read it here.