For more information and screen shots for this newly... leaked alpha version of the next generation of Windows, codenamed Longhorn, check WinBeta.org.

Here is - at times frustrating, and at times exhilarating - the journey I made trying to get Linux working on my desktop. This is the experience of someone who tried using Linux for the first time (most Linux veterans will probably find nothing surprising here). The whole experience reminded me of all the fun I used to have playing with Windows 3.1. Although it was not easy, it does show that a novice can make Linux work with a little persistence.

Lycoris Desktop/LX Build 71 (beta) is released (547 MB) and it features along wiht a new build system, kernel 2.4.21-pre6; XFree86 4.3.0; new splash screen; little installer fixes - now installs on via miniboards, as well as over USB CDROMs.

Reading the notes of yesterday's teleconference with people like Mike Harris from Red Hat, fontconfig's Keith Packard and others, it seems that they have decided to actually do fork the XFree86 codebase or at least to create a parallel organization to "demonstrate how a scalable community might work" (they also seem to email eachother in a non-archived mailing list of a sort). They currently looking for a nice, catchy name for the project, but they have registered xwin.org just in case nothing better will come up. Reactions of the teleconference have been recorded at XFree's public mailing list.

Amiga has released an article describing its application launcher AmiDock in AmigaOS4. The article originally appeared in the March issue of Club Amiga Magazine. This description is meant as an addition to the AmigaOS4 feature list. Note however that the default appearance of AmigaOS4 is yet to be revealed.

The OpenBSD project hopes that new changes to its latest release will eliminate "buffer overflows," a software issue that has been plaguing security experts for more than three decades.

Sun Microsystems made strides this week with its Linux strategy, releasing updated Sun ONE compiler code for both its low-end SPARC and Intel's x86 platforms, and adopting common Linux distributions instead of pushing its own version.

"I'm tired of reading on an almost monthly basis articles asserting that Linux isn't yet ready for the desktop. Nonsense! Linux is about as ready for the desktop as Windows is. It's simply a matter of corporate and user inertia that's keeping Linux marginalized." Read the editorial at NewsForge.

The Liberty Alliance next week will announce two new draft specifications and for the first time turn over a portion of its work to a standards group providing the first evidence that efforts to create a standards-based identity management framework may be fragmenting.

It's worth watching for, as indications are that X# would be used to treat XML as a first-class citizen in the .Net programming arena. Read the article at TechUpdate.

Mandrake Linux 9.1 for PPC is out and is based on Linux kernel 2.4.21 and includes XFree86 4.3.0, KDE 3.1, GNOME 2.2, OpenOffice.org 1.0.2 (semi-related note: OOo 1.0.3 has just come out), Mozilla 1.3, Apache 2, and Samba 2.2.7. Specifical features for this PPC version include: MOL Mac-On-Linux, pbbuttonsd/gtkpbuttons, BenH based alternate kernel.

MySQL is aiming for speedier development cycles than most database companies. The company is currently focusing on two products: MySQL versions 4.1 and 5.0. It released the binaries of 4.1 this week and plans to unveil a final version in about eight months. A final version 5.0 should be available about six months after that. Read the report at News.com.

Mac OS X 10.2.5, now available via Software Update and through the Apple Store, delivers enhanced functionality and improved reliability for the following applications, utilities, services, and technologies: Address Book, AirPort, AppleScript, Bluetooth, Classic compatibility, Disk Copy, Disk Utility, Finder, iChat, Image Capture, IP Firewall, Kerberos, Mail, OpenGL, Print Center, Rendezvous, and Sherlock.

The GNOME Development Series Snapshot 2.3.0 "Mighty Atom", is ready for your bug-busting and testing. A few new modules were added to this dev beta of Gnome for testing: battfink (energy saving and battery tool), fontilus, galeon, gcalctool, gnome-mag (desktop magnification tool), gok ('GNOME On-screen Keyboard', an accessibility tool), gpdf, gucharmap (unicode character map tool), nautilus-cd-burner, themus (theme management), zenity.