Newsforge is carrying a response to the IBM suit from the SCO Group. Our Take: SCO has one valid point: this case may well rest more on defining IP rights in an internet age than anything else. Of course, whose IP remains to be seen.

The operating system company makes a further move into the hardware business, offering Linux on a desktop computer with flat-panel monitor for $449. The computer has a 1.2GHz Duron processor, 256MB of SDRAM and a 20GB hard drive.

Listen, and you can hear the collective sigh of relief as news comes that IBM has finally countersued The SCO Group. No real news on the details yet. Stay tuned for updates. Update: Lycoris has announced that its Desktop/LX distribution is "immune" from the recent moves by The SCO Group to force Linux users to license its intellectual property. For those who have used Lycoris, the installer comes right out of Caldera's Linux installation code.

Contiki OS, "a highly portable, modern, open source, Internet-enabled operating system and desktop environment for very constrained systems," has been ported to the x86 platform. Previously able to run on only much smaller platforms, such as Atari, Gameboy, and Commodore, this is good news for developers interested in researching the OS.

CodeWeavers recently announced the second major update to their powerful Windows-to-Linux software adapter. Read all about it here.

The European Union says Microsoft is still abusing its monopoly with Windows Media Player. The press release can be found here.

Kees writes: "Amiga.org interviewed Carl Sassenrath.Carl Sassenrath is best known for his original design and implementation of the Amiga Multitasking Operating System released in 1985.Check it our here". Mr Sassenrath is also the Founder, CTO and Chairman of REBOL Technologies, a company which created the cross-platform REBOL messaging language and REBOL Internet Operating System.

KernelTrap has an interesting article about a recent benchmark conducted to compare five journaling filesystems available with the current 2.6.0-test2 Linux development kernel. The tests were conducted with a very simple shell script, mainly timing how long it takes to copy, tar, and remove directories. Looks like reiser4 is the fastest filesystem at the expense of consuming much more CPU, with ext3 trailing a ways behind.

Apple provided testers and developers with a new pre-release seed of Mac OS X 10.3, code-named Panther. The company also seeded a new Jaguar build, Version 10.2.7. Apple also seeded build 7B20 of Mac OS X Server 10.3 to developers. The new build of Panther Server was posted as two installation CDs. Microsoft has started the next big Visual Studio release "Whidbey" Alpha program that's expected to ship in 2004.

"This week, however, Linux was also awarded with CC security certification, and as one might expect, this announcement greeted with cheers from the open source community. There's just one catch: Linux got a lower security rating than Windows 2000 did last year." Read it at WinInformant. Update: The WinInformant article is a little slanted in its reporting, since the ratings discussed have little to do with how secure either OS is in real-world use. Keep in mind that to achieve the higher rating, the computer is not allowed to be connected to any network, since network-connected computers are inherently vulnerable. A CNN article shoots a little straighter on the subject. The certification is not a contest to see which is more secure, simply a test to see if the OS matches a certain objective set of criteria. You have to severely cripple a modern OS to make it meet government high security certification.

The GNOME Development Series Desktop 2.3.5 "Jebe", is ready for your bug-busting and testing pleasure! It is available for immediate download on ftp.gnome.org and mirrors.

Xandros, Inc., today announced the opening of the beta program for the 2.0 release of its award-winning Xandros Desktop. Users interested in testing Xandros Desktop 2.0 are invited to apply at the Xandros web site. Xandros is also looking for IT administrators considering mass deployment of the Xandros Desktop to test the forthcoming release of Xandros Networks Enterprise. For more info check here.

I'm 31 and an old school geek who started on computers with an Atari 800 as a kid. Growing up moved me into PC land until I became a "Switcher" before being a "Switcher" was cool. That's right - I got an original iMac when they first came out and I never looked back. I write software, and I bought the iMac thinking it was time to expand my horizons and maybe make a few more dollars by selling software on both platforms.

A recent study by analyst Evans Data concluded that KDE has a small edge, preferred over Gnome among Linux developers 65% vs 56% (with some respondents using both).