Wal-Mart Replaces Mandrake PCs with SuSE PCs

Wal-Mart and its PC source, MicroTelPC, have replaced their Mandrake PC offerings with SuSE PCs. We do not know if the financial status of MandrakeSoft and the poor marketing and retail availability in US had a role in this switch. SuSE PC prices start at $298. Wal-Mart continues to sell LindowsOS and Lycoris PCs (prices start at $199). Also, hardware prices seem to go down, as Gateway started to market a very cheap, yet fully featured 15" XGA laptop (2.2GHz Celeron, 30GB, 256MB RAM, DVD/CD-RW), the 400SP, for only $799 US (customize it to exclude the carrying case and the extra warranty).

New AmigaOS4 Screenshots Revealed

AmigaWorld.net has posted 4 new official AmigaOS4 screenshots. The latest screenshots were taken on an A4000 with PPC upgrade, running ExecSG and showing much of the default intuition look and Font Anti-Aliasing as is being demonstrated at AmigaOS4 on Tour events held across Europe. Larger scale versions of these screenshots should soon become available at the official AmigaOS website. Update: Higher quality images have been uploaded! (1024x768 in PNG format)

Hardened Gentoo’s SELinux Demo Machine

Hardened Gentoo's purpose is to make Gentoo viable for high security, high stability production server environments. This project is not a standalone project disjoined from Gentoo proper; it is intended to be a team of Gentoo developers which are focused on delivering solutions to Gentoo that provide strong security and stability. This machine is Hardened Gentoo's SELinux demo machine. The primary use of it is to test and audit SELinux integration, and policy.

Oracle Makes Bid for PeopleSoft

"Oracle on Friday announced a surprise $5.1 billion takeover bid for enterprise software maker PeopleSoft, only a few days after PeopleSoft said it was acquiring rival J.D. Edwards for $1.7 billion. Oracle is offering $16 cash per share for each share of PeopleSoft, a roughly 6 percent premium over PeopleSoft's closing price Thursday of $15.11." Read more at ZDNet.

Proposal for a New GTK+/Gnome GUI

A few months ago I was designing the UI of Sequel OS. I am not part of the project anymore, but I kept developing the UI in my free time, just when I was feeling a bit creative. Yesterday, in my Gnome 2 article I mentioned that it would be nice if Gnome/GTK+ adopt a new default theme. So, here is my proposal for the project, mockups seen for the first time in public... Update: One more mockup I just (quickly) created just to show to some readers that the theme is clean when used in a normal app. Update2: Vote for the poll inside. Update3: Download the Gnome window manager theme here.

OmniWeb 4.5 Public Beta Released

OmniWeb 4.5 public beta 1 is the first version of the Omni Group's Web browser to incorporate WebCore and JavaScriptCore frameworks from Apple -- the same frameworks Apple uses for its own Web browser, Safari. More specifically, improvements been made to bookmarks, AutoFill, plug-ins, history indexing and more. OmniWeb 4.5 beta 1 requires Mac OS X 10.2 or later. In other OSX releases, CodeTek VirtualDesktop 2.3.3 was released.

GNOME 2: A Year Later

One year ago I wrote a review of Gnome 2. Some people thought I was harsh, others thought I was fair, point is, I always write what I think and surely Gnome 2.0 didn't have the polish or stability of a .0 release. But one year has passed. Gnome 2.2.1 is out, and I must say one thing: I am starting to get impressed by the effort and the clean interface Gnome 2 is now offering. Update: Screenshots inside.