Joe Barr is happy to have a Ximian desktop again, and hopes he doesn't have to go a long time without it in the future. Read his review of Ximian Desktop 2 at LinuxWorld. Expect an interview with Ximian officials this week, here at OSNews. Update: Two more reviews of Ximian Desktop 2, one from LinuxAndMain and one from eWeek. And an additional article about it by eWeek again.

Learn how C++ program structure works, from the perspective of functions and data. This sample chapter covers function definitions, inline functions, recursion, pointers to functions, and functions with default arguments. It also describes structures and unions, member functions, and passing structures and unions as arguments. Additionally, you'll learn about C++ storage classes, exceptions, namespaces, and free store memory. Another dev article, named "Using Java Development Tools in Eclipse" is also available.

If you were to believe some, BeOS is a dead Operating System. If this was the case you would expect numbers at BeGeistert to be dwindling, but the reality is different, the corpse is moving and this was the biggest BeGeistert yet.

Python 2.2.3-final is a bug-fix release of Python. More information can be found here.

The newest version of the Syllable operating system (based on AtheOS) is now available. Changes include: ATA and ATAPI, improved SB Live! and Audigy support, ISO-9660 FS, and a bootable CD (as well as many updates/fixes). Read about it here.

The Iconbar has run a story saying that RISC OS Select 3, the latest version of the RISC OS operating system has been released by RISC OS Ltd. To compliment this news, The IconBar has an article outlining the new features of this new release. RISC OS Select 3 will be sent to subscribers on CD ROM once it is out of beta state.

Upstart JBoss Group will on Monday debut a new release of its popular open-source application server software amid a growing dispute with Sun Microsystems over Java standard compliance.
Update: Preview of Java 1.5, at Slashdot.

TriangleOS runs under the latest Bochs x86 emulator, ReactOS as well, and now you can run Syllable on it. Regarding Syllable, here is its updated tab-based terminal. On Bochs news, the CVS version now supports SSE/SSE2 emulation. Has anyone tried MenuetOS & SkyOS with the Bochs Vesa patch?

"Sun's primary focus continues to be on Unix -- the Unix product portfolio," says IDC research director Al Gillen. But that may be a risky strategy. "As Linux grows, if Sun's not riding that wave fully, they leave themselves open to losing part of the market.". The article is at NewsFactor. We recently wrote a related editorial about it too.

The MIM Visual Development Environment simplifies software programming by turning it into an intuitive visual environment for novice and experienced programmers. Maz Lab claims this is a huge innovation. They sent us --exclusively-- three mockups of their upcoming product (shot 1, shot 2, shot 3). Read more for the full press release.

SCO Group executives said Friday that the company's copyright dispute with Novell doesn't affect its legal campaign against Linux, but they'll probably sue Novell anyway.

The Mozilla project released its Mozilla suite 1.4, RC-1 for testing.

The Fink project already features KDE 3.1.1, but Tony Arnold is working on bringing Gnome 2.4 (2.3.x for now) under X11 for Mac OS X, via Fink. Screenshot. So far, older Gnome 1.4 is available via Fink.

Thursday here, a slow evening. Time for a new poll. This poll might require you to think a bit extra: it asks you to vote not for your favorite application, but which OSS application, in your opinion, has achieved high standards, performance, features and ease of use when compared to the best of breed of the closed source world. Read more for more explanation and voting.