Linux Live CD's are very popular these days, especially since the inception of Knoppix. Live CD's are very useful as a plug and play Linux systems for schools who want to use Linux beside their normal operating system, but Live CD's are also useful for demo-ing Linux or to try if Linux works well on some machine. Another advantage of Live CD's is that it is more difficult to break things, after rebooting the Live CD you will have a completely fresh system.

FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE is now available. Release notes for all five architectures, here.

NetBeans have today released their 3.5 IDE. A nice environment to develop e.g. Java or C++ in.

When debugging kernel problems, being able to trace the kernel execution and examine its memory and data structures is very useful. The built-in kernel debugger in Linux, KDB, provides this facility. In this article you'll learn how to use the features provided by KDB and how to install and set up KDB on a Linux machine.

Ximian has released their long awaited Ximian Desktop 2, their popular Gnome-based desktop, and Evolution, their popular email client and calendar program. They can be found on the main Ftp server. You can also check their mirrors. OSNews featured an interview with Nat Friedman of Ximian recently.

TuxReports features an introduction to Red Hat Linux 9 with screenshots. Elsewhere, Slashdot readers discuss the Linux experience on an Acer TabletPC.

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).

Slow day today, so here is another poll to have fun with. Let's see what hardware most geek readers around here desire!

This story has been removed at request of Apple Computer, Inc. We respect Apple's wishes to this sensitive matter.

The first beta of XFCE 4 was released. Release notes here, and a number of screenshots here. On other X-related news, Enlightenment DR16.6-pre3 is available for testing, while Epiphany 0.7 for Gnome is out.

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 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.

Sun Microsystems is expected to announce at JavaOne the release of an update to its JXTA peer-to-peer protocol and framework for collaboration. Elsewhere, Sun Microsystems will spend tens of millions of dollars to emblazon all manner of computing products with a new Java logo, the company plans to unveil next week at its JavaOne conference.

Marcus Overhagen of OpenBeOS has just released the alpha of the new Media Kit. It's a bit feature-light at the moment, but already usable.