Lycoris, makers of the popular Desktop/LX Linux package, released their ProductivityPak Friday featuring a highly customized and integrated Openoffice.org and PDA Sync tool. With the ProductivityPak, Lycoris has introduced features not found in typical OpenOffice.org installations, such as a spell checker, and has advertised compatibility with, among other formats, Office XP documents.

ZDNet UK reports: "With Christmas just around the corner, the consumer-friendly Linux distribution is readying its high street invasion". LindowsOS 3.0, a Linux-based operating system designed to attract the less Geeky and thus more general computer user, was reviewed by OSNews earlier this month.

Have you ever wondered why in other Operating Systems such as Windows, MacOS or even BeOS installing software is so easy compared to Linux? In such OSes you can simply download and decompress a file or run an installer process which will easily walk you through the process.

Preliminary Pentium 4 numbers are here. Scott R. Ladd extended the tables, keeping the Pentium III numbers for comparison purposes. You'll find specifications for both test systems. The new tests show that ICC is the choice if you need Pentium4 optimizations for your applications, while GCC is a good free alternative for the rest of the CPUs. ICC seems to compile up to twice faster in most cases.

MenuetOS 0.72 released with TCP/IP from Mike Hibbett & demos: OpenGL, 3D Maze, games, GUI appearance setup etc. Additionally, SkyOS has some interesting updates too.

Among one technology researcher's predictions for 2003 is this sobering thought: A major cyberterrorism event will disrupt the economy and bring the Internet to its knees for at least a day or two. IDC also predicts the dominance of Linux over Unix.

The doctrine that computing power doubles every 18 to 24 months has been considered gospel for the past three decades. Now it may be time for a new look.

"Many developers are eagerly awaiting the 2.6 Linux kernel. The feature freeze has passed, with a code freeze planned for January and final release slated for the second quarter of 2003. There is considerable excitement about anticipated enhancements, especially regarding scalability and performance. However, some developers may first notice what doesn't work anymore. Some techniques and APIs have been removed, and existing device drivers and modular plugins may no longer work. At the same time, it will take some time to take advantage of new features and to find replacements for old ones." Read the article at OnLamp.

This article is part 3 of a 3-part series. In Part 1, you got an introduction to the current clustering technologies available for Linux and and an introduction to openMosix. In Part 2, you got a fully-functional openMosix cluster configured and running. Now, in Part 3, you'll see some ways to use openMosix to tackle computing challenges with clusters built on IBM xSeries servers running Intel® Xeon™ Making use of performance-enhancing technologies such as Intel's Hyper-Threading Technology.

"CRUX is a lightweight, i686-optimized Linux distribution targeted at experienced Linux users. The primary focus of this distribution is "keep it simple", which is reflected in a simple tar.gz-based package system, BSD-style initscripts, and a relatively small collection of trimmed packages." CRUX 1.0 has been released, ISOs are now avaiblabe for download. Checkout the change log for a list of new/changed packages.

Blue Eyed OS, one of the premiere open source BeOS replacements, released their first downloads yesterday, a beta version of their kernel_server. It can be downloaded from the Blue Eyed OS website. They've also added a new screenshot as well as an interviews section to their homepage.

"...if the nine states and the District of Columbia decided against an appeal, Microsoft would cover the states' expenses and provide an additional pot of funds for the states to help enforce the settlement deal, the sources said." Read the full article at the Washington Post.

"The KDE Project today announced the release of KOffice 1.2.1. KOffice 1.2.1 is a stability and enhancement release, with the principal improvements over KOffice 1.2, released last September, occurring in the spreadsheet program (KSpread)" Read more at KDE.org.

William G. Canaday writes for Newsforge, "When my wife asked me to remove Windows and install Linux on her computer, I was happy to oblige. She is familiar with Linux from watching me use it and was quite upset that Windows had lost her desktop photograph -- again. This gave me an excuse to try setting up a terminal / server network." His article discusses his experience with LTSP, the Linux Terminal Server Project. Read the rest at Newsforge.