The verbal punches tossed in the clash between Java and .NET may never end -- but for now it seems that the app servers supporting these software environments both have a place. Evidence suggests that most large companies will support both Java and .NET. The 'battle,' in reality, falls short of the hype. The scene is almost like that in a heavyweight prizefight, where the weigh-in holds more terror than the fight itself. Read the rest of the article at ADTMag.

The leaders of several major open-source projects have joined George Washington University's Cyber Security Policy and Research Institute. Read the report at BusinessWeek.

The Debian-based Libranet 2.8 is finaly released. Order & download, read the feature-set or an intro.

"There's a lot to like in SuSE's latest edition, 8.2, and little to complain about. There are security enhancements and graphics tweaks partly due to KDE 3.1, and major administration bonuses in YaST-2. It's clear that SuSE has worked hard to accommodate the corporate desktop market as well as the home user since edition 8.1, which we did not recommend." Read the review at The Register.

Now it is possible to have hardware accelerated OpenGL with DirectFB.

"Is Server 2003 fast? Yes, it's easily outdistances anything that Microsoft has ever shown us before. And, yes, it's faster than Linux. It is stable? Based on about two weeks of testing with the final release, I would say that it's also the most stable Microsoft operating system I've ever seen. But then again, I'm not asking it to do much besides basic file/print. The functionality servers that any business needs are largely not there. Ironically, this reminds me of the old claim against Linux that it didn't have any applications. That was never true of Linux, but it is true of Server 2003." Read the article at Practical-Tech by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols.

Yellow Dog Linux version 3.0 for PPC is now shipping worldwide. Read more for the announcement.

This time around, Transgaming WineX 3.0 has some new tools as well as improvements in the number of games supported and gaming speeds. In this article, LinuxOrbit is going to take a look at the new features of WineX 3.0, with a focus on their new GUI installer called Point2Play.

Andrew Morton posted a lengthy list of items that need to be done before the 2.5 development kernel tree should be turned into the 2.6 stable kernel tree. He prefaced his list by noting that 2.6.0 does not mean, "it's finished, ship it", alternatively offering, "I'd propose that 2.6.0 means that users can migrate from 2.4.x with a good expectation that everything which they were using in 2.4 will continue to work, and that the kernel doesn't crash, doesn't munch their data and doesn't run like a dog. Other definitions are welcome."

Will systems is the future come with bios enabled browsers or embedded browsers without an OS? At Convea they have been working on creating an web-based office suite which would complement such a device perfectly (this effort is not unique on the web though).

"In my career, I have managed the deployment of Macintosh labs and offices in colleges and elementary schools and at companies with a few workstations to those at major corporations.

Compelled by the endless debate of whether Linux is ready for the desktop, I wrote my own rant. It morphed into some kind of "my experience with Linux". This is some kind of long term review of Linux, from the very specific viewpoint of someone who uses it to do research about computers and networks. It is not a distro comparison, or Linux vs Windows TCO comparison, or any such thing. It is just a story about a guy who found Linux.

With Windows Server 2003, Microsoft is promising greater security. However, its 50 million lines of code mean it'll never be secure enough. Read the article at BusinessWeek.

Lately, we've all read a lot of articles about desktop Linux - so many that it's getting hard to tell them apart. One says "Why Linux Sucks," the next "My Success With Linux." Even Michael Robertson of Lindows.com joined the fun with his "Why Desktop Linux Sucks, Today." But very few people have proposed anything radical, and I believe that's what's needed to take GNU/Linux to the next level.