KDE 3.1 RC3 is released and it is likely to be the last RC release. Download, install and report bugs.

The next interim release on the path to GNOME-2.2 is now available, according to release guy Jeff Waugh. GNOME-2.1.2 includes implementation of several user-requested features and cosmetics, as well as some under-the-hood changes. Read the report at LinuxAndMain.

"With stories about the new Amiga shipping spreading across the web, including here on ExtremeTech , I thought it would be worthwhile to sit down and talk about these, and other developments with Bill McEwen, the CEO and President of Amiga, Inc." Read the interview at ExtremeTech.

The MacOSX 10.2.2 update delivers enhanced functionality and improved reliability for the following applications and technologies: Address Book, iChat, IP Firewall, Mail, Print Center, Rendezvous, Sherlock and Windows file service discovery. It also provides a foundation for the journalling filesystem (JFS - not to be confused with IBM's JFS), which may currently be enabled via Disk Utility on Mac OS X Server systems. Journaling can also be turned on via the command line.

"With the last year or two of Linux press describing the financial woes of various Linux distributions, it's refreshing to see a new Linux distribution launched with some fanfare. "New" is something of a misnomer--the Xandros Desktop is a descendant of Corel Linux, but with a new purpose and sharper focus than ever before." Read the review at LinuxPlanet.

Linux and Microsoft's .NET will dislodge Unix as the dominant OS within the next 10 years, according to a study. Senior research analyst and report author Mike Davis, from UK-based Butler Group, said the shift had started with smaller businesses moving to install Linux for file and print services, replacing Windows NT and lower-end Unix.

"The Grand Old Duke of York is clearly in charge of Microsoft's operating systems roadmaps for, having marched Longhorn up to the top of a distant (2005, said his Billness) hill earlier this year, he has now marched it straight back down again. Longhorn, the next version of Windows XP, will not after all be a 2005 product, but will quite possibly be a next year product after all." Read the article at TheRegister.

In spite of the major advances in Web technology and the explosion of communication methods on the Internet, the simple act of Web browsing has remained fundamentally single-user in its implementation. Why is Web browsing still a solitary activity? Researchers at Microsoft and Harvard were excited about their proposal for a multi-user Web six years ago, and yet here we are and nothing much has changed. Jared White of The Idea Basket gives us his take on the matter, and offers a new proposal for a multi-user Web experience.

"Miniscule mobile telephones, tiny electronic organizers and portable DVD players are nice. But they'd be so much less cumbersome if they were surgically implanted under your skin. The chip, called the VeriChip, is about the size of a grain of rice, carries a number that identifies you and, the company says, may eventually provide a way to make sure that only the right people gain access to secure sites, corporate offices or even personal computers. The chip could also carry access to personal data, like medical information." Read the (enthusiastic!) article at NYTimes. Our Take: Implantable chips? Over my dead body. I have hard time liking the tooth implants already.

Version 2.0.8 of the GTK+ widget toolkit is now available. Fixes gif/gdk-pixbuf and libtool-related bugs.

"Put an absolute beginner in front of a computer and he'll try to touch the screen to make things happen. The revolutionary thing about Microsoft's new tablet PC is that it transforms this wishful-thinking behavior into reality: You can write on its screen and the thing will respond! This is the stuff of science fiction, and it makes the tablet PC an unusually ambitious venture for Microsoft. It's just not a successful one." Rob Pegoraro tells it like it is for WashingtonPost.

Here's the latest about what the OpenOffice Project is up to for language support, new platforms and development partnerships.

"Sun's Desktop strategy - "Project Madhatter" - is taking shape and it dominated questions from the floor at an analyst session in San Francisco today. In charge of Madhatter is Curtis Sasaki - Sun's VP of Desktop Software - who was at Apple at the launch of the original Macintosh in 1984, led the IIGS project and then followed Steve Jobs to NeXT where he spent several years. More from Curtis in a moment. Read the story at TheRegister.

"In Vernor Vinge’s sci-fi novel A fire upon the deep, he presents the idea of “software archeology”. Vinge’s future has software engineers spending large amounts of time digging through layers of decades-old code in a computer system — like layers of dirt and rubbish in real-world archeology — to find out how, or why, something works." Good stuff over there from UI designer Matthew "mpt" Thomas.