Microsoft is getting serious about management software. That's either terrific news or a real cause for concern, depending on who you are. On other MS news, three-fourths of computer software security experts at major companies surveyed by Forrester Research Inc. do not think Microsoft Corp.'s products are secure, the technology research company said on Monday.

And one more Mandrake Linux 9.1 review. This time is at LinuxOrbit.

DistroWatch has the details of the official release: The press release has all the details with links to further information, such as features and benefits, product description of the Personal and Professional editions, technical details and the package list. Red Hat Linux 9 is available for immediate download to paid subscribers to Red Hat Network (US$60 per year). It will be released to FTP servers on 7 April. Update: Release notes on the newly created "Shrike" mailing list. New Nvidia drivers here. Update 2: How to add the Java plugin on RH 9.

What a big month this was with many Linux releases (and not just Linux ones). The third most popular Linux distribution (along with Debian), after Red Hat and Mandrake, is SuSE. While the company is more successful in Europe, with their 8.1 release a few months ago they were able to broaden their user base worldwide even more. The new version, 8.2, is coming out in about a week from now, but OSNews had early access to it so we were able to evaluate it. Read more for our experiences with SuSE Linux 8.2 and check out a few screenshots too.

The GPL is a wonderful license for community works, for the basic reason that it starts out with the premise that the point is the source code. The program, someone is trying to make. Not the programmer, not the programmer's company, or the programmer's pay check. What it basically says is that there is no way for one to act as a stop-gap to the flow of code development and the organic way that code tends to build upon itself.

Recently, some sharp criticism has been displayed against the OS reviews posted on OSNews by third parties. In an effort to make the reviews more substantial, I have put together some guidelines in addition to the generic guidelines OSNews already provides for the readers who want to have their voices heard on this site.

Jason Filby has notified us: "ReactOS 0.1.1 is out, and features much improved windowing and GDI abilities; WineMine can be played to a limited extend and the MS VGA and VMWare VGA drivers can be used. There is also better disk drive detection and support as well as registry, IO and console improvements. The usetup installer has also progressed well." For more infomation and screenshots, turn to the ReactOS website.

Some of the people complained about the two previous posted reviews being incoherant and you said "write your own", so I thought I would throw my two cents in...

Yes, we all know the "big three" (Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE) commercial distros, we also know the next big bunch of respected traditional/geek distros (Debian and Slackware and some might add Gentoo too in this list), and we know the "other big three" in the desktop Linux area (Lindows, Xandros, Lycoris). However, not everyone knows what is available besides this "threshold". Here is a list of Linux distros that worth knowing about and to keep an eye on!

The development of Mandrake Linux 9.1 has been completed: "Sounds like a good time to put myself in the seat of a first-time Linux user and dissect this long-awaited release. I had rehearsed the installation of Mandrake Linux 9.1 final using 9.1 RC2, and this time I decided to explore in detail the hardware and software configuration that I would consider adequate for a comfortable Mandrake desktop experience. Kind of, a Mandrake 9.1 Certify-It-Yourself PC if you see what I mean..." This article concludes DistroWatch's 7-part series in which followed the Mandrake 9.1 development process.

A long thread has started in the phoebe-list over at Red Hat, people arguing that Mp3 capabilities should/shouldn't be included in Red Hat's products. Mike Harris of Red Hat replied to the issue and gave a clear answer about the facts.

The server maker expects major PC makers soon will begin bundling Sun's software for running Java programs on their computers.

Eclipse 2.1 was released today. For a list of what is new checkout here. In other developer news, OnLamp posted an article explaining what's new in Python 2.3. Info on PHP 5 can be found from here.

When I first started playing with Linux (RedHat Distribution -- Version 5.2 Deluxe), it was a present from a father's friend in Boston. As I recall that is the only version of RedHat I ever got to work correctly without any major problems (like "Kernel Segmentation Error" or something to that effect).