Wal-Mart is famous/notorious for its relentless focus on price. Now it's decided to have a little fun with the PC business. The world's biggest retailer is flogging a new desktop computer for $199. The 800 MHz VIA C3 processor is never going to win prizes for performance - but for price/performance at the budget end of the market, it's very hard to beat. The PC comes with 128MB SDRAM on a VIA Apollo PLE133 chipset-based mobo, supplying integrated graphics and networking.

So what exactly are Sun's plans? While precise details remain close to Sun's chest, it is clear that the company is planning to assemble a suite of both open source and proprietary software products with which to go head to head with Microsoft. Some of these, such as the MySQL open source database, Sendmail messaging software, Samba file and print software, Apache web server, Mozilla browser, and Gnome desktop, have already been discussed by Sun executives. Our Take: At LinuxWorld, I saw their default configuration of Gnome 2 on Solaris. It looked pretty bad, while their X server did not even support AA. I don't think they are going anywhere to "assault" Microsoft. They might "assault" some other Unix or even Linux vendors, but their game will stop there.

Sun Microsystems Inc is looking to expand its Intel Corp-compatible processor-based server line and is also drawing up a list of OEM partners for its Solaris x86 Unix operating system for Intel-compatible servers, indicating a new level of commitment to the reborn operating system, Matthew Aslett writes.

From BSDForums: The FreeBSD-STABLE branch (development branch for 4-STABLE) of the source tree has now been frozen in preparation for the release of FreeBSD 4.7. This means that any new commits to the -stable source tree must be approved by the Release Engineering Team first. The expected "ship" date for FreeBSD 4.7 is October 1, 2002.

One year later, the jury is still out on whether the tech industry's most contentious merger was worth the effort. The company still faces the same criticisms: Technology mergers rarely work.

eWeek and ThinkSecret claim that Apple (since the begining of OSX) is developing in parallel to the PPC version of MacOSX, an x86 version called 'Marklar' as a fallback option, in case the Motorola CPUs could not deliver. The article also claims that this version is assigned only to a few dozen engineers so far, for maintanance purposes-only, and Apple most probably would switch to the desktop Power4 CPU that IBM is preparing instead. We recently wrote an editorial about the probable switch of Apple to x86.

Also from DistroWatch:If you thought that Slackware developers were going to take a long break after the 8.1 release, you were wrong: "We're happy to announce the initial Slackware-9.0-beta based on gcc-3.2. :-) Please test it and report any bugs that you find. The above message is from the current ChangeLog. See the pre-release notes and the complete package list for further information. Apart from GCC, many other packages have also been upgraded, including Linux Kernel (2.4.19), KDE (3.0.3), Perl (5.8.0) and Netscape (7.0), but GNOME packages were left at versions found in Slackware 8.1 (1.4.1).

From our friends at DistroWatch: Your last chance to test things out and report bugs -- if you miss it, you have no right to complain that some things don't work in Mandrake 9.0! Links to the three ISO images: CD 1 (695MB), CD 2 (700MB), CD 3 (549MB) or try a more convenient mirror. Report bugs on the cooker mailing list. Also don't forget this excellent offer to all beta testers: Mandrake 9.0 DVD (as soon as it's available) + Mandrake cap for US$55! Great value compared to regular pricing -- click here if you'd like to take advantage of the offer coupled with free shipping within EU, USA and Canada and 50% off shipping cost for the rest of the world. Things just don't get much better that this, do they? Mandrake Linux 9.0 final should be out in about two-week's time.

The new version of Cosmoe includes the following changes: doing a "make doc" in the libcosmoe directory will make html API documentation in the docs directory (you must have doxygen installed). Partially fixed a bug in LayoutView reported by James Dean Palmer, so that Guiprefs runs better. Here is a screenshot of Cosmoe running both locally and remotely, on single, dual, and quad CPU machines.
In related news, Syllable's web site has been updated to include screenshots of Syllable 0.4.1.

DesktopLinux contributing editor Malcolm Dean interviews SCO's new CEO Darl McBride in-depth about Linux, the desktop, and the company's new direction.

The August 2002 Mac OS X Developer Tools Update addresses issues with the July 2002 Mac OS X Developer Tools originally released with Mac OS X version 10.2 (Jaguar build 6C115 or later)." The download can be found at Apple Developer Connection (ADC login required). On other news, Apple says it's not just opening up the source code for its Rendezvous networking tool--it's actively courting open-source developers to work with the technology. Also, Apple now sells PowerMacs with MacOSX 10.2-Server pre-installed. Prices start at $3,000 USD for a dual 1 GHz G4 machine.

Microsoft has once again tweaked the name of the successor to Windows 2000 Server, in a move that suggests its official release won't come until next year. During the Redmond, Wash.-based company's annual employee meeting this week, executives revealed that the follow-up to Windows 2000 Server will be called Windows .Net Server 2003. Read more at ZDNews.

"I like MandrakeSoft very much, but I have some concerns. Here is some constructive criticism. I do not oppose your core business model - in fact I like it a lot. My proposals here should be compatible with it. MandrakeClub has become a bit of a 'secret society'. Non-members have no idea of what's going on inside, so they see no point in joining. I think you should merge Mandrakeclub.com and Mandrakeforum.com." PCLinuxOnline's Yama writes an editorial for MandrakeForum.

LinuxAndMain is hosting a story, describing the begining up to today the growing problems between the KDE Project and Red Hat. Apparently, the latest news is that Red Hat sees KDE as "kde* crapland".