"IMD for Linux (Indigo Magic Desktop) is going much further that those themes that simulate the IRIX look and feel. IMD for Linux has it own window manager that looks, behaves and provides the same features found on an IRIX box. Read more about the recreation of 4dwm desktop environment on Linux and how to beta test for the project.

GNOME 2.0 Desktop, the user environment for the Solaris OE, is now ready for production use. It has been built by Sun Microsystems and is fully supported. Additionally, Sun went beta with Star Office 6.1.

Omni Group is well known to most Mac users and NeXT ones back in the day. Omni Group today is a MacOSX-only company, writting high quality applications in Cocoa, apps like OmniWeb, OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner and 3D game ports. Today, we talked to its CEO, Ken Case, about the company and its products, Apple's strategies, Safari and the future.

An insider at Sun says there's frantic discussion inside the company about big problems with the Java platform that, he claimed, "prevent general acceptance of Java for production software within Sun". He said: "It strikes me as hypocritical for Sun to blame Microsoft for any failure of the Java platform when Sun's own engineers find developing common software applications in Java impractical". One of the problems, he claimed, is that while Java has a lot of benefits compared to C and C++, its implementation on Solaris makes it difficult to deliver reliable applications. The Inquirer has the scoop.

Responding to the overwhelming interest in Desktop Linux, representatives from key firms and organizations today announced the formation of the Desktop Linux Consortium, or DLC. The vendor-neutral association will promote interests and raise awareness of the emerging role and benefits offered by GNU/Linux on the desktop. Consortium members comprise both commercial companies and open source organizations that are developing and shaping the technology that will speed the adoption rate of Linux to the desktop.

"After three years in the making the FreeBSD Release 5.0 operating system has been made available to the general public. Released towards the end of January, the OS provides first-time support for Sun's Sparc64 and Intel's IA64 platforms. And while some effort has been put into AMD's Hammer architecture, there is presently no usable support for the 64-bit mode of Hammer, said FreeBSD engineer, Scott Long." Read the article at LinuxWorld.

Although GNU-Darwin can be viewed as a standalone OS for x86 and PowerPC architectures, it is also a source of free software to Apple users.

As we already mentioned yesterday, now from MacMinute: "Apple today announced a new Spring line of iMacs, a new 17-inch widescreen model featuring a 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processor and 133 MHz system bus; 256MB of Double Data Rate (DDR) memory; a faster 4x SuperDrive for playing and burning CDs and DVDs; and internal support for AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth, for US$1,799. The new 15-inch flat panel model features an 800 MHz G4 processor and is now priced at $1,299. Apple also announced lower pricing on its line of eMac computers, dropping the prices to $999 and $1,299."

I have been a big fan of BeOS since the Creative Labs OS Championship Team dumped it on me in 1999. At the time I was working technical support in Dublin and they had some guy looking after support for BeOS who really could not care less. He had never even installed it! I was deputy Linux champion and generally considered interested in OSes so they said "Hey, Stevo! Wanna be a champ? All you need to do is get this OS installed and play with it a bit." So, needless to say, I did and I was hooked.

Bug-fix version 2.2.1 of the GTK+ widget toolkit and associated librares (GLib, Pango) is now available.

The new iMac models are primarily speed-bump editions with the addition of Bluetooth and AirPort Extreme support (does not include the cards). The models will range in price from US$999 to $1700. In addition, Apple will not be upgrading the eMac line, but will instead lower prices of existing models to stay more competitive. ThinkSecret also has some exclusive info on the 10.2.4 release.

Microsoft on Monday released an updated version of Windows XP SP1 without the company's version of Java, complying with a court order that was stayed just hours later. However, today Microsoft received a reprieve on Monday from a court order requiring the company to ship Sun's Java software.

REBOL Technologies today announced its plan to expand development and support for the Apple Macintosh OS X operating system. Beginning with OS X Jaguar (version 10.2), REBOL will port its entire line of products, including View and Pro products as well as Command, SDK (Software Developers Toolkit) and IOS (X Internet Operating System).

One of the most prolific and active developers of FreeBSD, Matt Dillon, responsible for a lot of the latest advances in the FreeBSD kernel, lost his right to commit code to the source tree. The FreeBSD Project didn't give a solid reason on what lead them to this decision. Last year, OSNews interviewed Matt about his (truly immense) work on FreeBSD.