OSNews was privileged to an early access to the final version of Mandrake Linux 9.1 Standard Edition and we were able to test it for almost a week now. Here is our review. Update: Added four screenshots. Update 2: Mandrake Linux 9.1 is out, read the PR, get it from mirrors, buy it or join the Club, from links found here.

At $200US the new version of eComStation, 1.1, is available for purchase. No news yet about new features as the press release is not up yet to the newly redesigned eComStation web site. Additionally, OS/2World.com published a recap of last year's OS/2 activities and happenings in an editorial. Our Take: Any idea why the SMP version of eCS 1.1 is cheaper than the non-SMP version? Anyone?

DesktopLinux.com talks with Bernhard Rosenkraenzer, aka 'Bero', co-founder of ArkLinux about the company's plan to deliver a full-featured operating system based primarily upon a Red Hat Linux 7.3 / 8.0 foundation and KDE.

The new Yellow Dog Linux 3.0 brings recent Linux user interface improvements to the PowerPC architecture. Smooth, anti-aliased fonts and the clean, refined style of Red Hat's Blue Curve theme make this a beautiful creation to look at. There are screenshots here, though they aren't big enough to really do it justice.

According to Ralf Nolden, the maintainer of KDevelop, Kiosk mode allows an administrator to "lock down KDE so much that it is practically impossible for the users to mess up their configuration." Read the article at NewsFactor.

Adobe put a page up (named 'pcpreferred.html') stating that the PC is preffered to run Adobe products. Adobe, along with Quark and Macromedia, are the long standing allies to Apple, offering the most important products that literally drive Mac sales in the Pro market. For historical reasons mostly, it is now of surprise to see Adobe openly verifying and backing up Digital Producer Magazine's benchmarks and recommending PCs instead of Macs to their customers (even if PCs have indeed overtake Macs speed-wise the last 1-2 years). This is a blow for Apple, sales and marketing-wise and we will wait for a reaction from Apple towards Adobe.

A sizeable group of developers from the two leading free software projects developing desktops based on the X Window System, KDE and GNOME, have been discussing the current situation among themselves and decided to draft and release the linked document. Read the 5 points raised by both Gnome and KDE members. Update: X.org comes into the picture, but not everyone is as optimistic.

"Of all the topics I've disemboweled in this space in the last year, the question of moving to Linux is the hottest. It seems almost all of you have a leaning toward Linux. But Staight's point is important. The existence of a constellation of issues, rather than one or two dominant ones, was cited by perhaps 80% of those who wrote to me saying they aren't migrating." Read the article at IDG.

Microsoft aims to entice solution providers to develop applications for Pocket PCs and Smartphones using its .Net Compact Framework, said Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates last week. "The sky is the limit," Gates said in his keynote address at the first U.S. Microsoft Mobility Developer conference, held here in tandem with the CTIA expo.

Dr. Dobb's Journal issue of March 2003 features an article comparing C++'s libsigc++ class library to C#'s delegate feature.

LinuxJournal encourages users to start downloading and testing the unstable Linux kernel 2.5.x as release is near (around July), so more intensive beta testing is required by end users. Here is a quick guide on how to compile a generic Linux kernel.

'At last month's Most Valuable Partners meeting in which Gates opened up about open source, he reflected back on his battle against IBM for supremacy of the desktop. "OS/2 wasn't a joke; it was all of IBM that was ten times the size of Microsoft putting all their energy, their leverage on ISVs, bundling it with their systems, everything they could do to beat Windows," Gates said.' Read the editorial at ENT by Joe McKendrick.

Lots of talk and comments about our recent feature article "The Definitive Desktop Environment Comparison" recently (new OSNews comment # record). But what do the readers of this site think? Which is your favorite DE? Update: The poll is down.

ThinkSecret reports that a new beta release of Apple's Safari web browser, version 67, with improvements to tabbed browsing and AutoFill for completing web forms was released to beta testers. Also, a new beta build of the MacOSX v10.2.5 update, 6L14, was seeded to developers last week.