Lindows.com today announced the immediate availability of the Lindows Media Computer. The "Mini-PC," as Michael Robertson calls it in his announcement, runs LindowsOS 3.0, but can be used as a household media player. It boasts a startup time of 10 seconds for DVD/CD/MP3 CD playback. It is available online now.

The Gnome 2.2-RC2 (2.1.91) is released. This is the last test version before the final version is to get released next week. Also, the Gnome Summary of this week is published for your reading pleasure.

Xandros today announced the release of the Xandros Desktop Standard Edition 1.0. Unlike Xandros Desktop Deluxe ($99), Xandros Standard Edition cannot reallocate space from a Windows NTFS during the install, though it still can reallocate space from a FAT, VFAT, or FAT32 partition. By removing such Deluxe features such as CodeWeavers CrossOver Office and Plugin, the printed user guide, and the Technology Preview CD, Xandros Desktop can be made available at $40 USD. Desktop Standard provides one incident of e-mail installation support, as opposed to 30-day support with Desktop Deluxe.

From SkyOS' Robert Szeleney: "Finally I released the first SkyOS SDK and some documents with which it will be possible to develop SkyOS applications and libraries. Just follow the new Developer link. This SDK includes all needed header files (libraries and kernel), libraries and the source code of the desktop, panel and GiConfig application."

Opera Software expressed significant doubts it would continue producing a browser for the Macintosh operating system, illustrating a growing problem for third-party Mac developers as Apple Computer steps up its own application development efforts. Also, Opera Software on Tuesday will release the final version of its newly rewritten browser for the Windows operating system, adding features without increasing the browser's size. Update: Opera 7.00 for Windows is available. Update2: Official announcement and feature-list. Update3: I just added an OSNews sidebar panel for Opera.

Fred Langa contends that some Linux proponents harm their cause by hiding from the facts--it's just as buggy as Windows XP: "As much as the partisans wish it were so, open sourcing isn't a magic solution to the problems of bugs and security issues. As Linux and other open-source software grow in popularity and extend into a fragmented, uncontrolled mass marketplace, they will inevitably have their own full share of bugs and security problems, same as with any other software. Anyone who tells you differently, or tries to convince you that their favorite operating system is somehow immune to market forces, human error, and plain malice, is doing both you and the operating system they espouse a disservice."

Borland Software has licensed a key piece of Microsoft's .Net software and will build a new line of programming tools for .Net later this year, the companies announced Monday.

KDE 3.1 is out, announcement here, the source packages are linked on the 3.1 info page, and are also available in stable/3.1 directory on the KDE FTP site.

Microsoft comes under regular fire for its apparent eagerness to end-of-life its products, making them more difficult and expensive to support, and hence forcing users to upgrade to the next version. But without fanfare Red Hat has quietly introduced its own approach to end-of-life, and compared to this, Microsoft's idea of an upgrade cycle looks pretty sedate. As of the release of Red Hat 8.0, the company is only guaranteeing errata maintenance for the 12 months following a product's release.

"Going by the numbers, Apple appears headed for trouble again. But fear not, Mac faithful: Apple may never again pose a threat to Microsoft and its PC allies, but its niche is safe. In the $160 billion PC market, a 3% market share should be enough to fund Apple's research-and-development push. Nothing will come easy for Apple, however. It is rapidly losing its grip on the education market, a former stronghold. Over the next year, Apple may get a boost in the professional market. Finally, Apple is moving beyond the Mac." Read the article on BusinessWeek. Also, Apple strengthens server support.

Windows NT 4.0 Server, still the weapon of choice for quantities of the more truculent IT manager, has been given another 12 months to live. Microsoft today intends to announce that paid incident and security hotfix support for the product, previously scheduled to cease at the end of this year, will now run up until 31st December 2004.

"A lot of people are watching Miguel de Icaza, a bubbly young Mexican programming whiz behind an unusual project he named 'Mono', Spanish for monkey. Icaza's company, Ximian, has already produced software called Evolution that gives users of the free, open-source Linux operating system e-mail and calendar tools comparable to those that run on Microsoft's Windows operating system." Read the article at SiliconValley.

In late November of 2002, OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt announced on the project's mailing lists that after over a year of attempting to obtain useful UltraSparc III documentation, they had still not made much headway. In the email he rallied the OpenBSD community to help out, asking them to contact the people within Sun responsible for providing such information. C/Net reported on this in their story titled, Open-source clan in spat with Sun. The UltraSparc III is Sun's third generation 64-bit RISC architecture based processor.

From BSDForums: "FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long presents the FreeBSD November-December 2002 status report. Key highlights of the report include the anticipated FreeBSD 5.0 Release Bluetooth stack development, busdma driver conversion project, DEVD, C99 & POSIX Conformance Project, FreeBSD Package Cluster work and much more!"