You may have heard of Sun Microsystems' StarOffice which is being offered as a viable and cheaper alternative to Microsoft Office. Openoffice.org is the open source (or, free indefinitely) cousin of StarOffice. Staroffice used to be free as in you can freely download and install in as many computers as you like but Sun Microsystems has recently decided to charge for Staroffice. However, please do not fret as Openoffice.org will always be free and we are going to show you in this article how and why Openoffice.org instead of MS Office and StarOffice is for you.

"What are your experiences with the RPM package format? Do you install/uninstall RPM packages frequently? Do you upgrade every time a new release comes out? If so, does it go smoothly? Have you ever switched to an RPM-based distribution from Debian or Slackware? Have you tried other packaging formats? Have you tried source-based distributions?" Read the article at DistroWatch.

ZDNews' David Coursey is the person who was a long-time Windows user, but after pressure from his readers gave a month-long try to MacOSX, and since then he enjoys every minute with it. The other camp, the Linux users, now ask David to give a long shot at their favorite operating system. David installed Red Hat 7.3, and here is where he got stuck so far.

"In a move that appears to be a coup for Michael Robertson et al, Wal-Mart's online store is offering eight different Microtel PCs with LindowsOS included. The computers sell for USD$299 to $599 and ship in one to seven days." Read the story at NewsForge. Our Take: I noticed that they offer an AthlonXP system, similar to the one we tested a few days back. In order to use the X11 with its SavagePRO+ DDR graphics card, they needed to use a third party driver. The driver works, but it still has limitations.