Just like Blender did a few months ago, Hekkelman Programmatuur are now following the same approach to open their product's sources (development has stopped in the meantime). Pepper 4.x is a programmer's editor, running on Unix/Linux, Mac/X, Windows and it has already a lot of BeOS-specific code to kickstart a BeOS version too (I personally have a BeOS beta of Pepper 3.5 on my hard drive from the times I was beta testing it, a version that was never released). A small team of developers and users are trying to open its source so they have made an offer to Maarten Hekkelman for $11,000 USD and they would appreciate your donations (screenshot of Pepper running under Gentoo Linux).

In the Advanced filesystem implementor's guide, Daniel Robbins shows you how to use the latest filesystem technologies in Linux 2.4. In this conclusion to the AFIG series, Daniel continues his discussion of the Enterprise Volume Management System for Linux, or EVMS. He shows you how to use evmsn to take a new hard drive, partition it, and create LVM volumes on it. Along the way, he fills you in on important EVMS concepts that you'll find essential as you continue your exploration of this powerful technology.

"Red Hat is the biggest bandwidth user on the East Coast," company vice president Mark de Visser said. "If we wanted to make a killing in the retail market, we could, but that's not the intent. The intent is to get it into the hands of the most people." Read the article at NewsFactor. The article in a single sentence: Ladies and Gentlemen, meet the upcoming leader of the Linux market: Red Hat.

"Mounting anger over Microsoft's business tactics could hamper uptake of its .NET application development platform. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates claims to have "bet the company" on .NET, which is both an over-arching business strategy and a software development platform to rival Sun Microsystems' Java technology. But Gartner research shows resentment of Microsoft's licensing practices and fear of relinquishing control is feeding scepticism of .NET among IT executives." Read the report at News.com.au.

"I am impressed with Lycoris. They have made a good start at making Linux accessible to the casual user. There is a long way to go yet but the makers should be proud of the work they have done. It is capable of competing with Windows in the home, something which other distro's of Linux have not yet achieved. However Lycoris could not compete with Red Hat or similar distro's in a workstation environment. Then again, you wouldn't use XP Home edition as a workstation OS. Lycoris is to XP Home what Red Hat is to XP Professional." Read the review at TechSeekers.

"An internal alpha build of Microsoft's next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, made its way onto the Internet early Tuesday. The leaked build, which is numbered 3683, appears to be from late September and sports quite a few new feature concepts—although many are not yet functional. The oft-rumored Longhorn Sidebar can be enabled via Taskbar settings and uses XML to display customizable tiles such as a clock, virtual desktop manager and Internet search. The Start Menu can also be docked within the Sidebar, completely removing the Taskbar that has been a staple of Windows since 1995." Read the eWeek article for more information.