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.

FVWM, the powerful ICCCM-compliant multiple virtual desktop window manager for the X Window system, released version 2.4.8. Latest alpha release 2.5.2 will support font shadow effects like the ones seen at WindowsXP's title bars.

"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.

No, the web site is not updated yet as I write this, but the announce has been sent out to the subscribers of the freebsd-announce mailing list and all the files and ISOs are into place for immediate download. You can read it at BSDForums.org. One of the most significant changes in FreeBSD 4.6 is the adoption of XFree86 4.2.0 as the default version of the X11 System. Some contributed programs have been updated, such as sendmail and the ISC DHCP client. For more information about the most significant changes with this release of FreeBSD, please see the release notes.

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.

"Red Hat Linux is the most commercially popular distribution of Linux out there today, hands down. However, reviewing a new release of Red Hat can make any reviewer a little wary of what they might find this time around. Bill von Hagen has examined Red Hat's latest release and has found some surprises, both good and, well, not so good." Read the review at LinuxPlanet.

"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.

"Microsoft accidentally sent the virulent Nimda worm to South Korean developers when it distributed Korean-language versions of Visual Studio .Net that carried the virus, the company acknowledged Friday. Microsoft's flagship developer tools picked up the digital pest when a third-party company translated the program into Korean, said Christopher Flores, lead product manager for Visual Studio .Net." Read the story at C|Net News.

What do you do if you don't have the source for your application and it's failing because a GNU Library for C (glibc) function is returning something bad to the application? Override the function of interest with your own version. This can be done without having root permissions and without recompiling the libc source. Imagine the thrill of writing your own version of open()! The article contains sample code.

If networking software pioneer Novell fails to recapture at lease some of its former luster, it won't be for lack of effort. The company's latest plan to reinvent itself kicked off Monday, with the purchase of SilverStream Software, a maker of development tools. Novell Chief Executive Chris Stone sees the deal as helping the company expand into the market for Web services--an increasingly popular way to develop software. If Novell successfully integrates SilverStream into its product line, it could possibly revive interest in Novell's NetWare operating system and directory services software as a Web services development package.

"You will find the Cosmoe 0.5.1 tarball on the download area of www.cosmoe.com. Please read the README before building to avoid problems. This version should compile cleanly under any gcc 2.96 through 3.1. I did not test under 2.95.x" Bill Hayden announced the release to the Cosmoe mailing list. This version should also build cleanly on PPC.

Caldera International Inc has maintained its commitment to the Unix operating systems it acquired from Santa Cruz Operation Inc, despite admitting that it currently has no plans to port Open Unix to Intel Corp's 64-bit Itanium processor. The story is at TheRegister, via ComputerWire.

nVidia Corporation, today introduced the Cg Language Specification - C for Graphics. Cg is a high level programming language that enables content developers to create cinematic-quality real-time graphics easier and faster. Developed in close collaboration with Microsoft Corporation, Cg gives developers a new level of abstraction, removing the need for them to program directly to the graphics hardware. The common, familiar C-like syntax enables rapid development of stunning, real-time shaders and visual effects for graphics platforms, and is compatible with Microsoft's recently announced High Level Shading Language for DirectX 9.0.

Mono is an open source implementation of the Microsoft.NET Framework, and ships with a C# compiler, a runtime engine (with a JIT on x86) and a set of class libraries. Mono is known to work on a number of platforms: x86/Linux, x86/Windows, x86/FreeBSD; sparc/solaris; linuxppc/linux; strongarm/linux. Download version 0.12, or read its release notes.