The KDE Project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.0.1, the third generation of KDE's free. KDE 3.0.1 is primarily a translation release for KDE 3.0, which shipped in early April. In addition, KDE 3.0.1 offers a number of performance and usability enhancements. For an extended list of changes since KDE 3.0, please see the change log. Our Take: I spent most of the day yesterday compiling KDE 3.01 from source on my Red Hat 7.2 box. Here's a screenshot.

"Sun releases Solaris 9, along with a plan to integrate its Sun One Java application server software into the operating system. Could the move change the competitive landscape in a lucrative market?" Read the extended series of articles at ZDNews about the release of Solaris 9.

The Lycoris folks have posted a screenshot of the new, web-based, Control Center for their KDE desktop of the Lycoris Desktop/LX operating system. The Update2 of the OS will be released soon.

Sun Microsystems announced version 9 of its Solaris operating system on Wednesday along with a Microsoft-reminiscent strategy to integrate higher-level components. Solaris 9 comes bundled with the Sun Open Network Environment (Sun ONE) directory server, used for keeping track of network information. And by the end of 2003, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based server seller also will build into Solaris its application server for e-business tasks and Web server software for hosting Web sites. Solaris 9 is available only for the SPARC platform.

Some days ago we hosted a head to head review of Bochs, VMWare Workstation and VirtualPC. I received a number of emails asking why I haven't included Netraverse's Win4Lin in the article. The main reason was because Win4Lin is not an emulator in the "traditional" sense of the word; neither it runs under Windows XP, where our previous test were conducted. In fact, Win4Lin can only run Dos and Win9x/ME, under Linux. We got hold of the brand new version of Win4Lin, version 4.0, and here is our review accompanied by some screenshots we grabbed for you.

Scott Robert Ladd has updated his GCC versus Intel C++ compiler benchmarks. This time round he includes updated results of the recently released GCC 3.1. The new version of GCC seems to be much better than its 3.0.4 predecessor, and GCC 3.1 even wins some benchmarks it lost previously over ICC. Overall, ICC remains a much faster C/C++ compiler, but GCC has successfully narrowed the gap. Read Scott's interesting conclusion at the end of the article too.

"The Palm handheld computing platform is moving ahead with advanced new technology, but users and developers shouldn't expect to see a big change overnight, according to company unit PalmSource." Read the rest of the report at News.com.

We were the first to feature the world preview of gobeProductive 3 for Windows, the popular office suite, and now we have for you five brand new screenshots of the upcoming, GTK+ based, Linux version. Dig in for the goodies!

This article at InformIT (free reg. req'd), provides a brief introduction to optimization on the Solaris Operating Environment. To explore this subject in more detail, refer to Rajat Garg's and Ilya Sharapov's Sun BluePrints book, "Techniques for Optimizing Applications," published July 2001.

The release of Apple's latest hardware offerings this month has caused quite a stir among Apple loyalists. This is only Apple's second foray into creating a truly dedicated server machine, the first of which being the "Network Server 500/700", which Apple sold in 1995 running AIX. The question on everyone's mind now is going to be what this means for Apple's prospects as a server platform. Certainly everyone agrees that the new machine looks nice, but how will it on the duties it will be required to perform. Furthermore, what kind of price/performance ratio is Apple offering when compared to the current group of servers.

"Operating systems need to evolve from performing traditional file management and I/O tasks to learning and accommodating user behaviors, a Microsoft executive said Tuesday during a keynote presentation at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference here." Read the article at InfoWorld.

"The GNOME 2.0 Desktop Beta 5 release, "Reciprocity", is ready for your bug-busting and testing pleasure! It is now available for immediate download. The GNOME 2.0 Desktop is a greatly improved user environment for existing GNOME applications. Enhancements include anti-aliased text and first class internationalisation support, new accessibility features for disabled users, and many improvements throughout GNOME's highly regarded user interface." Read more at LinuxToday.

"Far from bringing openness and cooperation to the world of IT, Linux enthusiasts want to keep it as closed as possible - while collecting lavish praise from half-baked anti-capitalists - so they can carry on feeling self-important. After all, if these geeks could write real software, they'd be working for a proper company. Like Microsoft." Read the editorial at Spiked. IMNSHO: Some of the author's points are valid. But for the most part, speaking as a woman to woman, she just needs a good spanking.

America Online has dropped Internet Explorer from a test version of its software for MacOSX, the latest sign that the Internet giant wants a rematch in the browser wars with Microsoft. Read more at ZDNews.