"I guess I started it, this round at least. In this space last week I discussed what I saw (and see) as a disconnect between users of KDE and those who develop it. A few days later, Shawn Gordon offered a moderating view. Soon others weighed in. Many people grew angry. I'm sorry for that, but I think that if the use of Linux is to become more widespread, the questions demand answers: What, if anything, is the responsibility of developers to users? How does this affect the future of Linux as a desktop operating system?" Read the editorial at LinuxAndMain.

"AMD fanboys have taken on the characteristics of Apple computer lovers, and are hell bent on destroying the plucky little microprocessor vendor with smothering love, if you can call it love. They're trashing the company. For the love of AMD, let's all stake our claim to independence and run the colonizing freakazoids off the Web before they impose more of their imperious ways on the rest of the PC market. Happy fourth." Read the editorial at TomsHardware.

This is the second Lindows/Wal-Mart review coming out in a short while, and this one, is truly a must read. The author is a journalist that have used Windows, but he is not a Unix user. Trying to test Lindows he got into similar trouble as David Coursey did two weeks ago, when he tried Red Hat Linux. While Mike Langberg of San Jose Mercury News used a supposedly "desktop-oriented" Linux distribution, Lindows, as opposed to the server-oriented and marketed Red Hat, he still found it very unfriendly for common tasks like changing the refresh rates of a monitor.

The Cosmoe 0.5.4 release is a relatively minor update which further improves the configuration script and the Makefiles that it touches. New in this release is the ability to create a DirectFB-enabled target.

Less than two months since the release of Red Hat Linux 7.3, Red Hat already released a 5-CD beta of their upcoming version of Red Hat Linux, codenamed Limbo. The beta includes Gnome 2.0, KDE 3.0.1, GCC 3.1, Mozilla 1.0, OpenOffice 1.0 and much more.

libferris is a virtual filesystem (VFS) that runs in the user address space. This means that applications using libferris will use the shared libraries API to access the filesystem which may then delegate to the kernel using libc to perform the desired actions. Operating in the user address space allows libferris to mount things that one would generally not want the kernel to mount. For example libferris mount Berkeley database files, ftp sites, XML files, rpm files, sockets, sysv IPC, mysql databases and remote computers using ssh as a filesystem.

"It was with great anticipation that I began looking at Wal-Mart's latest offering: a Microtel PC with LindowsOS preloaded. I had reviewed the OS-less Microtel computer from Wal-Mart a few weeks ago and I hoped that this, the first consumer-focused Linux-based PC to appear from a major U.S. retailer, would be a great product for Linux newbies. Unfortunately, no matter how much I try to like this system, I am not comfortable recommending it to novice users." Read the review at NewsForge.

The company, along with Java backers, is preparing a new release of its Java software for cell phones that it hopes will prevent a splintering of the Java market and stave off rivals such as Microsoft. Read the report at News.com.

OSNews receives a lot of visitors every day, and while we try to equally report on all operating systems, including the commercial ones, most of our readership remains focused on open source. We have put together two polls for you, one to vote for your favorite Linux distribution and one of for your favorite X11 window manager or desktop environment. Read more and vote!

"MandrakeSoft would gain nothing by joining United Linux, and doing so would damage our reputation. Joining United Linux could destroy many of the features that have made Mandrake Linux so widely popular, such as our "easy to install, easy to use" approach. It should be noted that several recent polls indicate that the four United Linux companies currently rank lower than Mandrake Linux in market share." Read the rest of the MandrakeSoft's position on UnitedLinux.

"SGI is widely expected to make a statement of direction that will see the company push Itanium-based machines employing open source systems and middleware software along side its MIPS-based Origin servers and Onyx visualization systems (think of it as workstations created directly from slices of a parallel supercomputer and you'll get the right idea), which run the Irix variant of Unix." Read the story.

Remember the Pepper competition on OSNews two months ago? This is a quick note to let you know that Pepper, the popular Windows/MacOS editor, is now available on FreeBSD and Linux (x86/PPC).

There's a new article on computer commentary site "The Idea Basket" detailing the features and importance of the Rendezvous networking protocol that will be shipping with next major release of Mac OS X. It should be a very interesting read for many computer users, as Rendezvous will profoundly affect the way people use their Macs as well as other computer systems in a networked setting.

Today Microsoft launched Microsoft Visual J# .NET, a development tool for Java-language developers building applications and services on the Microsoft .NET Framework.