This release marks a milestone for PC-BSD, by moving to the latest FreeBSD 7-Stable and also incorporating the KDE 4.1.1 desktop. Users will immediately notice the improved visual interface that KDE 4.1.1 offers, as well as a large improvement in hardware support and speed from the update to FreeBSD 7-Stable. PC-BSD 7 also offers a large and growing library of self-contained PBI files available for installation, and improvments for other locales on our PBI Directory website. This release also offers new methods of installation, including a DVD, USB and Internet/network install. Note: Here is an interview with the lead developer of PC-BSD.

It's been nearly 18 months since the last major Xfce release - Xfce 4.4, to be exact. Xfce 4.6 was supposed to go final this month, but the Xfce team didn't meet the deadline. Instead, they released the first alpha release of Xfce 4.6, and Phoronix summarises the most important changes, including a number of screenshots.

As some of you may have noticed, I'm slightly obsessed with my Aspire One netbook, and actually, with netbooks in general. They are great little devices, more powerful than you'd give them credit for upon first encounter. And, but that might just be me, netbooks are what laptops should have been from day one: truly portable. El Reg has put together a buyer's guide for today's netbooks, and while the guide is generally spot-on with its assessments, it does present some odd choices here and there. Read on for some of my own thoughts grown out of experience.

The third release of Syllable Server has been published. This is the first release that focused on making the system actually usable as a server. A number of popular servers were added and configured, and also several innovative REBOL software stacks. Out of the imaginary box, Syllable Server is now ready for such things as accepting remote SSH log-ins over the network, running a web server on the Cheyenne REBOL server, running an FTP server and several more. Special attention has been paid to programmability, with support for developing Model-View-Controller web applications in QuarterMaster and networking applications with the REBOL/Services Service Oriented Architecture. The Genode Nitpicker windowing system is also included. Read the rest in the full changelog. An extensive manual was also written. Both a BitTorrent download (preferred) and a regular download are available (80MB 7-Zip archive).

Chrome is open source, and there's clearly still some work to be done on it. In this article Neil McAllister decided to take a peek under Chrome's hood and view it through the eyes of the developers who will improve and maintain it in the coming years. And it seems Google's open source browser has much to offer prospective hackers (provided they use Windows).

Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth announced Wednesday that his company, Canonical, will hire professional designers and interaction experts to improve the usability of the Linux desktop software ecosystem. They will work closely with upstream developers to bring a better experience to users of the open source operating system.

OSNews has been reporting on the Debian/Ubuntu/GNU/Opensolaris hybrid for several years. But for those of you who've never looked more closely at this interesting OS, a Nexenta developer has laid out some of its more noteworthy features and advantages.

Professor Roberto Ierusalimschy offers an in-depth examination of what he believes to be the most successful programming language not born in a developed country.

A lazy sysadmin is a good sysadmin. Time spent in finding more-efficient shortcuts is time saved later on for that ongoing project of "reading the whole of the internet", so try Linux Format's 10 handy tips to make your admin life easier.

How could someone make a more powerful editing tool than vi, you may ask? The answer is Vim, and this article provides details on the many enhancements that have made Vim a highly used and acceptable editor in the world of UNIX and Linux.

It has been one year and four days since X.Org 7.3 was released and a number of months since X.Org 7.4 was supposed to be released, but today X.Org 7.4 is scheduled to finally make it out the door! This release is shipping quite late and with a slimmed down set of features, but in this article we have more details on what this release holds in store for the Linux desktop community and why it may be a short-lived release.

jQuery is emerging as the JavaScript library of choice for developers looking to ease their creation of dynamic Rich Internet Applications. As browser-based applications continue to replace desktop applications, the use of these libraries will only continue to grow. See jQuery in action, its easy syntax, how to use jQuery correctly in your own JavaScript code in your browser app, and how to avoid any pitfalls when using it with other libraries.

Everyone's favourite perpetual beta operating system, SkyOS, has introduced a concept of an interesting new feature, whose inspiration came from a feature on the Playstation 3. The feature is kind of like an always-accessible (even during the boot process) version of Front Row, which you can access using a mouse gesture or a shortcut. It then allows you to access and play all your media files. "So whenever you want to quickly listen to music you don't have to open a dedicated music player. Simply enter crossbar, select your song and return to the desktop. Crossbar has been designed to make this as fast and as straight forward as possible." Click read more for a video.

When Google released its new (and first) browser a few days ago (Chrome), many praised that move or welcomed this new player into the arena, but many others simply were a bit surprised and wondered if a new browser was really needed when this market already features IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Konqueror and a plethora of smaller ones. While IE is still leader, those who aren't satisfied with it have a good choice of alternatives, especially in Firefox and Opera. So fasten your seat belt to join me in a ride which will attempt to explain why this browser war could be a threat to Google's very foundation and why Chrome is maybe the most important move Google could have done to protect itself.