"A few weeks ago, MEPIS released SimplyMEPIS 6.5. The latest version of the Ubuntu-based desktop distribution offers a number of interesting new features, including a 64-bit release and Beryl for 3-D desktop effects. After spending a fair amount of time with the release, I found it to be a worthy update to earlier versions of MEPIS."

Microsoft plans to make some of the security improvements and features it built into Office 2007 available for Office 2003. Service Pack 3 for Office 2003 will be focused on security, said Joshua Edwards, a technical product manager for Office at Microsoft.

This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions about how to install the free VMware Server (version 1.0.2) on a Debian Etch system. With VMware Server you can create and run guest operating systems (virtual machines) such as Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, etc. under a host operating system. This has the benefit that you can run multiple operating systems on the same hardware which saves a lot of money, and you can move virtual machines from one VMware Server to the next one (or to a system that has the VMware Player which is also free). Also, VMware acquired the VDI provider Propero.

"Microsoft Corp. posted a 65 percent rise in quarterly profit Thursday, topping Wall Street estimates thanks to better than expected demand for its new Windows Vista operating system." More here.

Novell openSUSE project has had a recent history of trouble with its update programs. Now, to make updating openSUSE more pleasant, the project is dropping its support for ZENworks and opening up YAST to community development. DesktopLinux.com has the story here and some other info here.

It was another small step forward for Oracle Enterprise Linux this week as a handful of ISVs pledged support, but it's still a long road ahead for the Red Hat clone. Says searchenterpriselinux, "The news came a day after Oracle announced that a handful of other hardware ISVs had also pledged to support its brand of Linux. For Tony Iams, a senior analyst with Rye Brooke, N.Y.-based Ideas International Ltd., the news was indicative of an upward trend for the company's Linux distribution, which was launched in October."

Adobe Systems plans to open-source Flex, its development framework for building Flash and Apollo-based applications. The company on Wednesday is expected to announce the move, which will start when it releases a beta of the next version of Flex, code-named Moxie, in June.

"The Fedora Project is pleased to announce the release of the fourth and final test release of Fedora 7! Test 4 is for beta users." Announcement and release notes here. Update: Screenshots.

NeoSmart has the goods on the release of Windows Longhorn Server Beta 3, and the availability of public ISO images for x86, x64, and Itanium versions of the English, German, and Japanese localizations of the various Windows Server flavors. According to NeoSmart, it's the same as the April CTP, but with some bug fixes and compiler optimizations.

"Apple Inc. surpassed even the most optimistic forecasts for its usually tepid second quarter, delivering an 88 percent increase in profit on strong sales of Macintosh computers and iPod music players," Laurie J. Flynn reports for The New York Times." There were 1.52 mil Macs and 10 mil iPods sold in the quarter. Elsewhere, check this article on Macs in the enterprise.

Ubuntu Open Week is a series of IRC meetings of people behind the distribution and the community. Mark Shuttleworth answered various questions on Tuesday and Wednesday. The interview covers many issues, including: GPL v3, proprietary software, Microsoft's $3 project, Launchpad, non-free stuff in Ubuntu, April 19th siege of ubuntu.com, Canonical vs. Ubuntu Foundation, becoming F/OSS contributor. Full logs are available on Ubuntu wiki. Ubuntu News has a digest with the most interesting pieces. Also, another interview with Mark is here and four interesting Ubuntu articles are here, here, here and here.

"Last Wednesday, a company called Falling Leaf Systems announced the availability of an alpha of something called the Alky Project. The Alky Project has a lofty goal: to liberate DirectX 10 gaming from the confines of Vista and bring it first to Windows XP, and then to Linux and OS X. The project plans to do this by building a converter that can take in a DX10 game executable and spit out a modified version that can be run on a (non-Vista) target OS. The target OS must be x86-based, which rules out the PPC version of OS X, since the converter doesn't do any binary translation."

Paul Thurrott reviews the latest CTP of Windows Home Server. "I remain excited about WHS and while one might easily come up with a number of features they'd like to see added to the product - a server-based version of Media Center comes to mind - know this: This is the initial version of WHS, Microsoft plans to keep improving it over time, and they're listening to your suggestions and ideas. As with the first version of Media Center, the technology is in a nascent stage but is already quite compelling. If this first version of WHS is so good, I can only imagine what the future holds."

"Desktop search engines are all the rage these days. While Beagle may be the most popular desktop search engine for Linux, there are alternatives. If you are looking for a lightweight and easy-to-use yet powerful desktop search engine, you might want to try Recoll. Unlike Beagle, Recoll doesn't require Mono, it's fast, and it's highly configurable. Recoll is based on Xapian, a mature open source search engine library that supports advanced features such as phrase and proximity search, relevance feedback, document categorization, boolean queries, and wildcard search."