Thom Holwerda Archive

"Excellent open source Outlook Express alternatives are available which provide similar and additional features. Such is the case with Mozilla's Thunderbird, which is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux users. Moving away from Outlook Express is a no-brainer, as our screen shots illustrate."

"Gideon is a versatile GUI designer for GTK/C++. The goal of the project is to provide an easy-to-use RAD tool for C++ programmers who want to create multi-platform GTK-based GUI applications. Gideon is not overloaded but strives to provide all necessary features and remain 'simple and lightweight' to end user. Gideon is highly productive for experts and accessible for newcomers."

Recently, we informed you about a growing conflict concerning the source code to Lycoris' Desktop/LX. This led to accusations being thrown both ways, leaving many users in the dark on whether or not the source code will ever be released. This article tries to explain what's really going on, and lists the facts.

A new release of Blackbox in the latest 0.70 series is now out: 0.70.1 cumulates new features and bugfixes added to CVS over the last 8 months. Read on for a list of the most notable changes.

Samba Team co-founder John H. Terpstra kicks off a six-part, two-month series that can help Linux administrators master Samba-3 management. This first installment introduces the Samba series and covers a tutorial on Windows network ID basics.

Silicon Graphics Inc. today issued a melancholy press release confirming that it has been kicked off the New York Stock Exchange, and will now trade as a 'penny stock'. SGI was the high-bandwidth, visualization-rich, media-savvy computer systems company that flourished in a decade when media pundits clamored for a winner in what they called 'the convergence space'. SGI obliged, and spared nothing - for a while its budgets were flush for R&D and fancy architecture. "Oh, SGI, we loved you and you screwed up. Bigtime."

Sun Tuesday launched the latest assault on the proprietary Microsoft Word document format by offering a new Sun Grid utility service that will convert Word files into ODF. Another Sun Grid utility will convert text files into audio files for podcasts or for playback on Web sites, said Tom Goguen, vice president with Sun's software group.

The Schillix OpenSolaris project has announced its second release, SchilliX 0.2, and a Live CD available for download. Highlights of 0.2 include 30 second boot time, boot from CD or USB-stick, installation to hard drive, and self-healing services. Software includes cdrecord, star, bash, bz2, fakeroot, gmake, gpatch, gtar, gzip, pod2man, texinfo, unzip, wget and much more.

Firefox 1.5 RC1 has been released. New and improved features include automated updates, better navigating performance, drag and drop re-ordering for browser tabs, better support for Mac OS X, and much more.

Glynn Foster wrote on his blog that Sun's throwing away the desktop which is based on GNOME because of different problems they see in maintaining it. There is also a full article about it on LXer.

Eclipse is an open source community focused on developing a universal platform of frameworks and tools that make it easy and cost-effective to build and deploy software. This article gives you information about the latest version of Eclipse, and a guide to some of the most interesting Eclipse projects. Learn what Eclipse is good for, why it is important, how you can get started, and where to learn more about it.

Microsoft on Tuesday took the lid off its highly anticipated line of online services, called Windows Live and Office Live. The company has been quick to say that the new products are not meant to replace traditional desktop software, but instead are intended to enhance the Windows experience.

The Open Source Business Conference here will open on Tuesday to the news from the Free Standards Group that the Linux Standards Base has been approved as an ISO standard.

It could be a pivotal week for Microsoft Office - or not. A new move by Google and a pending announcement from Microsoft are generating widespread speculation about the future of the Redmond company's flagship productivity software and its competition.