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Trolltech Releases Qt 3.2

Trolltech today announced the release of Qt, version 3.2. Qt, Trolltech's C++ multiplatform application framework, is the industry-leading C++ tool used to create applications that run natively on Windows, Linux/Unix and Mac OS X, all from the same codebase. The release of Qt 3.2 includes hundreds of enhancements and features that enable developers to build high-performance, low-maintenance multiplatform applications.

Computer History Museum: Get In Touch With History

The mission of the newly re-opened Computer History Museum (CHM) in Mountain View, California, is to preserve and present for posterity the artifacts and stories of the information age. As such, we wouldn't miss the opportunity to visit the museum last weekend, trying to be part and have a "feel" of how computers where like before the desktop home computers took off only two decades ago. Before that time, computers were much different, and I am sure that every geek on this planet would like to witness how they looked and felt like. Read more for the report and plenty of pictures from our visit.

Red Hat Linux 10 Beta: First Look

"There aren't many major changes, just a bunch of minor tweaks. Most of these are welcome additions though. The one gripe I have is that Red Hat doesn't seem sure if they want to have this be a desktop for the average, not-very technical person (e.g., they hide the boot messages) or be one for the more advanced or technical user (e.g., Emacs is installed by default for a personal desktop)." Read the review at Linux-Universe. Screenshots are here.

BeFree 0.1.1 Released

The second version of BeFree has been released today. This is the first pre-0.2 version with a new design, which consists of some system calls for the Linux kernel instead of a user-space daemon. It is beta quality and may have bugs.The release notes are here. BeFree recently abandoned its FreeBSD-centric platform for the Linux one.

REAL Software Announces Linux, VB Strategy

REAL Software announced that the next version of REALbasic will generate native applications for Linux (in addition to Mac Classic, Mac OS X and Windows). The IDE is not ported, you will have to cross-compile a Linux binary. And they now have a Visual Basic migration tool that will help developers port their VB applications to these other platforms.

G5/2GHz MP Performance Data compared to the G4/1.42GHz MP

Bare Feats has some interesting benchmarks to show: Fastest G5 so far to the fastest G4 MP. G5 is much faster on memory operations, but not all operations are faster than the G4. Bare Feats says that until developers optimize their code for the G5, users won't see G5 being speedier than G4 on all tests. Same thing happens with all new CPUs though, including the P4s which included a new instruction set and developers had to compile for it in order to take advantage of what it really had to offer.

Is this the End of Free Linux?

"If SCO has its way, the Linux community will suffer a setback, but longer term will prevail. A good way to avoid the SCO scenario is for the open source community to take more responsibility for ensuring that its code doesn't violate established patents and copyrights. In an interview with News.com, Linux founder Linus Torvalds said it's not the responsibility of engineers to look up patent information. He's right, but someone other than the engineering crew supporting the open source community will need to provide some oversight. It's part of the maturing of Linux and open source: We have our copyright and patent lawyers, they have theirs." Read Farber's editorial at ZDNet.

Gtkmm 2.2.5 Released

Gtkmm is a C++ interface for popular GUI library gtk+. gtkmm provides convenient interface for C++ programmers to create graphical user interfaces with Gtk's flexible OO framework. Highlights include type safe callbacks, widgets extensible using inheritance and over 110 classes that can be freely combined to quickly create complex user interfaces. gtkmm is free software distributed under LGPL. Read the announcement of Gtkmm 2.2.5 here.

20% Linux Market Share is all we Need

"Let's get over Linus Torvalds' old "world domination" goal (which was a joke), stop gnashing our teeth over The Evils of Microsoft, and think rationally about what percentage of the world's desktops we really need to switch to Linux. I figure 10% would be a minimum, and 20% would be more than enough. Enough for what? For everything we really want." Read the editorial at NewsForge by Roblimo.

Lindows Debuts Web Kiosk

Lindows.com announced a dedicated web kiosk on Tuesday morning, intended to prevent users from accidentally making catastrophic changes to the machines. However, the new $169 WebStation also foregoes a hard drive, requiring a user to work with documents stored on the Web or on a floppy disk. Certain versions of Lindows.com's new kiosk also seal the CD-ROM drive inside the case, preventing additional retail software from being added later.

Getting freedesktop.org to the Next Level; XFCE 4.0-RC2 Available

Havoc Pennington outlined recently the steps required to bring the freedesktop.org effort --to unite the specs/protocols of the X11-based DEs for better interoperability-- closer to its goal. Read more of the discussion in their list. On other X11 news, XFCE 4.0-RC2 was released for testing. UPDATE: Here is a screenshot of XFCE 4-RC2 running on Red Hat Linux "Severn" beta.