The KDE Project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.1 beta2, the third development release of a significant feature upgrade for KDE 3. KDE 3 is the third generation of KDE's free, Internet-enabled desktop for Linux and other UNIXes. KDE 3.1, scheduled for final release in October 2002, will provide substantial improvements to the KDE desktop experience. As the KDE 3 API is frozen for binary compatibility, KDE 3.1 will be binary compatible with KDE 3.0.

Enterprises tend to choose Linux because they must consider the availability of professional service, the IT learning curve, and standards and interoperability, the Yankee Group's Laura DiDio said. Read the article at NewsFactor.

"Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake and others are just starting to bless us with a new round of desktop-oriented distributions – aka "distros". If you're finally considering Linux as a desktop OS, congratulations! And don't fret, we're here to help." Read Jim Lynch's article for ExtremeTech.

"My initial reaction to the Mandrake desktop was no different than before. The Mandrake desktop is fairly basic, maybe even ugly. First I installed the Windows fonts, then upgraded Freetype to enable the bytecode interpreter and things started looking a lot better. Then, I headed to pclinuxonline.com and downloaded some KDE and Gnome themes that Texstar has provided for Mandrake 9.0. KDE started looking as beautiful as my 8.2 install. To get a clean and consistent desktop, I use the Bluecurve theme that Texstar has provided from Redhat." Read it at RatedPC.

"You might be pretty happy with Windows XP. But Windows continues to suffer from more than its share of drawbacks: From the newer operating system's incompatibility with older software to Microsoft's well-known security problems, Windows still engenders a fair amount of user aggravation. Windows XP also subjects its users to the indignity of the Microsoft Product Activation service: You might have to ask Microsoft for a new key if you upgrade more than one or two major components." Watch the match at PCWorld.

Anyone knows of really cheap but good (==stable) server hosting with about 100 MB of web space and at least 25 GB of bandwidth allowance per month? Please let us know, as we are completely out of bandwidth for the month (this is why screenshots for older articles do not work anymore, our mirrors for images are disabled). Because of the way our mirroring system works, the server should support direct linking to files (not to require to load images together with ads or via web page instead of direct linking), while SSH support is surely preferrable but not required. If you are a hosting provider and you would like to sponsor us for an exchange of a linked logo/button on our site, we are open for discussing the possiblity. We do not need fancy features (eg. mysql, php), just LOTS of bandwith for cheap!

Beginning Tuesday, buyers of new Macs can pick up the full version of Office v. X for $199, or about $200 less than the full purchase price. Read the story at C|Net News.com.

PaulOS is a low-latency, single-threaded embedded operating system for 16, 32, and 64-bit microprocessors. It is written to allow applications to be developed under GNU/Linux or FreeBSD and then recompiled for the target platform. It features POSIX file descriptors, a TCP stack (LwIP) with BSD socket API, an ANSI C library, and a DNS resolver library. A number of GNU/Linux network applications have already been ported.

"It will never beat Windows on the desktop, but the Linux operating system has an undeniable charm in the world of corporate computing: It's free. Microsoft's Bill Gates may be richer, but when it comes to unvarnished business aggression, no one in the high-tech world can top Larry Ellison, the 58-year-old founder and CEO of Oracle. This is a man cocky enough to fly his own fighter jet, competitive enough to have his minions pilfer Gates' trash, and mean enough to verbally flog his executives in public. He's worth $14 billion, making him the fourth-wealthiest American at last count, and unlike his peers who demur on the subject of money, Ellison isn't afraid to admit that he loves being rich." At Fortune.com.

"Much has been written about the virtues of .Net. But as Builder.com's Lamont Adams pointed out in a recent article, "I'm confused...What is '.Net' anyway?," the developer world is a long way from adopting .Net as the de facto standard for development tools." Read the editorial at ZDNews. Another related .Net article is to be found at ZDNews: "Why .NET will benefit other platforms".

Gentoo, Lindows and Lycoris arguably were the big surprises of the year in the Linux land, but everyone is waiting the release of Red Hat 8.0 with, possibly, the biggest anticipation ever for a Linux distribution. Since Red Hat posted the Limbo and Null betas, fans of the most popular distribution on earth were making waves and even called this new version a Windows killer. Does this really hold up though? Will Red Hat be successful on their quest to infiltrate the business workstation/destkop market? Read more to find out and view some of the high resolution screenshots we have for you! UPDATE: Red Hat 8 is out! ZDNews has an article about the new release of Red Hat 8.0.

"First, usability is often thought of as how easily a process can be completed on the first try. A process does not have to be 100% brain free in order for it to be highly usable. The best interface is also efficient. A GUI should be accessible both with the keyboard and with the mouse." Read Matt Grab's article on usability, found on his home page.

"What is configuration in Linux? What do experienced system administrators do when they need to, for example, modify the access rights to a Web site or change the network settings for their server? Invariably, they're going to login into the machine and edit a text file using a Unix editor such as vi or Emacs. That by itself isn't that bad, but depending on which application you want to configure and which Linux distribution you happen to be using, the location of the file you need to edit (and maybe even the format of the file) could be completely unknown." Read the article at FreshMeat.

The wait for Xandros Desktop is almost over. The product will first be available in box with a manual from the Xandros web site. The company says that the manufacturer indicates the product should be available for shipping in the week of October 21. OSNews recently hosted a preview of their distro. Update: PCLinuxOnline reviews Xandros Desktop beta 3.