With the end of the year approaching, the Gnome Foundation has put together an appeal for help. You can also just head over to Gnome.org to contribute directly - and this year, they become a charity organization, meaning that contributions for US citizens will be tax deductions. Yay, tax deductions!

Miguel de Icaza writes "We have just released the new version of Mono the new version includes a working version of ASP.NET. The release includes a sample web server that "hosts" the ASP.NET runtime (it can be hosted anywhere, for instance in Apache, with mod_haydn). The web features of ASP.NET would not be very useful without the support of a backing database. The new version of Mono includes database providers for Oracle, MS SQL, Sybase, ODBC, OleDB, Gnome Data Access, SqLite, MySQL and of course, Postgres. The C# compiler is now 37% faster due to some nice optimizations on the JIT engine and in our class libraries. You can use it to develop GUI applications using Gtk#. Screenshots for mPhoto and the GUI debugger (which can debug both JITed apps and native applications). "

Gentu writes "OSNews had a quick chat with John Fowler, Sun Software's CTO about Solaris 10, Java, the web services competition and more. In the interview, Fowler reveals the timing in which Gnome2 will become the default desktop environment: Solaris 10, which is expected to have its first beta later in 2003. This is a huge step for Gnome2 in the UNIX world, as it will be replacing CDE for good as the default desktop environment (betas of Gnome 2 for Solaris 8/9 already exist) and becoming a standard part of the large operating environment with millions of installations worldwide. Additionally, Sun is now pushing developers on coding on either GTK+ 2.x or Java (they have in fact revealed plans on creating GTK+ bindings for Java which will make all future Solaris apps look like alike)."

An anonymous reader writes: "I'm a huge OS X/Gnome fan, but still highly respect the KDE project. I still try and keep up with it's developments and recently came across this posting on KDELook which proposed a totally new GUI design for KDE, which I think could be quite easily adopted in other environments as well. A rolling Slashdot discussion I think would help keep the open-source innovation going. Thoughts?" Update: 11/27 20:12 GMT by T : Amended to give credit where due, which in this case is to the anonymous submitter :)

proclus writes "A 40 gig Maxtor 3.5 inch, ATA/EIDE hard drive ready to go with GNU-Darwin OS pre-installed, plus GNU-Darwin Office, plus a full ports tree and select distfiles. This bundle includes Darwin-6.0.2, GNOME desktop, AbiWord, PyMOL, The GIMP, gdFortran, parallel computing, and much more. A triple CDR set is also included. Available now for ppc and x86 computers. The PPC version includes OpenOffice-1.0.1 and Mozilla-1.0. Compatibility is as specified for our OS installer CDs. Check out our updated ordering web page. (Mirror one mirror two.) You want it."

Tina Gasperson reports on NewsForge that Martin Schulze, Vice President of Software in the Public Interest, is resigning his position there to protest the lack of time he says fellow SPI higher-ups are devoting to the organization. Since SPI serves as a coordinating body for several large-scale Free software projects (like GNOME and OpenOffice.org), discord there should concern a lot of people. Update: 11/26 03:14 GMT by T : That should read "OpenSource.org," not "OpenOffice.org." Sorry.

e8johan asks: "I recently found the BusyBox project that combines tiny versions of many common UNIX utilities into a single small executable. It provides minimalist replacements for most of the utilities you usually find in GNU fileutils, shellutils, etc. The utilities in BusyBox generally have fewer options than their full-featured GNU cousins; however, the options that are included provide the expected functionality and behave very much like their GNU counterparts. As I look through the list of products and projects using BusyBox I find that most installers use it (RH, Slackware, Mandrake, Gentoo, etc.) As the footprint of this is very small, I came to wonder, are there any other smaller versions of common linux software. I found TinyX and the small linux project but I lack a proper desktop. Does anyone has a small desktop solution (like KDE or Gnome) to recommend. What I'm looking for is a proper desktop solution with common configurations tools, standardized IPC and common look-and-feel, not just another window manager."

Smoking writes "It seems that Oracle just released libraries to allow low cost Linux clustering solutions using firewire... Aside from the coolness factor (imagine a beowulf cluster of DV cameras...) it's quite new for Oracle to release GPL software. They also seem to include really useful tools for NIC failover, Wizard building framework and integration of the cluster into Gnome (via a gnomevfs plugin)."

lvv writes "Register: according to Sun's Jonathan Schwartz, Solaris - one of the most proprietary Unixes, might become LSB compliant OpenSolaris. Also some info about future of Solaris desktop (Gnome)."

krog asks: "I've recently signed a contract with a local middle school to replace their aged Apple /// cluster with a roomful of IBM Aptivas running Linux 7.3. Now surely I will be installing such ease-of-use tools as KDE3, Gnome, and screen, but I am looking for suggestions of other software to install. Anyone know of any good text editors/BASIC interpreters/shells/etc suitable for eight-year-old children?"

Andreas(R) writes "Red Hat Software has revealed that future versions of the distribution will hide the differences between command-line user interfaces, creating a 'more unified shell prompt experience'. 'I don't mind if they rebrand and unify the GNOME and KDE interfaces,' said one Linux longhair. 'Frankly, I rarely use GUIs. But when they start messing with my CLI, then it's personal. I'm not going to sit here and let Red Hat infect my beloved tcsh with those annoying quirks from bash." Ah, nothing like satire that only a small group will truly grok. *grin*

steveha writes "Colin Walters announced that GNOME 2 will go into Sid (the unstable branch of Debian) this Sunday. Good experimental packages have been available for a while, but there wasn't any upgrade from GNOME 1.x; you lost all your settings. Now there are transition scripts, and the Debian GNOME 2 developers would like people to test the transition scripts as much as possible before Sunday... to quote Colin Waters, '...if you haven't helped us out by testing them already, then you will be forced to anyways this Sunday :)'"

mingthemerciless asks: "The company I work for is developing accessible solutions for the visually impaired. Right now we are working on (yet another?)a screen reader for windows, but a linux version is on the drawing board...Linux screen readers like Speakup and Emacspeak either are console only or create virtual desktops. Is it viable to have a 'what you hear is what is on the screen' screenreader like JAWS on the current Linux desktop environments Like GNOME 2.0 or KDE 3.0?"

GonzoJohn writes "The official GNOME filemanager Nautilus was originally developed by Eazel as part of their plan to bring usability and beauty to the Unix desktop. Today Nautilus is maintained by veteran GNOME hackers Alexander Larsson and Dave Camp. Being such a core application in the GNOME desktop it is the topic of many discussions in and around GNOME. In a recent survey on gnomedesktop.org an interview about Nautilus was at the top of the wishlist. So to let everyone get the inside scope on what is happening with Nautilus currently I got hold of Alexander and Dave for a small interview.""

Ivan writes "Lunar Linux 1.0 was released today. It's a source based distribution, with gcc 3.2 and the latest versions of packages such as Mozilla 1.1, OpenOffice.org 1.0.1 and GNOME 2 and KDE 3. From the about page on their website: 'In the beginning Lunar was a fork of Sorcerer GNU Linux (SGL). The fork occurred in late January to early February of 2002 and was originally made up of a small group of people who wanted to collaboratively develop and extend the Sorcerer technology.' Download the ISOs here."

An anonymous reader writes "Do you use GNOME? How about GTK+, Sawfish, Metacity, Nautilus, or any other components? Well, then you may want to check out art.gnome.org. A great site, though not fully finished, you can't be anything but woowed by the quality and sexiness of these various pieces of art for your GNOME component. Please no Desktop Wars, just appreciate the work these people put into making GNOME prettier than ever!"

An anonymous reader writes "Neal Walfield announced the first release of RMGPT, which is (or rather, aspires to one day be) a complete, portable implementation of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 threads also known as POSIX threads. With this new pthreads library, it will soon be possible to run complex software packages on the Hurd, including the GNOME and KDE desktops, the OpenOffice suite, and the Mozilla web browser. Find more information here, including the humorous meaning behind RMGPT, and insight into a future Hurd release..."

An anonymous reader writes "A lot of people are angry over the changes RedHat has done to KDE and Gnome in their latest beta, code-named Null. They have basically "nullified" all the default themes and settings with which each desktop attempts to posture for more users. Instead, there is now a beautiful unified look. To explain RedHat's stance, Owen Taylor writes this piece here. I hope that RedHat successfully forces both Gnome and KDE to become compatible with one another which would result in the creation of a single desktop. This would be the greatest gift to the Linux world."

leandrod writes "The Register reports that members of KDE are committing to use and support mono, Ximian's independent .Net implementation. Not only does this provide KDE with some of the multilingual programmability it initially forfeited by its use of Qt, it also spells well for cross-desktop application and even KDE-Gnome desktop integration, because mono is developed by Gnome's most prominent ISV, Ximian, and is intended for Gnome integration." Update: 09/12 14:22 GMT by T : Actually, the Register story overstates things a bit, it seems. According to KDE developer Hetz Ben Hamo (heunique), "Yes, you can use QT# to write QT/KDE apps, but it doesn't mean that KDE will support mono. you can use kernel 2.4, but you can use any linux kernel or any other unix based OS." See also this comment from David Faure for more insight.

Motor writes: "The fine GTK/GNOME accessibility architecture work done by Sun Microsystems has won an award from the American Foundation for the Blind. See more details here. Accessibility is a vital feature for any desktop system hoping for widespread use, so this is great news."