Gather round kids and let me tell you a story. A story of "Convergence": a nasty buzzword many of us have dreampt of in hot lusty dreams that we wouldn't admit to our mothers. The dream is the borged media box: combining the functionality of your Tivo, your MP3 Box, DVD Player, CD Player, and so much more. It's not here yet despite lots of trying, but its getting closer.

A zillion people took time out of their busy day to submit that Ximian 1.4 is out. Now it includes nautilus (which I continue to be lukewarm on. It likes to barf on huge directories, and I prefer efm's integrated command line) as well as Mozilla (which is good to see included with the distribution although again, I think I prefer konqueror). But the Ximian desktop is super solid and great for beginners, and includes lots of useful stuff. I'll be apt-get'ing the latest revision asap.

Boban Acimovic writes "New Mandrake 8.0 is finally out. Official announcement will come today, but new ISO files are already on some of mirrors. Main improvements are kernel =2.4.3, KDE =2.1.1, GNOME 1.4, Nautilus 1.0, Evolution 0.9, XFree86 =4.0.3, RPM 4.0, improved installer with pictures and other nice stuff. Enjoy!" Thanks to Gael Duval, from Mandrake for letting me know - the main features are listed as well as the new features page. But one of the cooler parts is a new part with Mandrake-Linux that will let you donate to the Free Software project of your choice in Mandrake - that's at at Linux-Mandrake.com. Update: 04/19 12:27 PM by H :Newsforge has got a article with more mirrors as well.

miguel writes "Today we announced that David Patrick has joined Ximian as our CEO. Nat which we all love has stepped down from this role and will now be in charge of our products (he insists that people call him `VP of Product Management' although to me he will always be Commander Nat "Fleebety Jeebits" Friedman). David is a great guy, his experience in the field will Ximian and GNOME tremendously." He's got old timer creds (Wordstar? Geezus).

Updates and revisions for you on various and sundry stories you've seen here recently, from Parrot to Linux on handhelds to the recent judgement against MP3.com and more. Read on below to find them.

Bob Young prefaces his answers to your questions by saying, "You may notice I've ducked some of the answers below - there is a reason for this. My role at Red Hat these days is as Chairman of the board. Matthew Szulik is Red Hat's CEO and will be a better person to answer some of the specific issues that these questions raise....

Doug Miller (no relation) is an amazingly affable and unflappable man. This interview came about because I asked Doug face-to-face if he'd do it when we met after a panel discussion he was part of in Washington DC a few weeks ago. He said "sure" without even a second's hesitation, let alone checking with PR people. His answers to the 10 selected questions we sent him are 100% straight-up. You may not like everything he says (devout Free Software people probably won't like any of it), but Doug Miller deserves your respect (and courtesy) for telling it like it is -- at least from Microsoft's point of view -- without a hint of weaseling.

Roanld Bultje writes: "According to this article on LinuxToday, Gnome 1.4 has just been released! Gnome and all other required packages can be downloaded from Gnome's FTP or a mirror. Medusa seems to have been removed from the final release due to some bugs that were found recently. Let's hope that this new release puts Gnome next to KDE's 2.x-version." Download.gnome.org will pick a mirror site for you automagically.

GlockaDe writes: "FreeBSD is now a supported platform for the GNOME project. This means that now, new GNOME releases will not ship unless they successfully build and run on FreeBSD. The actual note is buried in these minutes."

infodragon writes: "Here is a good interview with the project lead of Berlin. It is very informative and interesting, they talk about technologies such as gtk+, bonobo, corba ... If Berlin takes off it looks like X-Windows may have a competitor." That project head is Stefan Seefeld, and Seefeld gives good answers to questions like whether GNOME can or will be ported to Berlin, and how Berlin can hope to win converts from the millions of Xf86 users.

raelity writes "CNet is running a story about Ximian, nee Helix Code, planning to bring Web Services a la Microsoft's .NET to *nix operating systems by incorporating "SOUP" (a play on SOAP) into the Gnome user interface. "While tech kingpins such as Microsoft and Oracle have rushed to one-up each other in introducing Web-delivered software, Ximian is doing work behind the scenes to make sure Web services can run on the Linux and Unix operating systems.""

Maciej Stachowiak writes: "The GNOME 1.4 Release Team is proud to announce GNOME 1.4 Beta 2 "Hit Me Baby, One More Time". This is only a beta and there may be problems with compiling and running. However, if you are adventurous and would like to help with testing, get it from your favorite GNOME mirror site in /pub/gnome/stable/betas/gnome-1.4beta2. We would also like to announce the GNOME Fifth Toe 1.4 Beta 2 release, a collection of additional packages that are not part of the core desktop but designed to work well with GNOME. This should also be available on gnome mirrors in /pub/gnome/stable/betas/gnome-fifth-toe-1.4beta2. Bug reports for most packages should go in one of the following, depending on the module: GNOME Bugzilla, Eazel Bugzilla or Ximian Bugzilla."

Navarre asks: "While I really like the GNOME desktop, and it's good to see that it's being taken up by HP and Sun, I noticed that it's a little weak on manpages. While I know that GNU prefers Info pages, I personally hate them and greatly prefer man. It's bad enough already when half the GNU apps I use refuse to give decent manpages in favour of info. Now GNOME includes help in HTML format, but no manpages that I've seen. Are we now at a point where we cannot survive on a Unix box without some kind of web browser? What happened to that great common-demoninator of a terminal, troff and a pager? The minimum bloat on Linux continues to increase, and I question if it's a good thing. How much trouble is it to include a manpage anyway?" I'm all for better documentation in formats that have richer functionality than troff, but let's not forget that man pages have worked for years and is still standard on just about every Unix system out there. I'm not as much of a fan of GNU Info, but that's probably more due to my familiarity with man than anything else. How do you all feel? Should we retire man for info or HTML (you can always use lynx)? Or do you think man pages still have a place on modern Unix systems?

Ur@eus sent us this: "We at Linuxpower have just put up an interview with Erik Walthinsen, lead developer on GStreamer. GStreamer is a full featured MultiMedia framework which recently got commercial backing from RidgeRun Inc.. GStreamer has also been chosen to be featured at GUADEC 2. For those interested in Multimedia on Linux there is a new version available from the GStreamer homepage today."

assbarn writes "Ximian has announced that they have released Red Carpet, their new updater application and software management tool. This marks a huge improvement over their old updater service, with full dependencies (a la apt) for both RPM and dpkg systems, and a channel system that can provide any kind of software to your Linux system." I've included their release below - check it out for more information.

The folks at GNOME have released GNOME 1.4 beta 1, code name "oops, we did it again". You can find the packages at your favorite mirror. If you're testing, then please fill the bug reports in the "right place" (either Eazel's bugzilla or Ximian Bugzilla). Good work, guys.

Dan93 writes: "Here is an article on what is planned for GNOME 2.0. Pretty interesting stuff such as GNOME VFS, and the cleanup work that is supposed to fix every known architectural problem in GNOME." Also, I heard at LWCE as well from the Eazel folks that by this point in the evolution (ha ha) of GNOME, the nearly-ready-for-prime-time Eazel desktop will be included as well.

algorithm_x asks: "I visit regularly and read everything that comes down the pipe. But I rarely ever see anything about Linux education. In an Microsoft ruled world we have classes on how to use every piece of software there is. So why not a Linux literacy class? I did just this thing! I am a PC Repair, and Networking Instructor at the Continuing Education Center here in Conway. My problem is that there is no set precedent and know of no one who has ever done such a thing. What curriculum should I use? Which distro should we use as a base? I start with the shell (bash) and work from there to installation, to X11 (KDE, GNOME, FVWM) but are there things I am missing? I want to end it with compiling a custom kernel, but I am not sure these guys are advanced enough. You can find the site for our program here."

Ur@eus writes "Want to see how nice your GNOME desktop and Mozilla browser will look anti-aliased? We have just posted screenshots and a non-stable patch on Gnotices" Here's evolution and mozilla displaying slashdot. Neither are perfect, but its still exciting to see progress.

Ur@eus writes: "We [at Linuxpower] have just put up an interview with David Mason of Red Hat Labs. David answers questions on plans for GTK+ 2.0, Pango, GtkFB, GNOME and Orbit 2.0. Lots of interesting info if you want the scoop on whats moving on the infrastructure front of GTK+ and GNOME." There's a lot here on the immediate future of those projects here, including some information on what features will distinguish GTK 2.0, and unfortunately only a teasing reference to adapting the ultra-cool aRTS project for GNOME. (That in particular makes me drool.)