BEI01 writes "From windowmaker.org: After years without a release, we are glad to announce that Window Maker 0.90.0 is out! Highlights are NetWM support (thanks to Peter). This means wmaker should work fine with GNOME 2.x and KDE 3.x. UTF-8 support, antialiased text support via Xft2, Xinerama support, enhanced Alt-Tab window switching, Font configuration in WPrefs, and many fixes."

An anonymous reader writes "Looks like the folks at Xandros are getting ready for a new release of their Linux desktop. They're recruiting beta testers so those of you who like to try something new, you can sign up from here. No details about when or what to expect in the new release. Xandros always lets the other distros get the bugs out of the latest bleeding edge software before they do a new release so this should be another solid release with updated KDE, kernel, X, drivers, etc. Can't wait. Gotta get me on that beta list."

Chris writes "Did you know that OSDir now does frequently updated screenshots of open source apps, including Evolution 2.0, KDE 3.3, Gnome 2.8, Enlightenment DR 16.7.1, Thunderbird 0.8, and YaST? Have a look!" These screenshot tours are a great way to see how polished (or not) a particular piece of software is getting, especially when you absolutely have to know what every menu item holds.

Pete Gordon writes "Do Portable Usability and User Research Labs make sense in the software development life-cycle? This interview (my bias--it's with me, and I have a tool in beta now) covers some of the issues and questions on KDE's news site. I don't have the right answers necessarily, just looking for others input and opinions. Also, here are other links about the subject over the past few months. Info World and Harry's comparison."

Raymond Lodato writes "For a number of years now, I've been playing with Linux at my company. My laptop is dual-boot, and I've been trying to steer away from Windows as much as I possibly can. Most of the books I've read have been geared either to running Linux as a server, or as a personal workstation. The gap has been filled. Moving to the Linux Business Desktop, by Marcel Gagné, covers what you need to know to successful run Linux as a business workstation." Read on for the rest.

Michael Pyne writes "It's finally out, KDE 3.3.1 has been released with many bugfixes and translation improvements! Those who just want to start downloading can visit the KDE 3.3.1 Info page, which also includes packages for Red Hat, SuSE, Conectiva, and Yoper." wikinerd adds some details, writing that the new version "fixes a number of bugs in Konqueror, improves JuK and enables VPL in the Quanta webpage editor. The new Plastik theme is very fast and may become the default style in 3.4."

Chris writes "To give you a feel for what to expect in Core 3, we've done 120 screenshots of a full installation of Fedora Core 3 Test 3. Our screenshots include Gnome, KDE, and XPce interfaces. This is the last planned test release before the final release, scheduled for November 1."

An anonymous reader writes "After Hewlett Packard, who jumped off of supporting GNOME, Red Hat has followed by splitting their Desktop Linux out to Fedora which is community driven, and now distributions like Slackware have started to drop GNOME entirely in favor of KDE. Read more about their decision here. It looks like companies as well as distributions start focusing towards one solution." Patrick Volderking's quoted message doesn't announce a final decision to drop GNOME from Slackware, however -- and as the followups in that thread note, it could be interpreted as an endorsement of the good job done by Dropline in packaging GNOME for Slack.

prostoalex writes "eWeek Labs reviewed the latest editions of GNOME and KDE desktop environments, and for all the criteria that eWeek uses for evaluating the software products ranked 'good,' while usability, capability and reliability for both products ranked 'excellent.' The online version is missing the screenshots and ranking tables that the printed version has, but eWeek likes Evolution (for mail), Konqueror (for file management), Samba and Kopete. They dislike GConf (still complex and a hassle to use) on GNOME and KMail on KDE."

Fabrice Mous writes "At aKademy I had the chance to talk to Chris Schlaeger about SUSE and their relationship with the KDE community, his view of a Linux enterprise desktop and the speed of development of several key features in KDE. Read the interview at the KDE news website."

joestar writes "Mandrakesoft has released the new version of Move, a Linux system on liveCD + USB key which handles configuration data and personal data. The new version is based on Mandrakelinux 10.0, comes with Linux 2.6, KDE 3.2 and OpenOffice.org 1.1. Mandrakesoft claims that with Move, 'Linux becomes a viable option to millions of first-time Linux users'. My experience with former Mandrakemove has been excellent, especially because it had everything I need for internet/multimedia/office, and because of the transparent USB key management. The new Move is available earlier for download for Mandrakeclub Members, and may be purchased as a pack."

peterprior writes "Novell have issued a press release announcing SUSE Linux 9.2. The new version comes with kernel 2.6, KDE 3.3, Gnome 2.6 and features (amongst other things) enhanced wireless support as well as Evolution 2.0 with Groupwise / Exchange connectivity. The WYSIWYG web development tool Nvu is also included. The new release is expected to hit the retail shelves in early November."

OctaneZ writes "DistroWatch is reporting the first release of Mandrake 10.1 for PPC, this is the first PPC upgrade from the Mandrake camp since April of 2003. Release 10.1 includes stepping up to kernel 2.6.8, Gnome 2.6, and KDE 3.2.3. Release Notes and Torrent are available."

worm eater writes "On September 29, Terra Soft Solutions delivered the final release of Yellow Dog Linux v4.0 to their CD manufacturer. It is currently available for download by ydl.net subscribers. Yellow Dog Linux v4.0 is built upon Fedora Core 2, offering both KDE 3.3 and GNOME 2.6.0 desktops with an all new presentation for both the Installer and post-installed desktop environment. Expanded USB support includes many cameras, printers, adapters, and storage devices. FireWire support is now built-in with bootable FireWire made possible through manual configuration. Mac-On-Linux offers the ability to run Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X and now offers automatic network configuration."

Paul Lamere writes " This story on ZD-Net and this recent story on Slashdot describes the recent open sourcing of IBM's voice recognition software. This release, unfortunately, doesn't include any source for the actual speech recognition engine. Olaf Schmidt, a developer on the KDE Accessibility Project , is quoted as saying 'There is no speech-recognition system available for Linux, which is a big gap.' In an attempt to close this gap, we have just released Sphinx-4, a state-of-the-art, speaker-independent, continuous speech recognition system written entirely in the Java programming language. It was created by researchers and engineers from Sun, CMU, MERL, HP, MIT and UCSC. Despite (or because of) being written in the Java programming language, Sphinx-4 performs as well as similar systems written in C. Here are the release notes and some performance data."

anonymous writes "The Free Software community is on a quest for the next generation development environment. Is it .Net, is it Java? Many (including Havoc) are quick to dismiss some of the gems invented by the Free Software community itself. Yes, Ruby is an incredibly consistent and clean language designed specifically to incorporate many of the best features and ideas of predecessors. Absolutely everything in Ruby is an object and practically everything can be redefined or extended on the fly. The effects and resulting power of such flexibility can be quite astounding to those who have adapted to contemporary language limitations. Now, the Ruby environment has been seamlessly integrated into KDE through Korundum, meaning that well-integrated and first-class desktop citizens for Linux can be sketched and developed in an extremely short time. Caveat: No explicit compilation is required and programming seems so easy it feels like cheating."

xiando writes "Developers aim at making Krita a user-friendly image manipulation program where users with no computer experience or slim experience with other light-duty image programs like Paint Shop Pro should feel right at home. LinuxReviews has a 5.5 MB preview video by developer Bart Coppens available, showing how the app looks and feels. Check it out or download the source preview packages by Daniel Molkentin to try it yourself. Developers hope to make Krita a part of the KDE office suite KOffice 1.4, scheduled spring 2005."

sgtrock writes "UserInstinct has an article that documents the reactions to KDE 3.3 by 7 users with limited or no Linux background. By and large, they found KDE intrguing, but far too busy. They all complained about some pretty basic UI issues; no stars echoed while the password was typed, anti-aliased fonts off by default, far too many options shown by default, etc. Most had minor UI issues as well; some of which were KDE specific, others that weren't. All in all, I would have to regard this test KDE 3.3's UI as somewhat disappointing. Especially since KDE strives so hard to provide a consistent and easy to use UI. IMO the single biggest issue is probably the overwhelming number of options that are exposed to a first-time user. Personally, I'm a guy who likes to tweak almost everything on a UI, so I love the way that KDE works. However, I have seen myself just how quickly beginners get turned off by the very busy option screens. There must be a better way of showing a sane number of options while still allowing power users to access the more esoteric ones. Anyone have any thoughts?"

uninet writes "In the third installment of the Stealth Desktop series about Slackware Linux, Eduardo Sánchez builds upon the previous steps of Part I and Part II. Continuing where those parts left off, he introduces the subjects of user, font and printer management in Slackware using KDE."

MohammedSameer writes "Mandrakesoft released MandrakeLinux 10.1 Community, As usual it's only available first to the club members The new release features Kernel 2.6.8.1, Xorg-X11 6.7, KDE 3.2.3 with 3.3 as an install option,"