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.

A source (who asked to remain anonymous, but is reliable) claims to have seen a Linux Port to the Playstation 2. He also saw a PS2 running X and KDE on the machine, running on the MIPS processor w/ 32 Megs of RAM. Unfortunately the information that is available is all written in Japanese. It would be sweet if Sony would make a free image available so people could boot Linux. If not, maybe someone else is up to the task? My PS2 is currently in Toledo (after taking what seemed like an eternity in Memphis). Damn fedex: I need to play Star Wars Starfighter and DOA2! If I boot Linux, can I count it as a business expense?

Some folks pointed out an interview on Dot.KDE with Richard Dale. Richard is the author of the code which adds bindings to KDE and Qt for Java. What does this mean? Well, the interview has more details, but the simple answers is "KDE/Qt apps written in Java". Hopefully this means more programs.

Well, it's here -- the KDE 2.1 final version. You can find the official (and lengthy) press release here as well as the locations to download the various packages. I have been playing with this version for a week (took the tagged version which went to packagers) and I can definitely say that it is very stable and fast. You can also read a small review here. Good work, KDE team.Update: 02/27 12:05 AM by T : Check out the change logs, as provided by seanr, and enjoy the "major improvements" pointed to by Andrew Coles in Konqueror and KMail, as well as "the addition of the excellent IDE KDevelop, as well as the modular new multimedia player noatun."

Frank writes "Here's a good interview with KDE League chairman Andreas Pour. He talks about the K desktop environment (KDE) 2.1, that will be Hitting the streets on Monday, February 26. He reveals info about some significant advantages over the old 1.0 platform, including a full-fledged browser and the upcoming KOffice suite of business applications."

MrEfficient asks: "I'm searching for an Oranizational Chart software package that stores employee data in a database. Ideally, it would be web based, or if not, at least allow client programs to access a remote database over an intranet or the internet. It can be either Linux or Windows based. All the software I've seen is little more than a drawing program which allows one to manually create a visual chart but with no way to manage the data behind it (OrgPlus is the one I've been using). This is fine when your company has less than twenty people, but completely inadequate when the company size is in the thousands. The lack of a database-backed organizational chart program is strange when you consider that the organizational chart is the most common example used when discussing trees in SQL. I've considered Kivio, a flowchart program for KDE, which isn't designed for organizational charts but looks like it could serve as one given its scriptablity. So, what do you think, does anyone have any suggestions?"

An Anonymous Coward writes: "There have been countless requests from KDE users, on the dot, on the lists, and even elsewhere, for a KDE Installer and Updater. Nick Betcher (aka Error403) has stepped up to the challenge and now needs your help to make this project really happen. His current code is in CVS and the project is in active development. The install starts off with an intro/detection screen, prompts the user for the type of installation, prompts for the destination of the KDE installation, and then prompts for the packages to install (see all the screenshots)."

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."

Alexsander writes: "As announced by Pimenta da Veiga, minister of communications, a Net PC costing R$ 400 (around US$ 200) will be available in 120 days. It targets low-income users, and a 24-month paying plan will be considered. The computer will be a Pentium 500 MHz, with keyboard, mouse, NIC, 56 Kbps modem, 14" display, 64 Mb RAM and no hard disk (16 Mb flash RAM instead). The main-board architecture (developed by UFMG) will be open, allowing any company to make it. It will run Linux (probably Conectiva) with KDE, KOffice and Konqueror." The Brazilian government notice is available, as are pictures of the device. Imagine: a government doing something to help poor people get access to the internet.

Paladin128 writes: "Talk about cool technology. Linux may get widespread voice recognition before Windows, as this article mentions that IBM's ViaVoice will be bundled with Qt, and allow the programmers to use BNF to create parsing rules, and bid voice input directly to Qt components via Qt signals and slots. This level of integration evidently wasn't possible with Win32, thus there were performance issues. And since Qt is open source, the GNOME people could easilly find a way to integrate this technology into GTK+. Between adding voice to the handicapped accessability list, offering KDE in more languages than Windows is available in (I don't use GNOME so I can't comment on how it's doing here), and more customization than Windows can ever hope to offer (such as choice of desktops), Linux could really make some waves this year." Just don't mention "rm -rf" when you're near the microphone ...

As the title says - KDE 2.1 Beta 2, and Nautilus Preview Release 3 are out. Both are in the last beta stages. So, if you like KDE or you like GNOME, then go ahead - download the source or binaries, install, test, torch it - and give bug reports. KDE announcment is here which includes LOTS of improvments, while on the Eazel side, there is a nice demo mode which you can test it here or download it here. Enjoy.

starseeker writes: "It looks like the financial picture is not good for Applix - "the company intends to report VistaSource as a discontinued operation in its audited financial statements." The financial report is online. What happens to Applixware Office now?" For the backstory: Vistasource is the division of Applix - we've talked about this before. Still with the various K* options, the G* options, and OpenOffice the competition is tough - not to mention Abiword and all the others.

StupiDiot writes: "Aethra is a open source mail client which follows in the steps of LookOut, and is being developed by the Kompany. In case you haven't been following, Aethera is theKompany's fork of the greatly hyped/anticipated Magellan project. Beta 1 of Aethera sports POP3, SMTP, HTML, DnD, a contacts interface, sticky notes, and more. IMAP, Calendar support, etc., are promised for the next beta. There is no mention of the license although source is available from the Web site -- most of the source files seem to be under the BSD license. " So, I downloaded it and tried playing with is last night - it's a very cool, very slick program - the competition between this and the Gnome-equivalent Evolution will be interesting, as always. Regardless of which wins, the race to produce an Outlook-killer is on.

An 0xAnonymous 0xCoward asks: "I just wasted a whole day looking for a good hex editor for Solaris. I finally had to give up in frustration and disbelief. I found several hex editors, sure, some of which were even decent, but none of them had the -one- feature I was looking for: when I highlight the hex, the corresponding ASCII should be highlighted at the same time and vice versa. The only one that came close to providing this was khexedit, which looks excellent, but which I couldn't get to work on Solaris because it requires the [Qt] library and god-knows-what-else from [KDE]. Anyway, I finally had to resort to using a hex editor in Windows, all of which seem to have this feature. This seems like such essential geek tool...it must exist somewhere!"

James Hills writes: "Gamespy.com has released their end of the year Linux retrospective , "Operating system historians will record the year 2000 as the year that Linux gaming began to become a serious prospect for both gamers and developers. While many things still need to be resolved for Linux gaming to seriously compete with Windows gaming, companies such as Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSe, nVidia, 3Dfx, Loki, Vicarious Visions, Tribsoft, Hyperion Entertainment, and thousands of programmers working on projects such as KDE, Gnome, and Xfree86 have begun to make gaming in Linux gaming a more mainstream concept. Through the efforts of corporate investors and individual netizens, the Linux gaming market experienced tremendous improvements in all areas last year and the year 2001 looks even brighter. ""

Per Wigren writes: "I just found out about Athena OS which got me really amazed. It's a 100% OO, kernel-independent GUI OS with an XML-based scriptinglanguage called DML that allows the user to edit the OS itself, as well as creating simple applications and extensive GUI interfaces! It's extremely fast! It started an Amiga Workbench-clone desktop with draggable screens in less than 2 seconds... Download is less than 1M ... I honestly think Athena has potential to obsolete both Gnome and KDE ..." Take note of these words from the FAQ regarding Athena's terms: "[O]pen source may be something of a misnomer from a purist's point of view. Linux users should note that Pandora has nothing to do with the GPL or any other public licensing scheme."

Aciel asks: "I recently decided to switch from Windows to Linux. I'd been held back by many things before (such as that my copies of Thief II, Quake III Arena, and Wheel of Time only ran on the former), but I was really ready to do it this time. But once I got Red Hat all set up, running Gnome, et cetera, I realized that I had no idea how to install anything. I of course knew about sites like linuxnewbie.com (and .org), but neither of them were really oriented towards people like me. One was oriented more towards programmers; the other towards idiots. But where to find a tutorial on Gnome, KDE, or Linux and X in general oriented towards people like myself, people with significant but not infinite computer DOS-based know-how?" If Unix (Linux/*BSD/etc) is ever to successfully woo users from Windows, something like this is a must.

navindra writes "KDE's component technology, KParts, has been extended to support out-of-process embedding of components theoretically including GTK components, Bonobo, and OpenOffice UNO components. Even better, the same technology could be potentially be used by GNOME to embed KDE components. Here are some screenshots of Konqueror embedding the Mozilla rendering component, and the whitepaper on XParts. This appears to be an important step forward in the interoperability of free desktops." The screenshots page has an excellent overview of what this does, and what it means. This is extremely impressive stuff people.

Thanks to Jeremy White of Codeweavers for sending over some of the previews of Wine 1.0. I had a chance to see this during ALS, and was very impressed by what they are doing. 1.0 has Gnome/KDE integration, as well as new (better) config program, and some new launcher features. As well as doing this, they've also WineHQ, for all the Wine news that you can drink.