A little birdy writes "Less than a month after Beta 1 was released, Mono Beta 2 has been released. See the Release Notes, or go directly to the download page. It includes a C# compiler, an implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure and two stacks of APIs: a Unix, Linux, GNOME, Mono stack for APIs that takes the most advantage of your Unix server and desktop and a set of APIs compatible with the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 that provides support for ASP.NET (web services and web forms), ADO.NET and many other components." And in a related story: darthcamaro writes "The drive to develop a FOSS implementation of Microsoft's .NET framework by DotGNU and Novell's Mono project is being painted as a contest between the Free and Open Source communities in an article on internetnews.com. The article details the running argument between DotGNU's Norbert Bollow and Mono's Miguel de Icaza on the issues of commercial involvement, software patents and all the 'religious' stuff that the Free software community holds against the open source community."

darth_silliarse writes "Linux.com have posted an interesting review Fedora Core 2, which includes reference to the now famous Windows/Fedora Core 2 dual booting "feature". My favorite quote "Unfortunately, all of FC2's admirable qualities cannot save it from its congenital defects. These range from annoyances such as broken audio drivers to the abomination known as Gnome 2.6, and are serious enough to make the Fedora Project's second litter of pups unsuitable for any use other than as laboratory animals." Quite a indictment don't you think? My fav distro is SuSE but I'm interested to hear others views about this review..."

Eugenia writes "Metin Amiroff of OSNews interviewed the well known artists of KDE and GNOME, Everaldo and Jimmac. They discuss their first steps into Linux, the applicationss they use and why Linux still doesn't have all the professional applications and support they need for their day to day work, their inspiration, the state of the Linux desktop visually and usability-wise, the SVG factor and their future plans for KDE and GNOME."

An anonymous reader writes "Linuxlookup.com staff member Rich Hughes posted his thoughts on the latest Fedora release with this Core 2 Review. "Fedora Core 2 is the newest release from The Distro Formerly Known As RedHat. Updates include the 2.6 kernel, KDE 3.2, Gnome 2.6, X.org replacing Xfree86 and numerous package updates. Having played around with SuSE 9.1, Arch .6 and Slackware 9 with the 2.6 kernel, I was interested in seeing how the Fedora team did with this release.""

Alaa and his friends at Linux-Egypt put a lot of thought into answering your questions. Alaa wrote, "we felt there was much misinformation or lack of information about egypt while reading the comments so I kinda used each question to inject some extra info," which makes this Q&A worth reading for insight into Egyptian society even if you have no particular interest in Linux. Thanks, Alaa and Linux-Egypt.

FreeLinux writes "Mainstream computer rag ComputerWorld, has posted a review of Gnome 2.6 by Nicholas Petreley. This opinion piece review, titled Living Down to a Low Standard, positively lambastes Gnome 2.6 over the new spatial Nautilus and Gnome's design choices. The review is quite the opposite to a previously reported review from PCWorld, last month. While this latest review is bound to be a polarizing and heavily debated issue (read flamebait), it is important in that this review will be seen by so many mainstream readers and corporate types who may have been considering Gnome."

An anonymous reader asks: "A while ago OEone released a thingy called Penzilla which was basically a Mozilla desktop environment like GNOME or KDE. Everything was written in either DHTML or XUL and ran within the Gecko engine. Recently a new project, Robin was released that is basically a desktop running within Mozilla using XUL as well. There is NetWindows that attempts something similar for more interactive web applications. What advantages would a 100% Mozilla engine desktop hold and what are the disadvantages compared to much more complex environments such as GNOME or KDE? Is a Mozilla desktop possibly more elegant or efficient for the typical user? Is the XUL runtime environment more robust than troublesome C/C++ widgets? It seems like most applications could make the transition as the growing collection of Firebird extensions like ChatZilla and Gnusto and have shown."

Eugenia writes "OSNews had an interesting discussion with Miguel de Icaza about all things Linux and Novell. Miguel talked about the general patent problem and how this will become the one single stumbling block of widespread adoption of Linux in USA, while he asserts that Longhorn uses some 'new' technologies already found on Gnome and elsewhere. Miguel believes that poor countries will be the first that will adopt widely Linux, and as long the EU won't adopt a similar system to US for patents, Europe will follow soon after, leaving no option to USA but to eventually adopt Linux as well in the long run (despite potential patent problems). Another strategy Miguel discussed was about moving as many F/OSS applications as possible to Windows in order to familiarize the casual users with open source. Among many other interesting tidbits he also mentions that Quark is now using Mono on Mac OS X." Of course, the EU not adopting software patents seems to be less and less likely.

News for nerds writes "According to the internetnews.com report, Microsoft's technology evangelist Robert Scoble said in his blog and interview that while he is a user of Firefox it can be improved if Mozilla developers take advantage of Longhorn technologies such as XAML, Avalon and WinFS, instead of making it only within GNOME/Mozilla coalition."

moquist writes "Netcraft has an interview with Miguel de Icaza, of Gnome and Ximian fame. Icaza expounds his thoughts on Mono (the .Net framework for open source), the current direction of Microsoft's .Net, Novell's acquisition of Ximian, Novell's Linux desktop environment, Linux for grandmas and kids, and "the greatest danger to the continuing adoption and progress of open source" (Hint: it's pronounced "XAML".)."

bckspc asks: "I've been getting pounded by spam lately, so did a Google search on my email address to see where it might appear on the Web. To my horror, it turned up several times in an archive of a Gnome listserv for a project I briefly participated in. While the email address is visibly obscured on the Web pages, it is quite intact in the HTML code. I emailed the list admin about obscuring or removing my email address, but was curtly dismissed. I'm a relative newbie and the experience soured me on participating in other OSS projects. How to Slashdot users deal with this? Must I set up disposable email accounts for every list?"

An anonymous reader writes "The board of directors of the GNOME foundation recently met with a few representatives of the Mozilla foundation - discussing how they could collaborate a little closer in future. A number of interesting things were discussed, including XAML/Avalon and the future of Firefox in GNOME/Linux. Check out the minutes of the meeting on the Gnome mailing list."

TDRighteo writes "OSNews is carrying a quick introduction to a programming language under development - D. Features include garbage collection, overrideable operators, full C compatibility, native compilation, inline assembler, and in-built support for unit testing and "Design by Contract". With all the discussion about the future of GNOME with Java/Mono, does D offer hope of a middle-road? Check out the comparison sheet."

An anonymous reader writes "PCWorld colmnist Matthew Newton has written an interesting two part article titled "In Search of Linux for Grandma", in which he shares his thoughts on introducing computers to a 75 year old PC neophyte (through Linux). He discusses the new spatial Nautilus that he is planning to unleash upon grandma, and quote from the article - "Grandma is never going to learn about "opening a file manager" to "navigate her way" to her documents. They are all going to live in plain view in folders on her desktop. And when she opens them, there won't be any surprises."."

Karma Sucks writes "In KDE 3.2 - A User's Perspective (mirror), W. Kendrick gives an incredible visual overview of some of the lesser known features of KDE. Together with a recent article on GNOME, it's become clear that the Linux desktop has all but surpassed proprietary alternatives."

Thomas Delaet writes " This article is a short evaluation of Eiffel as a language for developing the core gnome desktop platform. Last month, there has been a heavy debate about a successor for C/C++ as the language of choice for developing the core gnome desktop components in. The debate has mostly focussed around C#/Mono and Java. This article tries to summarize the different requirements for a gnome development language and shows how Eiffel fits in these criteria."

JoshuaTreeCA writes "Adam Doxtater of Mad Penguin has published another excellent review... this time on the newest SUSE Linux 9.1 beta-release. This release comes complete with the latest GNOME and KDE enviroments as well as being the first distro to present a retail package built on kernel 2.6.4 Check out the review, with screenshots." rokzy also wrote in with another review from NeoLink Computers.

Several folks submitted the press release announcing the formation of the X.Org Foundation and the release of X11R6.7 of the X Window System. The XOrg Foundation is the successor to the X Consortium, formed by many of the most notworthy participants in the XFree86 Project. This code release is a tree forked from the last XFree86 release not troubled by that pesky license change. Since Mandrake, Gentoo, OpenBSD, and Debian have already rejected the new XFree86 license, this new code tree will likely become the default X11 for most Linux users. I've attached the press release that explains more details about the code release, as well as the X.Org foundation itself.

Theo Kolokotronis writes "Many people replied to the controversial article by John Gruber about UI/Usability in the FOSS developments. Among these replies you will find OSNews' (which had spurred some interesting discussion too), Brad Griffith's about the niceties of GNOME and its future (mirror), Havoc Pennington's promise of a new UI era via Red Hat's newly assembled desktop team in Boston and even Microsoft's Don Box." The previous story was Making Things Easy Is Hard.

The Original Yama writes "Ars Technica takes a look inside the GNOME 2.6 Desktop & Developer Platform, due for release any minute now. It builds upon an earlier review of the GNOME 2.5 development series and their own examination of GNOME 2.4." darthcamaro writes "internetnews.com is running a story about the release of GNOME 2.6 today. They actually got a hold of Miguel de Icaza who had some real interesting stuff to say about it and the Linux Desktop in general. 'de Icaza told internetnews.com that a simpler interface has been the goal of GNOME since at least version 2.0.'" Update: 03/31 21:59 GMT by T : sn0wman3030 was one of many submitters to link to the GNOME 2.6 start page, including links to screenshots, documentation, and source downloads.