Cardhore writes: "According to this article, Sun's and Wipro's developers are now working on Metacity, instead of Sawfish. Metacity and Sawfish are two window managers for the GNOME desktop, and Sun has decided to use Metacity over Sawfish for GNOME 2. This decision has been based on issues such as accessibility, maintainability of the code [1], documentation, multi-head support and a general eagerness from the community to commit to Metacity in the future." Here's a brief description of Garret LeSage's experience with Metacity, which is described here as a "boring window manager for the adult in you." Anyone with Metacity screenshots, please post below :)

babbage writes "There has been some talk recently on various mailing lists about getting a Mac OS X version of Ximian Connector extension to Evolution, which allows Evolution to interact with Microsoft Exchange 2000 servers much as Microsoft Outlook can. It is already possible to build and run Gnome and Evolution on Mac OS X, thanks largely to projects such as Fink. Ximian is aware of this interest, and has indicated that if enough users expressed a serious interest in buying the product -- the target number was 500 paying users -- they would be willing to produce a Mac OS X port of Connector. To that end, I've set up an petition to help gauge user interest."

Saqib Ali asks: "I was wondering if any Slashdot readers are accessing WebDAV folders on their Linux box. I heavily use DAV folders to store files and documents. On a Windows machine, I can easily access them using WebFolder or native DAV support in MS Office Suite. But when I switch to my Linux box, I have a hard time accessing the files on the DAV folders. I haven't seen any application on Linux that support DAV natively. OpenOffice/StartOffice don't support DAV either. I know there is nautilus which uses gnome-vfs to access files on DAV, but that doesn't help if the apps don't support DAV themselves. Are there Linux app that support DAV natively? How about integerating gnome-vfs into OpenOffice? Any ideas?" For those who just want access to the files, and don't mind the extra steps, you can use utilities like Cadaver but probably, what many of you might be looking for is a simple file system driver. What are you usin to access your DAV resources?

parking_god writes "MIT prof Stuart Madnick, testifying on MS's behalf, was caught out twice when a government attorney asked him to name an OS (other than one made by Microsoft) where the browser couldn't be removed. Madnick also faltered on several other questions." Basically he doesn't understand what GNOME and KDE are, and since we're all holier-than-thou know-it-alls around here, we might as well laugh at Microsoft's expense ;)

EyesWideOpen writes "I just read a review of a beta version of Red Hat 7.3 (code named Skipjack) over at Linux Journal. It's not the most complete review (being a little KDE heavy and GNOME shy, as well as focusing mainly on the install and desktop components) but it's a decent read. From the article: '...if you are a desktop user like me and you like the latest software, you will be hard pressed to find a more complete and usable piece of software...'. If you're feeling adventurous you can download the latest beta from a Red Hat mirror site."

Nat Friedman often seems to live in the shadow of his famous coworker, Miguel de Icaza, but today it's his turn to shine. You asked Nat questions last week. This week he answers, in detail, with lots of links, touching on subjects ranging from Gnome's future directions to how Microsoft is dealing with Linux as a competitor to Windows.

Havoc Pennington wrote a piece on creating good user interfaces, with special attention toward GNOME 2. See also the advogato thread.

Though it's been out for more than a year, most people have not gotten a chance to see Revolution OS ; luckily for those who'd like to, a video release is planned for later this year, and for California readers, the screenings page lists four two-night showings over the next several weeks, in Newport Beach, Pasadena, California, Santa Monica, and L.A. Reader AdamBa submits his impressions of the movie (below).

This week's interview guest is Nat Friedman, co-founder and vice president of product development for Ximian. Nat is also co-chair of The Gnome Foundation, and an all-around nice guy. Post your questions (one per post, please) for Nat below. We'll forward 10 of the highest-moderated ones to him, and will post his answers (verbatim except for HTML formatting) within the next week.

fader writes: "On gnome.org is an article indicating that there are now GTK bindings for C#. Basically, when combined with MONO, this means that you should be able to write at least some rudimentary .NET applications for GNOME." Update: 04/12 00:30 GMT by T : Hetz points out that Qt already has this capability (also in Alpha): here's a link to the Qt-CSharp project, and a proof-of-concept screenshot as well.

fabiolrs writes: "imaclinux.net is running a review on Yellow Dog Linux 2.2. They could manage to run it on the iBook. YDG 2.2 is a great distro with KDE 2.2.2, Gnome 1.4, kernel 2.4.18 and Xfree86 4.2.0." Nice to see PPC systems (meaning "Apple," mostly) getting so much attention in the Linux world lately -- Mandrake's 8.2 PPC is also getting close to a release.

damiam writes "GNOME 2.0 Desktop Beta 3 has been released. Changes include new versions of Nautilus, Yelp, and the control center, as well as bugfixes all around. Download it from gnome.org or one of the mirrors." Jeff Waugh adds: "The possibility of a complete beer freeze at GUADEC has inspired another kickarse release of the GNOME 2.0 Desktop. It's awesome stuff, definitely worth trying out. You should find GARNOME handy if there are no packages available for your distro."

jpsc was kind enough to send in coverage of the Linux Accessibility Conference at CSUN: "There was a flurry of activity in the Linux accessibility world at CSUN 2002, one of the most widely attended, well known, and longest running conferences on technology for the disabled. Accessibility, for those who do not know, is the practice of making software accessible or usable by the disabled (e.g., blind or low vision); under United States law, software, including Linux, must be accessible for it to be used by the government. Similar laws exist in other countries. " Coverage continues...

Gatton writes "Terra Soft has released version 2.2 of their Linux distribution for Apple hardware known as Yellow Dog. According to the website, a few of the features are: Red Hat 7.2-based system, 'ext3' graphical migration program, XFree86 4.2.0, KDE 2.2.2, Gnome 1.4 w/Nautilus & Evolution, improved modem & printer support, improved support for nVidia GeForce2 MX & ATI Radeon--including ADC digital. No ISOs, only SRPMs on the ftp site at the moment. Presumably it will be available for download soon." I bought two previous versions of YDL, but this time I am just going to download it, as I don't use it enough to warrant buying it, now that I primarily use Mac OS X as my "other" OS. And, darnit, I want to download it now.

Just saw in Red Hat's FTP's - Redhat 7.3 (codename:skipjack) is available for download. There aren't lots of changes there, but you'll find that RedHat 7.3 comes with KDE 3.0 (rc3 is on this beta), you'll need to remove the Ximian Gnome before upgrade, and in general - read the release notes before testing this release. As always, don't try it on your main Linux partition, and use the mirrors. Annoucment is here (thanks to Linux Weekly News)

plastercast writes: "Following the release of GTK2, the second beta of gnome 2.0 is available. There are also release notes here. From Gnotices: 'The GNOME 2.0 Desktop is a greatly improved user environment for existing GNOME applications. Enhancements include anti-aliased text and first class internationalisation support, new accessibility features for disabled users, and many improvements throughout GNOME's highly regarded user interface.'"

Some random reader sent in: "Gtk.org all of a sudden (?) says version 2.0 is available. There is a FAQ for 2.0. Here is a mail from the gtk-devel-list with some 'pre-release release-notes' :)."

Eugenia writes: "Font antialiasing first made its way to XFree through Qt/KDE only a year ago and GTK+/Gnome followed some time after. Even with the latest version of Freetype 2.08, which reportedly brings better quality, the result is still not up to par with the rendering quality found on some commercial OSes. David Chester has hacked through the Xft library and he achieved an incredibly good quality on antialias rendering under XFree86. With this hack, at last, XFree can deliver similar aesthetic results to Mac OS X's or Windows' rendering engines. Check the two brand-new screenshots ('before' and 'after') at his web page and notice the difference with your own eyes."

Rob Valliere writes: "The best Linux Web browsers have dramatically improved in the past few months: they are all stable, standards compliant and loaded with solid feature enhancements and additions. Using Red Hat 7.2 and the KDE desktop, the premier Linux browsers are Galeon 1.0.3, Mozilla 0.9.8 and Opera 6.0 TP3. The best Web downloads and installs were from Opera and Mozilla, which have minimal dependencies. Galeon is a small download but can be difficult to upgrade due to its Mozilla and GNOME dependencies."

Dina's Dream points out two interesting articles currently running on LinuxPower, and linked from Gnotices (GNOME news site) as well. "The first article is a really good summary of the current state of affairs of video under Linux and the direction we should take. Questions are bounced back between a few very knowledgeable people, including GStreamer developers, SGI people and Alan Cox. The second article is a set of lessons learned by Chris Pirazzi while working at SGI. Chris was involved in a lot of Video API programming at Silicon Graphics, and raises a few very good points based on his experience. All people even remotely working on video drivers or software should read these points and take them to heart."