Software Illustrated asks: "When publishing books on how to use Linux desktop software, the legal/IP review process to make sure we aren't infringing on the property rights of 3rd party sources should be easier than for books about proprietary/closed source software, right? Microsoft makes it easy as long as you comply with their guideline. I didn't think it would be necessary to get permission to publish a screenshot of, for instance, the GNOME gconf-editor. But that is just what our legal/IP review team is pursuing. Is this necessary?"

linuxbeta writes "redhat.com says the new Fedora 'has just turned 4' and it 'purrs', 'hums', and 'mesmerizes'. Has Steve Jobs taken over Fedora's marketing dept. or is this release something to really get excited about? OSDir has put together a quick tour of this fresh release in KDE and GNOME desktop flavors. Release Overview. You be the judge."

Mister Furious writes "First, Apple switches to Intel, and now, equally shocking: Debian Sarge is released! Hell has officially frozen over! The scoop is from debian-administration.org: "The new Debian stable release, codenamed Sarge, has officially been released today. Several years of development since the last stable release, Woody, was released on the 9th of July, 2002 over a thousand developers around the world have helped make this release possible." Changes include Gnome 2.8, Firefox 1.0.4, Thunderbird 1.0.2, Apache 2.0.54 (1.3.33 is still available, too!), Postgresql 7.4.7, and more. The news hasn't hit the main Debian GNU/Linux site as of this article's posting. Congratulations to all of the Debian developers and contributors. Thanks for all your hard work and for a great distro!" Here's a link to the Debian Stable "Release" file.

koreth asks: "Last year I switched to Debian sarge on my office desktop machine. For the most part it's been great, but I can't seem to wrap my brain around fonts. For example, my favorite programming font is Sheldon Narrow. After running it through a few conversion tools and copying it to various font directories, I was able to start using it in xterm. But no sign of it in Konsole, despite running it through KDE's font installer tool. A few times I've installed new fonts that appear in the font lists of GNOME apps but not KDE apps or vice versa, and it's unclear to me how either environment's fonts interact with what I see when I run 'xlsfonts'. I have yet to find any documentation describing how either GNOME or KDE decides which fonts it likes. And then there's Debian's 'defoma', which seems to interact with everything somehow. Are there any good resources out there for learning what's going on under the hood of a modern Linux desktop environment's font subsystem?"

seachnasaigh asks: "I love desktop Linux, but the one stumbling block I have with deploying it in some capacity for my userbase is USB Palm Pilots. Once upon a time I managed to get GPilot working with a serial PalmVx, but despite repeated attempts (SuSE 9.2 pro, Fedora Core 3 and several Palm devices) I can't get a synch to happen with the USB version, either through the native Gnome Pilot app or through Evolution (and yes, Kpilot too!). Our standard deployment is a Palm Tungsten T series; most of our desktops are recent Dells. It's embarrassing to have to boot into Windows to synch the Palms. Does anyone have some suggestions out there?"

jtowndot writes "The market for open source developers seems to be heating up. Asterisk, Gnome, Horde, and Mozilla all have bounties for desired features. Recently, Lime Wire updated its wish list to include bounties on open source development work! Similarly, i2p also released a bounty list. Is it time to consider quitting my day job to do open source development full time?"

FridayBob writes "The BBC has a story on a new, ultra-thin client that a group of not-for-profit developers, Ndiyo, hope will open up the potential of computing to people in the developing world. Not surprisingly, their system uses open source software. The system runs Ubuntu Linux with a Gnome/KDE deskto and OpenOffice. From the article: 'Licences for software are often a significant part of expenditure for smaller companies which rely on computers. But a recent UK government study, yet to be formally published, has shown that open source software can significantly reduce school budgets dedicated to computing set-ups.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Havoc Pennington, lead developer of GNOME, wants to fork GNOME 3. 'So the forces of existing userbase, the easiest-to-reach future userbase, cross-platform applications, and funded development efforts are strongly pulling GNOME 2 toward conservatism. I think GNOME 3 should be a fork for that reason.'" This has been a common practice for not only many open source projects, but proprietary systems such as Solaris for major revisions, so it's not as tumultous a change as the word "fork" may imply.

Kethinov writes "The second test release of Fedora Core 4 is now available from Red Hat and at distinguished mirror sites near you, and is also available in the popular torrent format. New features in Fedora Core 4 test 2 include GNOME 2.10, KDE 3.4, as well as a preview of GCC 4.0, as well as support for the PowerPC architecture. Additionally, Fedora Core 2 has been transferred to the Fedora Legacy Project."

joestar writes "Mandriva ('Man-dree-vah'! - formerly Mandrake) Linux Limited Edition 2005 has just been released with Linux 2.6.11.6, KDE 3.3 (which includes backports from KDE 3.4 including kpdf), GNOME 2.8.3, Firefox 1.0.2, OpenOffice.org 1.1.4 and many other features such as dkms integration, and support for the XBOX! This is a transitional release for "power-users" before the next Official version which is expected to appear on next fall. Download (HTTP+BT) is available for Club members and contributors. The new version will also be released publicly at a later date."

ceswiedler writes "Matthew Thomas lists 69 interface issues he has with the new Ubuntu release "Hoary Hedgehog", ranging from desktop and Nautilius behavior to Firefox and Evolution. They're serious interface issues, he claims, but he also says that Ubuntu 5.04 "is the first Linux-based system I have encountered that is tolerable enough for me to use for everyday work." That's a rather backhanded compliment...the suprising thing is that he's an interface designer working for Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu." As Thomas mentions, "Many of these flaws probably exist in other Gnome-based systems, and some of them also exist in Microsoft Windows and/or Mac OS."

gmaestro writes "Fedora Core 4 Test 2 is up on the servers. New features in Fedora Core 4 test 2 include GNOME 2.10, KDE 3.4, as well as a preview of GCC 4.0 and support for the PowerPC architecture. Use a mirror or torrent and help with testing!"

Simon (S2) writes "Ubuntu Linux 5.04, code name 'Hoary Hedgehog', is now available. It offers the following new features: Simple and fast Installation, live CD's for Intel x86, AMD64 and PPC, GNOME 2.10.1, Firefox 1.0.2, first class productivity software, and X.org 6.8.2. Read the announcement and the complete release notes. Quick download links for the i386 architecture: ubuntu-5.04-install-i386.iso.torrent (587MB) and ubuntu-5.04-live-i386.iso.torrent (625MB). Install CD and live CD images for AMD64 and PowerPC computers are also available." Kubuntu is out in a new release as well. Screenshots available of the Kubuntu release. Update: 04/08 14:21 GMT by Z : Made the direct ISO links torrents.

llywelynelysium writes "Mad Penguin has an excellent review of the upcoming SuSE 9.3 Professional release. The review is mostly positive, commenting on SUSE's improved speed, improved Gnome suppport, inclusion of Xen, and interestingly, the use of Firefox as the default browser. On the other hand, the review states that Novell has futher crippled the multimedia capabilities of their distribution by removing MP3 playback support. SUSE scores three stars in the end."

A long, long time ago, you asked questions of Mark Shuttleworth -- astronaut, entrepreneur, activist, and now chief of Debian-and-GNOME based distribution Ubuntu Linux. Mark's been understandably busy running the world of Ubuntu, especially considering the imminent release of the group's newest version, Hoary Hedgehog. He's answered below questions on everything from what makes it worth paying for a trip to space to how software offered with source, for free, and under a liberal license (aka Free software) can sustain itself and its creators. Read on for his answers.

Anonymous Coward writes "After long consideration, Pat Volkerding has removed GNOME from Slackware. Pat mentions in the -current ChangeLog that GNOME takes a lot of time to package, so this move should allow more time to be spent on the rest of Slackware." From the changelog: "Please do not incorrectly interpret any of this as a slight against GNOME itself, which (although it does usually need to be fixed and polished beyond the way it ships from upstream more so than, say, KDE or XFce) is a decent desktop choice."

glenkim writes "Remember Seth Nickell's blog entry about next generation X Window rendering? Well, in case you were wondering what it would look like, he's updated his blog with videos of luminocity, the experimental GNOME window manager, and screenshots of programatically themed widgets." From the post: "The wobbly window effect is mildly addictive. Kristian hasn't gotten much work done since he wrote it. He (and now I) spends all day moving windows around and watching them settle."

krunchyfrog writes "The first test release of Fedora Core 4 is now available from Red Hat and at distinguished mirror sites near you, and is also available in the torrent. New features in Fedora Core 4 test 1 include previews of GCC 4.0, GNOME 2.10, and KDE 3.4, as well as support for the PowerPC architecture. Please file bugs via Bugzilla, Product Fedora Core, Version fc4test1, so that they are noticed and appropriately classified. Discuss this release on fedora-test-list. -- The BitTorrent link is already there."

jimmy_dean writes "The latest issue of The GNOME Journal has just been published. This regularly published online magazine features original content and commentary for and by the GNOME Community. This issue covers some technical articles, including Audio CD Ripping/Burning by Ken Vandine and Simplified Package Management in Ubuntu Hoary by John Meuser. Celebrating the release of GNOME 2.10, we include a tour of 2.10 by Sayamindu Dasgupta and also the evolution of Evolution 2.2 by Jorge O. Castro. Also, art.gnome.org gets a face lift as told by Link Dupont."

Jonathan writes "Some editorials were posted on the web the last few days about GNOME and its apparent lack of interest on user feedback, especially when GNOME pitches itself to follow a 'users first philosophy' in their press releases. OSNews started with an editorial about market research or lack thereof, Expert-Zone posted another one on how OSS must learn to take responsibility on its great success."