lengau asks: "Has anyone got Linux working with a Novell Network? I'm building a Gentoo system and need to be able to mount a Netware drive. I have IPX compiled into the kernel, already. This is to be a school computer that most students should be able to use like the Windows machines. I'm going to use KDE with OpenOffice and Firefox as the main applications to be used. My ultimate goal is to just have a desktop icon that one can click that goes to one's Netware directory (mounted under $HOME/MyDocuments or something). Any suggestions?"

norburym writes "Mark G. Sobell is well known for several comprehensive and well-written volumes: A Practical Guide to Solaris; A Practical Guide to Red Hat Linux: Fedora Core and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (2nd ed.); and A Practical Guide to the Unix System (3rd ed.). It seems only natural for the author to follow these exceptional examples with yet another excellent book entitled A Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming . Read on for Norburyms' review.

Rich writes "KDE could soon be making its way into your mobile phone. At aKademy in August David Carson and Deepika Chauhan from Nokia presented the work they've done in integrating KDE components into the latest version of the company's mobile phone software. Philip Rodrigues discusses this work with them on dot.kde.org."

MankyD asks: "I'm almost done loading up a new Gentoo installation paired with MythTV and a hardware MPEG2 encoder. I'm looking forward to finishing but before I let it loose upon my television, I was wondering what else I should compile in. Samba File sharing? A webserver (for watching shows on the road)? A CPU/Memory monitor? An additional media player? Not to start a flamewar, but should I do KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment, or some other window manager (especially when viewed on a TV screen)? What bells and whistles can I add to make my system that much more complete?"

HatofPig writes "As the dust settles from aKademy 2005, the annual KDE conference, it's a good time to take a look at what the KDE developers are working on. Though KDE 3.5 isn't even out yet, developers are already working on KDE 4. Plenty of work has already gone into porting existing code to Qt4, the GUI toolkit upon which KDE is based, and KDE developers are working on projects that could radically change how the world's most popular free desktop looks and works."

danimo writes "In response to his letter to the Massachusetts administration, the KOffice team has written an open letter to Microsoft manager Alan Yates. It clarifies some false claims that Yates made, such as KOffice, StarOffice and OpenOffice.org being one codebase and that OpenDocument was thus never a real standard. Massachusetts has meanwhile adopted OpenDocument."

GeoffP writes "AppleTalk Australia is running a story on running KDE on Mac OS X. For those that don't know, KDE is a graphical desktop environment used to access your computer's files. Finally, Mac users have a free (as in speech) approach to their filesystem."

christchurch writes "The KDE Project has announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.5 Beta 1, dubbed "Kanzler". This will be the last major release in the KDE 3 series. Qt 3.3.5 was released too late to adapt to it and it shows some fundamental compilation problems. We had a preview of KDE 3.5 two months ago."

An anonymous reader writes "An interview was recently conducted with Rickford Grant, the author of "Linux for Non-Geeks" and the new "Linux Made Easy". Grant is outspoken in his opinions and offers a number of unique views on topics as diverse as Windows Vista, desktop Linux, GNOME vs. KDE, and lots more. Part of the interview is spent talking about his new book but the bulk of the interview is a discussion of his views on pertinent topics and news. The author is a strong supporter of desktop Linux and has been getting quite a bit of attention for his views on the subject."

yootje writes "The Summer of Code ('Google's program designed to introduce students to the world of open source software development.') is now over. The result: 410 participants helping 38 projects suchs as Apache, KDE and FreeBSD. 'Among the project awards are both complex and simple innovations spanning the width and breadth of everything that the open source world has to offer. There are projects dealing with security, networking, VoIP, Java, mono, IP-PBX, online picture galleries, instant messaging and content management. There is even a game that Google's summer internship helped to pay for.'" Update: 09/11 17:15 GMT by Z : Added the story link at submittor's request.

corso64 writes "Ohio Linux Fest 2005, a free conference/event for Linux and OSS enthusiasts, looks to be every bit as good, if not better than Ohio Linux Fest 2004. Last year, IBM, Novell, Apache, Beowulf, Mozilla, along with Jon "Maddog" Hall made Ohio Linux Festival 2004 a huge success along with tons of swag, freebies, and door prizes (including a Linus-autographed cdrom of the original source release of Linux). This year IBM, Novell, Apache, Digium, KDE and others will be doing sessions on Asterisk, KDE, Digital Forensics,Unified Threat Management, Ubuntu, Server Farms and lots of other topics. Check it out this October 1st!"

linuxbeta writes "DesktopBSD is the latest easy to install BSD aimed squarely at the desktop. Installation screen shots. From their site: 'DesktopBSD aims at being a stable and powerful operating system for desktop users. DesktopBSD combines the stability of FreeBSD, the usability and functionality of KDE and the simplicity of specially developed software to provide a system that's easy to use and install.' DesktopBSD joins the ranks of PC-BSD and FreeSBIE."

Bill Hilf, Microsoft's Linux Lab Manager, got his answers to your questions back to us in time to publish them just before the San Francisco LinuxWorld, where he is speaking. Before you ask: Yes, Microsoft PR had a look at his answers before he sent them. So if you have any follow-up questions for Mr. Hilf, please post them below and I'll try to ask at least a few of them in person at LinuxWorld.

tr_x_data writes "There is a quite interesting KDE 3.5 preview with screenshots on JLP's Blog. I thought there wouldn't be so much improvement to KDE 3.4 since everyone is working on porting KDE4 to QT4, but obviously there are quite a few changes. Look forward to "Storage Media Notification", "Adblock" for Konqueror, new Tooltips, better Workspace-Pager, and so on. Read for yourself."

shanecoughlan writes "FreeDOS, the GPL DOS distribution, has a powerful little graphical user interface called OpenGEM being actively developed for it. Well, powerful is relative. OpenGEM is based off the DR GEM GUI from the 1980s, and is a 16bit single-tasking GUI that tends not to use extended memory. While KDE and GNOME might not be shaking in their boots, it's an interesting opensource project in its own right. And it runs on a 286 with 640kb of RAM..."

linuxbeta writes "Distrowatch is reporting that 'The beta testing process for Mandriva Linux 2006 is now officially underway. All the new features, which are not yet all included in this first beta version, will appear in the next test versions. You will see changes in the network management, especially WiFi, in security, on the desktop with the new versions of KDE, GNOME, new version of the kernel, GCC....'. Screenshots are available."

A reader writes: "KDE continues to grow. Early screenshots, mockups, and developer blogs show that the new Plasma Project (KDE 4.x branch) will bring innovative approaches to desktop computing. On the other hand, the very first screenshots of SimpleKDE, an unofficial fork of KDE, were meant to be a response to those who criticise KDE as being overbloated."

aneroid writes "eWeek has a story on Microsoft allowing a third party to present a 'hands-on lab' that allowed attendees to play with a range of Linux desktop software at its annual worldwide partner show in Minnesota this weekend. It was run by Don Johnson (not the actor), who explained in true MS style how the things that are considered wrong with Windows are planned or an advantage. Whether it's for the desktop or server, wasn't clear. People did get to 'see the Apache Web server in action' and a KDE desktop.Is this more of a preemptive strike where the Linux experience is so bad (slow machines, old software) they wouldn't bother to check it out in the future, thus securing an existing partner/client? Or are they that confident people won't stray if they're invited to sample the competition? According to the Register, 'Microsoft is unlikely to stop developers moving to Linux and open source so its best hope lies in articulating a strategy of co-existence to limit the 'damage' to its business.'"

Anonymous Coward writes "According to Eric Seidel, Apple WebCore developer, Safari may soon have 'experimental SVG support.' He ported KDE's new DOM architecture KDOM as well as their Scaleable Vector Graphics (SVG) implementation KSVG2 and render tree library KCanvas to WebCore. A new section devoted to SVG is also up on the WebCore site. Does this all mean that SVG will now go mainstream, finally?"

hisham writes "Every now and then we see articles pointing out "what's wrong with Linux on the desktop." This one gives a nice overview not only of the problems we all know, but also where to look for solutions (app dirs, smarter filesystems) and what's out there (projects trying to change the face of Linux, like Klik, Zero Install and GoboLinux). Still, it usually boils down to things that Mac OS X already has or that are/were touted for inclusion on MS Longhorn. Fortunately, the major desktops stopped playing catch and are focusing on forward-looking Linux projects, like KDE Plasma and Gnome Beagle. Interesting times ahead."