Just Some Guy writes "I recently received a promotional copy of Roderick W. Smith's "FreeBSD: The Complete Reference". I was pretty skeptical at first - it's my nature - but was pleasantly surprised at the range and depth of information presented in a very accessible format. While not ready to supplant Greg Lehey's "The Complete FreeBSD", it's certainly a worthwhile read for new and moderately-experienced users." Read on for Just Some Guy's full review.

TheMadPenguin writes "When I heard about Libranet 2.8 containing KDE 3.1 and kernel 2.4.20 in our forums, I just about fell out of the chair I was sitting in. As you all probably already know, Libranet is a Debian-based distro aimed toward the desktop user. Until now, I had never heard of a Debian release with all the newest goodies, but my world was about to get turned upside down. Read the full review with screenshots at MadPenguin.org."

bergie writes "There is an interesting article on Advogato on why it is so difficult for Open Source projects to interoperate or support common standards. Often cultural differences between projects, egoes, and many other issues stand in the way. The article outlines some practical ways for improving the situation, based on experiences from OSCOM efforts to get support WebDAV, SlideML and other standards into Open Source CMSs. Examples of successful interop projects include freedesktop.org, the cooperative effort between GNOME and KDE."

An anonymous reader writes "dot.kde.org posted an interview with Hans Karlsson, the author of the now pretty popular KDE clone of Samurize, Karamba, which is responsible for the recent craze at kdelook.org. An interesting interview well worth a read which shows that even today most open source programs still start as tiny hobby projects after all."

fishermonger writes "Trying to imoprove relations, the french KDE team invited RMS to tea at Linux Solutions 2003. From the piece: 'He asked whether KDE people were saying "Gnu/Linux" or just "Linux", and Open Source or Free Software. I told him some of us are using KDE/Gnu/Linux which pleased him as an answer.' Many pearls in the article."

Jon Danzig writes "Hi, Libranet 2.8 has been released and I hope you will inform your readers. Libranet is our implementation of Debian to which we have added our installer, up-to-date software e.g. KDE, Gnome, kernel, etc., and generally packaged GNU/Linux into a super smart fast and stable system. The installer has sophisticated hardware detection and setup with flexable installation of software packages. We keep hearing that the Linux Desktop is on the horizon and while the horizon never gets any closer Libranet is steadily making its way in that direction."

David Lechnyr writes "This article goes into detail on optimizing KDE for speed. Typically, most distributions include pre-compiled binaries of KDE which are optimized for an Intel i386 computer. Chances are that you're running something faster than this; if so, this should help you tweak the compile process to speed things up a bit."

anonymous writes "In this fascinating interview, Eric Laffoon and Andras Mantia give us a glimpse into the world of the Quanta Plus project. Read on for everything from tantalising references to Kommander, billed by Eric to be part of the foundations for the next generation desktop and user experience, to details of future plans for Quanta VPL (Visual Page Layout)."

Mac of Macistan writes "In a recent article in the New Scientist, Microsoft's R&D claims that women have a harder time navigating the desktop because their spatial abilities are roughly 20% lower than men's abilities. Maybe Linux UI people can get a jump on MS by making KDE/Gnome more accessible to more females."

dvdweyer writes "This book deals with administration of UNIX (one wonders why the book doesn't bear the title "Essential UNIX Administration"), all major UNIX platforms are covered, most of them in their almost latest version when the book went to press (Linux: Red Hat 7.3 and SuSE 8.0, Solaris 8 and 9, FreeBSD 4.6, AIX 5, HP-UX 11/11i, Tru64 5.1), SCO and IRIX were dropped for this edition, FreeBSD was added. Other UNIXes (e.g. Debian Linux) are not mentioned, but this makes the book only a little bit less useful on those, with some imagination the information can be used, except for special topics (e.g. package management). This book is on system administration and not targeted on desktop users, as such it doesn't cover KDE, Gnome or any desktop application." Dvddwyer's section-by-section review continues below.

dmalloc writes "The Fink Project community and contributors announced the availability of the Fink Binary Distribution 0.5.2, which adds binaries for KDE 3.1, Koffice 1.2.1, and Kdevelop 3.0a3, new documentation/manuals, and improved support for Apple's X11 Server along with speed improvements to fink itself. Download instructions are on the Fink site."

TheMadPenguin writes "MadPenguin.org announces today its TykeLinux (current working title) project, a Linux distro geared toward child development and learning. The distribution will be based and built upon Ark Linux 1.0a7.1 and the KDE 3.1.x desktop environment. It will include several educational tools, as well as cross-platform compatible office applications. If you are an interested software developer, please read the full announcement and get on board :)"

An anonymous reader writes "George Staikos responds to Michael Meeks' arguments of using GNOME over Qt. There is also a discussion of events at KDE.News. In Meeks' same set of slides, he states that Ximian OpenOffice is much faster to start than native OpenOffice."

TheCrimsonUnbeliever writes "The latest version of Knoppix (bootable Linux distribution on CD) is out - New features include: KDE 3.1.1 - XFree86 4.3 - Evolution 1.2.1 - OpenOffice 1.0.2 - KOffice 1.2.1 - The ability to create a home directory on a memory stick or similar - More information is available at the KNOPPIX English homepage." If you're getting started with Knoppix (and speak English), you should also check out knoppix.net for the excellent forums hosted there.

Devil's BSD asks: "My school is planning to add remote desktop access so that people can easily access a school computer from home. However, with the financial situation in our Kentucky being what it is, using Citrix Metaframe for Unix/XP and buying all the software licenses necessary will be extremely hard. And with the state department of education (ironically named KDE) very pro-Microsoft, VNC is out of the question. Is there a free or low cost Citrix-like software suite that can give access to a remote desktop and compress the datastream to be able to work on a 56k modem like Citrix's ICA does?"

NoSun writes "Sun's latest project is to create a font library for XFree86, named Stsf, that would replace Fontconfig and Xft2. But the big question is: Does the world need yet another X font library that would create more incompatibility and fragmentation? Well known Gnome and GTK+ developers are against this (yet another) X font library which just re-invents the wheel one more time with the result of slowing down KDE and Gnome in the desktop race. "

alvinc writes "Mark Rais' new book Linux for the Rest of Us is an excellent choice for beginning Linux users. It also has enough solid, fundamental information to be a refresher for experienced Linux users. The book's philosophy is that Linux is a viable alternative OS that is also fun, and this viewpoint is reflected in the narrative's friendly tone." Read on for the rest of Alvin's review. Update: 03/26 20:51 GMT by T : Since bn.com isn't stocking this book, author Marc Rais wrote to suggest that you can order this book straight from the publisher.

Slashback with more on Linux telephony, Mailblocks' terms of service, the scary disease known as SARS, the status of civilian GPS accuracy and more -- read on for the details.

kiltedtaco writes "Slackware Linux 9.0 is out! Based on gcc 3.2, and equipped with kernel 2.4.20 (ptrace-patched), XFree86 4.3, GNOME 2.2 and KDE 3.1. You can read the full announcement, or just go grab a copy for yourself at either the Slackware Store or these lovely mirrors." I know a lot of people who first cut their teeth on Slack when trying Linux. It's cool to see that it's still around.

chriseh writes "For those of us who prefer Linux to the candydrop OS, good news! YellowDog Linux 3.0 has been released. For those who don't want to wait, you can get an enhanced membership at YDL.net and download ISOs directly. As per other releases, ISOs will be available to everyone/mirrors two weeks after the CDs have been on sale.Finally, I can run Linux on my 12" Powerbook." extrarice amplifies: "New features include: Redesigned installer, a unified KDE 3.1/GNOME 2.2 desktop (both WMs share the same icons and menus), Kernel 2.4.20, and the usual package refinements/updates. More release info can be found here. Note: ISOs are not available yet, and CDs are scheduled to ship in mid-April. I have been running YDL 2.x for about a year now, and it's a fast, stable distro."