Weekly news wrap-up: Sun, Red Hat talk up Linux on the desktop, Perens leaves HP

Where’s Sun headed with Linux on the desktop? There was lots of speculation this week about Sun’s plans for Linux. The Melbourne Age reported, like others have, that Sun is committed to Linux on the desktop. LinuxJournal.com mused about what the Sun boxes would look like.

Meanwhile, Red Hat also seems to be flirting with promoting Linux as a desktop OS again.

And two other top-notch desktop efforts pushed ahead this week. GNOME 2.0.2 Desktop RC1 was released, and RC 2 of Mandrake Linux 9.0 also arrived on the scene. (See more newly released software below.)

Perens, HP part ways

The New York Times wrote a prominent story about Open Source advocate Bruce Perens leaving Hewlett-Packard because of internal strains over Linux vs. Microsoft. What’s Bruce up to next? He told us about his work on the Sincere Choice political platform, and he’s looking at some consulting gigs. It doesn’t hurt to have The New York Times tell the world you’re looking for work.

KDE likes Mono?

First came reports from Computerwire, published at The Register and linked at Slashdot, saying KDE developers were committed to working with the Open Source .Net-like project Mono. That story suggested the KDE project could be the first real-world user of Mono, which sounded a bit odd, because Mono has roots at major Gnome project backer Ximian.

Then, KDE developers took issue with the published report, saying Trolltech is working with the project, but the KDE project as a whole isn’t. Is that clear now?

Trying to recover the Microsoft tax

It’s not so easy, a columnist at LinuxJournal.com suggested, when he tried to return the version of Windows that came with his Toshiba laptop. Basically, the company told him to get lost.

Odds ‘n’ ends