Slashdotters discuss the announcement of the new release featuring support for 2.4, graphical installation, XFree86 4.02, and glibc 2.2. More from DebianPlanet.org.

A column at osOpinion talks about recent snubs to Apple’s OS X, including one from Linus Torvalds: “Those not whitewashed by these reports know that Linus has expressed his dislike of microkernels of any type for years. It was the
reporters, not Linus, that made it sound like he was dissing OS X, thus suggesting wrongdoing on Apple’s part by making Mach not up to
Linus’ standards.

The assumption that Linus’ comments will upset GNU developers is equally wrong. Most GNU developers are mk-agnostic and are happy
with Mach for its stability and reasonable licensing terms.”

The Redmond Linux Organization announces the
release of Beta 3 of Redmond Linux, Personal Edition. Beta 3 is the
latest release of Redmond Linux Personal, a Linux distribution with the
simplicity and ease of use necessary for new and casual computer users.

“Linux is for everyone,” says founder Joseph Cheek. “Redmond Linux has
improved upon the user interface found in standard Linux distributions
to the point that it is easy enough for real people to use.” Redmond
Linux includes simplified versions of Caldera’s Lizard installer and the
KDE 2.1.1 desktop, as well as cutting-edge software – Linux kernel
2.4.3, Mozilla 0.8.1, RealPlayer 8, Macromedia Flash 5, Adobe Acrobat 4,
and a demo of theKompany.com’s Kapital financial management program.

“This Beta 3 release brings Redmond Linux to the level of stability and
number of features needed for home use,” he continues. “We’ve got
everything a home user needs – full Internet access, word processing,
spreadsheet, and financial management software, multimedia, and
entertainment – without the excess software that’s commonly attached to
an operating system. Extra software is available for those who need it, and our management tools allow easy remote diagnosis and repair of
damaged systems.”

Shawn Gordon, President of theKompany.com, agrees. “Given the recent
exodus from the desktop by several major Linux distributions, it is
gratifying to work with a group like Redmond Linux who shares our focus
of making the end user experience easier on Linux. Including a copy of
our personal finance software, Kapital, with Redmond Linux, we hope to
make the first step of simplifying and improving desktop Linux.”

Initiated in June of 2000, the free version of Redmond Linux has been
consistently downloaded an average of 300 times a day. The release of
Beta 3 gives interested users another option for obtaining Redmond
Linux. Beta 3 is available for purchase on CD, bundled with an
installation guide and e-mail support through the final release date,
for US$19.95 at the redmondlinux.org web site.

“Redmond Linux has the quality necessary for widespread public Beta
testing,” Joseph Cheek finishes. “By offering it as a CD, with
instructions and support, we can provide it to people without high-speed
Internet access and a CD writer, who otherwise would not be able to try it.”

Redmond Linux is slated to go gold in June of 2001. Other editions will follow, as well as add-on software for extending the functionality of
Redmond Linux. Redmond Linux can be found on the web at
www.redmondlinux.org.

“Apache 2.0.16 is the first public beta of the forthcoming Apache 2.0, an update which includes several new enhancements, including the new Apache Portable Run-time, the new Multi-processing modules, and I/O filtering. This is a beta release, and is not intended for production use; use it at your own risk. It will be available in both source and binary format. The binary implementations will be available as they are created.” Now available at Apache.org.

LinuxToday.com.au posts: “The necessity of running a slower Linux machine at work than I do at home has led me to explore the world of
smaller, faster window managers. FVWM belongs in that category – I had a brief love affair with it’s simplicity before
deciding it was too ugly for anyone but a man with two-cm thick glasses to use – that or most of my old Uni lecturers 🙂

Next, on the advice of a friend, I turned to BlackBox. BlackBox is a window manager which has been developed primarily
by a guy named Brad Hughes, with the stated single premise of minimalism. And minimalist BlackBox is! However it will
probably fulfill most of the requirements that most people use a window manager for.”

Conectiva Linux releases ‘Heartbeat’ version 0.4.9, “…the most up-to-date and stable release. Some possible bugs related to startup procedures were fixed. It has passed several tests and proved to be rock
stable. Thus we strongly suggest this update.
Heartbeat is now divided into three packages: heartbeat, ldirectord and stonith.
The package heartbeat is responsible for HA services, ldirectord deals with load balancing and stonith does the “Shoot The Other Node In The Head””

InfoWorld reports: “Continuing its push into the application server and e-business infrastructure
market, Hewlett-Packard (HP) said on Monday that it will offer Lutris Technologies’
open-source application server, Enhydra, as a less expensive alternative for
midrange and small companies.”

EE Times: “Making their strongest bid yet for the embedded market, open-source vendors will unveil
a host of software products at this week’s Embedded Systems Conference. Operating systems, development
kits and wireless protocol stacks designed for the embedded arena and aimed squarely at a broad array of
microprocessors commonly used in that market are among the products scheduled to roll out in San
Francisco.

That’s considered a significant step for the open-source community, which until now has focused primarily on
the desktop and on that market’s high-performance microprocessors.”

CNET News.com reports on Adaptec’s release of USB 2.0; the latest version of the protocol pushes data at 480MB per second. That’s quite an improvement over USB 1.1’s 12MB of data per second.

Linux Programming reports that Trolltech is now previewing the next version of Qt to select customers and vendors. A quick look at what to expect in 3.0: “atabase support; data-aware widgets that provide automotive
synchronization between the GUI and the underlying database; a new version of Qt Designer that has become a
full-function GUI builder; comprehensive internationalization; and a host of other improvements.”