With last week's release of version 1.2, GNOME has attained a new level of reliability and overall completeness. The latest release is smooth, stable and polished.

Harry McGregor and a few of his friends are trying to build PCs around Linux that, loaded with software and networking equipment, would cost schools no more than $1,000 apiece. The group is devoting much of its time to making sure the systems are stable and easy to use.

IBM, a company most high-tech watchers wrote off as a dying brontosaur at the beginning of the decade, has managed to outrun the competition in embracing Linux and open source technologies such as XML.

The Axis 2100 is exactly what it claims to be - a network camera. It runs its own web server internally so you can point a web browser directly at the camera and see what it's looking at.

A second Linux company has put the brakes on expansion and laid off staff, a further indication that investors no longer are as gung-ho on the comparatively new operating system.

Corel announced a partnership agreement with Linux Technology to deliver a version of its Corel WordPerfect 8 for Linux suite in Internet appliances. Linux Technology makes the Solution Box and the Office/Residential Gateway.

Rich media in the Hypercosm format, called "applets," are actually compiled ultra-small programs that run identically in Web browsers under Linux, Microsoft's Windows and Apple's MacOS.

ASPLinux, Inc., revealed its plans to officially launch the first Singapore-made Linux distribution, at the end of June, 2000.

Elfstone Software, LLC and MSC.Software have announced that Elfstone RTX, a runtime kit for Motif applications, has been chosen as the core graphical interface technology to bring MSC.Patran, the engineering industry's leading modeling and simulation analysis software, to Linux platforms.

Dubbed "Gamera," the software is in "pre-alpha" testing. The current incarnation of Gamera combines Web browsing, instant messaging, chat, email, graphics and file transfer capabilities.