"OK, it's official: Linux on the desktop is dead. Oh, sure, the corpse is still kicking around a little,

and there's some debate about whether the patient is officially dead. But all we're waiting

for now is the official death certificate from the coroner. The recent death of Eazel, as well as

Corel's inability to practically give away the desktop-oriented Corel Linux, are two strong

indications that there isn't an acceptable rate of return on Linux desktop development.

Instead of lamenting the past its time to recognize the amazing accomplishment of Linux's

This article, written by a former foreign aid worker, addresses the issues surrounding bringing technology to developing nations as its starting point and moves on to discuss the specific usefulness of Linux in these instances. The author's decidedly lucid about the perils of promoting technology for its own sake. For people who've ever wondered what the story was behind vim's "help uganda" command, there's something interesting, too.

Through Caldera's Professional Services, system builders, VARs, corporate accounts and OEMs may have global access to experienced business and technical expertise. This includes Caldera's LifeSpan Project Methodology, which provides such services as rapid development and deployment of solutions, as well as system replication, application and system migration, and custom engineering.

NetBeans open source project has added more than a dozen additional modules into its open source code base. These modules make the standards-based IDE platform more complete and expand its appeal to a broader audience of Java developers. These will streamline Java application development and address a range of issues, including integration with Apache's "Ant" XML scriptable build tool, improved application server deployment support and SOAP-based Web services generation and deployment.

The first quarter was a rocky one for Unix servers, as the U.S. market shrunk by about 2 percent because of a slowing economy, according to a survey by market researcher Dataquest. But despite the contracting market, Sun Microsystems and Dell Computer managed to eke out double-digit growth, while IBM stayed its course with sales remaining basically the same.

Red Hat´s Melissa London has said that Red Hat´s browser plans are to drop the Netscape browser as soon as Mozilla has equal functionality. This could mark the beginning of the end for the Netscape browser suite. Browser-wise, Microsoft´s Internet Explorer already dominates the several Windows platform variants. Linux has been Netscape´s last safe harbor. When and if more Linux distributors drop Netscape, Netscape will have lost its last stronghold.

As part of its ongoing commitment to Enterprise-level volume management on Linux, IBM will contribute portions of the AIX LVM to the Open Source Community. IBM will be releasing this code as part of the Enterprise Volume Management System (EVMS) project. EVMS will now have support for 3 major volume management formats (Linux LVM, OS/2 and AIX) expanding on the flexibility provided by its pluggable architecture. In conjunction with the Linux JFS project, this will make it possible to move disk drives between Linux and AIX systems and allow all data to be exchanged.

Here is a guide that explains how soundcard drivers work, some common sources for them (using the kernel's built-in drivers, ALSA, or 4Front's OSS). It also talks about the future of Linux soundcard development.

SuSE Linux has announced that SuSE Linux 7.1 for Compaq's AlphaServer systems will be available by the end of May. By porting the latest SuSE distribution to Compaq's 64-bit technology, SuSE proves itself again as a leading provider of Linux server solutions. Apart from the Alpha platform, SuSE Linux also supports Intel and PowerPC CPUs as well as the SPARC and S/390 architectures.

This article is a broad overview of the state of game boxes such as the XBox, Nintendo GameCube, and the Sony Playstation2. It also includes some insight on plans for the Linux-based Nokia MediaTerminal, which it calls a resurgence of the convergence pitch.