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The latest maintenance release of KDE, namely version 3.2.3, hit download servers all over the world this week. KDE 3.2.3 ships with a basic desktop and eighteen other packages, and - with the recent addition of Arabic, Croatian, and Upper Sorbian - is now available in 51 languages.

This week Tech Access hosted a seminar in the Dubai Internet City at which Linux specialist Enigmatis gave an insightful presentation about the practical use of Linux in the region.

Xandros, a start-up focused on desktop Linux, has begun offering a stripped-down but free version of its product. The New York City-based company released the Open Circulation Edition Wednesday, a product that resembles the company's regular products but is free, is restricted to personal use and is missing some features.

Consider these memory requirements for Fedora Core 2, as specified by Red Hat: Minimum for graphical: 192MB and Recommended for graphical: 256MB Does that sound any alarm bells with you? 192MB minimum? I've been running Linux for five years (and am a huge supporter), and have plenty of experience with Windows, Mac OS X and others. And those numbers are shocking -- severely so. No other general-purpose OS in existence has such high requirements. Linux is getting very fat.

Last week the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) announced that it will be updating its entry-level, vendor-neutral Linux+ credential, releasing the new exam by "late 2004."

Security researchers have found at least six more flaws in the open-software world's most popular program for maintaining code under development.

Lindows rolled out a new package of its Linux distribution dubbed Linspire. The company cut the price in half and throws in Mandrake and Fedora.

KDE Project Ships Third Translation and Service Release for Leading Open Source Desktop. KDE Project Ships Third Translation and Service Release of the 3.2 Generation GNU/Linux - UNIX Desktop, Offering Enterprises and Governments a Compelling Free and Open Desktop Solution

[LXer Editor's note: The CREDITS file in the Linux kernel 2.6.5 lists Torvalds' address as the Portland suburb of Beaverton] Linus Torvalds, the tech-world idol who launched the open-source operating system Linux from his bedroom in Finland more than a decade ago, is moving to Portland. Torvalds, who works with Beaverton's Open Source Development Lab, has purchased a Portland-area home and enrolled his kids in school. Many Portland programmers work on Linux, a populist public-domain phenomenon.

Vendors are ramping up enterprise support for Linux in a bid to nudge the operating system over the proverbial tipping point. According to Rusty Russell, a kernel hacker working for IBM's Linux Technology Centre, IBM is providing necessary enterprise support for Linux in four key areas – scalability, performance, hardening and testing.

"I am not hearing of many wholesale swaps from Windows to Linux," says Laura DiDio of the Yankee Group. "A company has to have a self-sufficient, experienced I.T. staff that can write custom applications, and be willing to risk not having an indemnification policy."

I have tried over and over to fault Mandrake 10, and apart from that one crash in KDE and the missing software I use, I cannot find any faults. I was going to give it a mark out of 10, but instead I will give it a percentage mark. 98%. Very good but still a very slight margin for improvement.