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Welcome to this year's 36th issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The first full week in September should be an exciting one for users and fans of Free Software - GNOME 2.12, Ubuntu 5.10 Preview, and SUSE Linux 10.0 RC1 are all expected to hit the download mirrors later this week. But before that happens we will take a brief look at the "smart" package manager in Mandriva, check out "SUPER", a performance-enhancing subproject of SUSE Linux, and revisit the Linspire versus Freespire controversy. Our featured distribution of the week is Elive, a great live CD featuring the Enlightenment window manager - a project that is also the recipient of our US$250 August 2005 donation. Happy reading!

A 4-year-old company is using open source software as the foundation for an ERP suite targeted at small and midsize manufacturers. OpenMFG this week plans to release Version 1.2 of its software, which goes by the same name as the company and includes some 200 changes from the earlier version. While most of the changes are small, about 25 per cent of them came from the company's network of value-added resellers (VAR) and 20 customers. Those changes reflect the fact that users get the complete source code for the various OpenMFG modules and can make changes that get incorporated into the suite. The suite was designed for manufacturers and can be readily adapted for discrete and process manufacturing, according to Ned Lilly, OpenMFG's CEO and co-founder. Modules include the standard ERP functions, such as part definition for bills of materials, capacity planning, inventory management, purchase orders and a complete set of financial programs.

REAL Software has stated the company will ship REALbasic 2005 for Linux on Sept. 13, 2005. REALbasic 2005 for Linux is a rapid application development (RAD) environment that enables professional and non-professional programmers alike to quickly create software for Linux.

But the conflict between Microsoft and Google goes much deeper than that. As long as Google has stayed in the online searching business, Microsoft has had nothing against the ‘do no evil’ company. But lately, Google has started to release software, to explore new domains, to invent new methods of using the PC, and that is already too much to take for Microsoft.

The KDEWebDev site is being formally launched.

With its Issue #6, TUX Magazine published the winners of its first annual Readers' Choice Awards, placing KDE in the first place in the "Favorite Desktop Environment" category and digiKam first in the "Favorite Digital Photo Management Tool".

Even as millions of dollars worth of Office business hangs in the balance, Microsoft says it will not support the OpenDocument format likely to be adopted by the state of Massachusetts this month as its standard XML format.

Usability has grown over the year since the last aKademy. During the Coding Marathon portion of the conference, the KDE-Usability group gave several presentations and tutorials so developers can learn more about usability, and get live usability support while they hacked away

A new, built-to-order PC with a pre-installed Linux distro may not sound like much fun to a hard-core, do-it-yourself Linux geek. But if you want a quick, easy, inexpensive way to get started with Linux, Systemax and Linspire have just the ticket. I recently took a hands-on look at the the companies' then-current offering: the Systemax Venture L335 Linspire PC. The system, which is available from Systemax subsidiary Tiger Direct carries a list price of $299.99, plus shipping and handling, in its basic configuration (see box). The system I ordered for review included some significant upgrades (see box), giving me a solid all-purpose PC for around $500, not including shipping charges.

The Fedora Project, a Red Hat-sponsored and community-supported open source project, today announced that the third Fedora User and Developer Conference (FUDCon) will take place on the second day of this years LinuxWorld in London on 6th October, 2005 at the Olympia Exhibition Centre. Following successful conferences of the Fedora Community in Boston in February and during Linux Tag in Karlsruhe, Germany in June this year, this third conference will further enable Fedora participants in the UK to exchange their views on various topics around the current state of the Fedora Project including infrastructure and development issues.

The disgruntled developers behind Mambo, an open-source software for publishing Web sites, have launched their own version of the project, called Joomla.

The leading Unix-on-Intel company is joining forces with open-source DBMS giant MySQL to bring the commercial version of MySQL to OpenServer. (ED: It doesn't look like a hoax, can this really be true?)

Google Desktop Search has taken the Windows community by storm. What about the real geeks that use Linux? Beagle comes to the rescue! An Open-source alternative, Beagle provides fast indexing and searching of all your files. Kevin of the LinuxForumsDOTorg Content Development team has used it, abused it and reviewed it. Read all about Beagle here!

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer vowed to "kill" Google in an expletitive-laced, chair-throwing tirade when a senior engineer told him he was leaving the company to go work for Google, the engineer claimed in court documents made public on Friday.

Tsync synchronizes multiple devices so that you never have to move data back and forth by hand,” said Anderson, a second-year Ph.D. student in Computer Science and Engineering at UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering. “And it’s all updated automatically.

While Novell Linux Desktop excels in the enterprise space and makes for a better corporate workstation, Xandros Desktop OS 3 Business Edition, a recommended product, empowers non-technical users by simplifying its installation and desktop tools. Ultimately, however, Test Center engineers recommend working with Novell over Xandros because of its wide variety of tools and strong channel presence. (Note: A good article about the Linux desktop -ED)

In the wake of Apple's decision to move from PowerPC to Intel, other vendors are stepping in to meet the Power demand.

Embedded Linux is all about the small, the stable, and the fast. The latest release from embedded powerhouse MontaVista, MontaVista Linux Pro 4.0, promises all three in its quest to provide Linux-based computing for devices everywhere.