The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the second release candidate for KDE 4.0. This release candidate marks the last mile on the road to KDE 4.0. This release sees increasing participation from distributions, you can download packages for Debian, Kubuntu, Mandriva, openSUSE & Fedora or grab the live CDs from Kubuntu & openSUSE.

Microsoft stirred up controversy last week when it suggested a Linux-based laptop for children in developing nations be redesigned to accommodate Windows. Would that be a good move?

The TuxMobil project covers all aspects concerning Linux on laptops and notebooks. The number of free guides and how-to's has more than doubled in less than three years, and more than 7,000 links to Linux laptop and notebook installation and configuration guides are now listed at TuxMobil.

OrangeHRM , a leading provider of open-source HR Management solution for small and medium sized enterprises worldwide, has announced a partnership with PicassoHR.

Tests of the latest KDE-4-Desktop showed that KDE 4 in direct comparison to KDE 3.5 almost 40 percent less memory consumption.

Alex Brown has now written up a FAQ on the ballot resolution meeting scheduled for February over MSOOXML, "Frequently Asked Questions regarding DIS-29500 Ballot Resolution Meeting", over which he will preside. The FAQ informs us that National Bodies need to send in their list of delegates by December 11, or they likely won't be let in to the February meeting. That is today, folks. Here's what will and won't be discussed:

Six months ago, Linux vendor Red Hat acquired the closed source Exadel Studio Pro IDE and pledged to turn it into a fully open source Red Hat product.

Continuent today announced new versions of Continuent uni/cluster for PostgreSQL and Continuent uni/cluster for MySQL with enhanced database scaling and ease of deployment in large-scale production environments. Continuent uni/cluster is a suite of middleware software that delivers high-availability and scalability clustering for virtually any mission critical database application.