With the familiar look and feel of a standard GUI desktop environment, Workstation 7 gives PC and workstation manufacturers the opportunity to provide their business users with easy access to the tools, applications, support, and stability of Linux. It includes e-mail, Mozilla, and PDA hot-sync capabilities. Its graphical user interface installer allows the user to complete installation by entering a single password. It also allows for optional installation of Windows95/98 in free disk space or optional dual-boot installation with Windows95/98.

The RC2 version of Ogg Vorbis has been released on the vorbis.com website. An MP3 competitor, Ogg was created to offer a patent free open source file compression format. Ogg Vorbis can handle more than 2 audio channels while MP3 can't. If you are serving audio streams, you can actually strip away parts of the files to make lower bitrate streams--without re-coding. MP3 can't. The most important of the many changes in the latest version is channel coupling, which means that Vorbis can now encode bitsteams at a much lower bitrate than before.

AlphaWorks team has added a pair of PCs to a modified Ford Explorer, dubbed the IBM TechMobile, which act as the brains of an elaborate embedded computing demonstration based on Linux and Java technologies. Included in the suite of cool apps that the team has incorporated into the TechMobile are eye movement monitoring functions, voice recognition, BlueTooth wireless connectivity, wireless Web access via a cellular modem, the Linux operating system, and Java-based middleware technologies which glue the various system software components together.

Red Hat has released its E-Commerce Package, an open-source product designed for medium-sized businesses. The most useful piece of new information from this report is the information on the price structure: "The suite is priced at $275 per month for a minimum of 12 months or for a one-year license at $2,995. The package will be available starting August 22, but preorders will be accepted by the Research Triangle Park starting next week."

Linux users looking for something to help speed up their systems may want to consider PowerTweak Linux, a free system optimization tool. It runs as a daemon in the background on a Linux machine and can be used to tune CPU performance by modifying the configuration registers in a Linux system. The program also can be used to adjust CDROM drive speeds, optimize file system performance using " /proc/sys " entries and change power management settings by interacting with hard drive " sleep " settings, similar to the use of the " hdparm " command.

Seasoned open-source code developers are concerned that an effort to produce an open-source alternative to Microsoft's .Net development platform may be held hostage by the software giant, if the endeavor ever gets off the ground.

Rocklyte Systems has released the first official (non-beta) release of Athene, a multi-platform operating system that's free to non-commercial users.

MPS, a new free operating system is a DOS clone, based on FreeDOS. It promises to give DOS a slew of new abilities making it ideal for HTTP servers and others. Powerful script system is designed for creating http servers, e-mail servers and others. It will give power of Unix on DOS. Programmed in Turbo Pascal, MPS is still in early programing mode and help from other programers is welcome. The MPS source code will be available on its successful functioning.

A little product from Romtec,Trios, allows three EIDE devices to be connected to it while switching between the three. This is great for all users especially newbies who don't mind spending more money for an easier install. It is mainly used to select between harddrives. And the best thing is that one OS can be put on a seperate harddrive, selected at start up and run as if it was the only OS on the computer. No problems with windows wanting to format your partitions. It is also protected against accidental switching.

The Government of Canada is launching the process for reforming Canadian copyright legislation over the years to come. This process has sparked the creation of this online forum, as well as a number of other forums. Most controversial may be the provisions similar to the USA's Digital Millennium Copyright Act which not only makes legal the circumvention by copyright holders of copyright's Fair Use provisions, but also makes the circumvention of this circumvention a crime.