xynopsis writes: "Based on the Indigo Magic Desktop on Irix, this Linux version contains a new window manager called 5dwm, an enhanced Motif library that supports the Irix look and feel, and widget sets specific to SGI. IMD goes further than those "themes" available that simulates the Irix desktop experience by allowing applications written in Irix to be ported to Linux with little modification in the GUI front-end. Linuxworld.com recently interviewed its creator, Eric Masson, who is single-handedly porting this great Unix desktop to Linux." Quote: "The first major difference between GNOME and IMD is the low-level API being used. In the case of GNOME it's GTK+, originally developed for the popular GIMP application, whereas for IMD it's Motif, a much more mature and standardized API ... "

An unnamed correspondent asks: "Does anyone think that the release of Mac OS X will threaten Linux? A UNIX-based OS that XFree86, the GIMP, Apache, etc. run on, and is easy to use and maintain for a beginner, might not bode too well for the little OS that could. I'm not talking about techies -- I'm talking about people who might use Linux on their desktop (companies who are deploying it, etc.). Why would they want to use Linux instead of OS X?" It's not a new question, but it won't go away, either. Anyone out there planning to jump to Mac OS X from Linux or one of the (other) BSDs?

green pizza asks: "My research group will soon be purchasing several workstations for telescope image analysis. We are currently planning on going with dual Pentium III systems from VA running Redhat 7. We have a good deal of custom filters and scripts that will be churning away in The Gimp and would like the best performance possible. Is our current choice the best one? Should we consider moving up to a Xeon system or perhaps a high-end, multiple processor Sun Blade 1000, SGI Onyx 3000, or Alpha?"

&& writes was the first to tell us that The Gimp has now reached v1.2.0. Congratulations to all the hackers that made it happen. I couldn't live without my gimp! (God I love saying that)

LinuxNews Team writes: "Sven Neumann and Michael Natterer prepared an RFC about GIMP. We learn that there will be three branches in CVS: 1.2.x branch (stable GIMP), 1.3.x ( devel GIMP but not many new features) and 1.9.x (VERY devel GIMP with whole new structure, GEGL and GCim stuff). Looks like GIMP 1.2.0 is on its way to the users. Check out the RFC."

Stu asks: "I've been thinking about giving my faithful old PowerMac 7600/120 a little boost, and also thought it would be nice to give Linux a go, especially to try out the GIMP as an alternative to Photoshop. I've noticed over the past year or so quite a lot of distibutions have popped up which install in an MSDOS partition and can be launched from within Win95/98 or MSDOS, like WinLinux and many others. I'm shying away from repartitioning my HD and installing LinuxPPC as of now, but I'd like to kinda dip my toes in the water before I take the full plunge, so my question is: Does anything similar to WinLinux and those other distros exist for the PowerPC platform, i.e. can install in an HFS+ partition alongside MacOS?"

Logic Bomb writes: "Salon has an article about the famous Berkely eXperimental Computing Club, from whence came GTK, the GIMP, early web browsers, and many other goodies. The article has a nice overview of the club's history, as well as questions about its continued existence. Apparently the rise of collaboration over the Internet has made it much harder to find recruits."

eweaver asks: "Windows has built-in color matching modules like ICM and sRBG, and 3rd-party solutions like Colorific and ColorBlind, but what is the Linux/XFree86 equivalent? Caldera Graphics seems to have some sort of solution, but I don't think it's universal, it seems to work only in their programs. What can I do so that the colors I see in all my Linux graphics apps (mainly GIMP and Blender) are accurate (adjusted for gamma, white point, lighting, etc.)?"

The Gimp, frankly, rocks. But like most pieces of complex software, it's a bit of a...problem to learn how to use. Enter chromatic's review of Carey Bunk's Grokking The Gimp. If you want to know more about image manipulation, check it out.

Another voiciferous Anonymous Coward asks: "Is there a such thing as a loss-less JPEG rotator? I want to rotate 90 degrees w/o the decompress recompress cycle which chews up jpegs. Supposedly there are some for windows, but I haven't found any for Linux. The GIMP opens and resaves and from what I can tell so does ImageMagik."

aibrahim asks: " I recently found out about W3C Specification for Scalable Vector Graphics from the Adobe SVG site. So I was looking around for programs that would allow me to work with SVG on Linux, or any OSS system for that matter. Adobe plans on making almost their entire product line work with SVG, including Photoshop. Corel has released an SVG Filter. Yet, I couldn't find a single product with a Freshmeat search that mentions SVG. Looking on SourceForge reveals two projects: Gill and Savage. Neither of these projects have posted any files as of 9/2/2000. Are there any free software projects with a usable SVG product? Can anyone comment on when any such project may come to fruition? Lastly, since Adobe is including SVG features in Photoshop has anyone even mentioned it to the GIMP ^[?] develeopers?"

Clyde has written a nice article over at LinuxOrbit about the state of the GNOME office suite. With all the hubbub surrounding the recent freeing of Sun's StarOffice, this is gonna get more interesting. I'll tell ya the one thing that I miss in AbiWord is anti-aliased text. Staring at that horridly pixelated text is hard on the eyes. Between the Gimp, Gnucash, Eazel, Evolution, AbiWord, Gnucash and the like (no, I'm not forgetting KDE, I just haven't used it recently), the application support under Linux is rapidly making it feasible for a desktop user, but we're just not there yet. And it's the little things that get ya.

Updates on Tom's detective work, Kevin's touchy look-but-don't touch semi-citizen status, and last but not least a word from the elusive printman, here folded, spindled and mutilated for your edification.

Mozilla's latest milestone, M17, arrived today(ish); early adopters, go thou and download. And while you're waiting, check out this summary of the state of the art of PNG written by Greg Roelofs. PNG is ready for prime time in its Mozilla incarnation (though there are a few outstanding issues). Imminent takeover of the net predicted. Film at 11. Update later by J: OK, so M17 isn't available yet. Mea culpa; Greg and I misread a planning page. Here are Greg's comments/corrections to clear up the matter.

A reader writes "Michael Hall of LinuxPlanet wrote a pretty nifty review of CorelDraw 9 for Linux. He's a mondo GIMP fan, but he's still saying nice things about CorelDraw, kinda sorta."

Ur@eus writes "Hi, We have just interviewed Sven Neuman, lead developer on the Gimp. The interview covers the upcoming 1.2, 1.3 and 2.0 releases of the Gimp and how [they]will evolve further. You will find the interview here" Improved path support, GIMP/GNOME interaction and an improved rendering system are a few of the points that Sven addresses -- The GIMP has impressed for years and keeps getting better.

HoserHead writes: "For those who are really worried about the Unisys patent on LZW compression in GIF files, the answer may soon be at hand: MNG is on the way. PNG has a brother in MNG, which is the free alternative to animated GIFs. Tim Rowley has recently sent Mozilla hackers a checkin of preliminary MNG support, as can be read here (Necko/Imglib section). Now, all that's needed is MNG export support for the GIMP!"

Thanks to all of the fine folks who contributed these updates, you are in for another illuminating, invigorating, inspiring round of fruity nuggets picked from the tree of wisdom, irradiated, waxed, polished, chilled, packaged and shipped (metaphorically) to your browser. Swallow two of these a week, call if symptoms recur.

Justin Mason writes "Raph Levien, Advogato builder, GNOME and Gimp hacker, and general graphics guru, has made 19 patents available for free use by GPLed programs." Raph adds: "I hope to see the dithering code used in free inkjet drivers soon." It's great to see that kind of commitment; if a few hundred more people did that, think where we'd be. On behalf of my BSD-lovin' friends, I asked Raph why the GPL specifically and how he felt about about other licenses; for his reply, "read more"...

Some useful stuff: An anonymous reader noted that AltaVista has opened Raging.Com which is a super fast minimal search engine without all that bloated portal crap. gi_wrighty noted that the winneers of the 5k HTML Contest have Been announced. Impressive minimalism. Soeren Staun-Pedersen noted that a new The Gimp User Group has come along. j1mmy pointed us to pictures of the new Lara Croft Model from E3. Yaruar sent us a story about Lego Filmsets that come with cameras for you do-it-yourselfers. If you don't want to make your own films, how about your own Mars Polar Lander Site? (Thanks Biff Studly). antiwesley sent us interesting insight into a typical geek cube. Speaking of things found in geek Cubes, BenTheDewpendent sent us a page that tracks tons of info on Mountain Dew and bob_jordan found pictures of upcoming Futurama Bender Action Figures (Not as cool as Nate's Picolo tho) Baloo Ursidae sent us a story about electricity generating shoes. Gorphrim sent us some Duron Parodies Finally some Slashdot references: DrFun (one of the original net comics) mentioned us in a recent strip, Someone noted that Geek Culture is selling First Post T-Shirts. QuasEye noted that someone registered hotgrits.org and ironically enough, is running Slashcode. And the WashPost ran an article on us which is mostly accurate. And to wrap things up, maxxon showed us the way to Crank Dot Net, which has stuff on all sorts of conspiracy theories and urban myths and other crazy stuffs on the net. Stuff like UFOs, the face on mars, Creationism, Scientology, antigravity, and perpetual motion and more.