Zach "Gimp News" Beane writes "Network World has a columnist who wrote an interesting column about creating an alternative to Microsoft by investing effort in Linux. The web version of the article is at this link.

Stefan Ottosson wrote in to tell us that the latest Gimp Contest is over and we have a winner, viktor-0 is the new gzilla spinner, and dietmar-3 was the runner up. Voting should start soon for the gnome logo- there are some really sharp ones in there.

Joseph Fisk wrote in with news to my ears: the latest version of The Gimp is out and about. Snag it from the same place as always.

Here is something to think about. A friendly war is being waged over what your X desktop will look like in the years to one. Hit the link below to read about the two major contenters, KDE and Gnome, what I think about them, and why they need to work together.

Aspirin The Fox wrote in to tell us that Mark Kilgard, famous OpenGL advocate, and disappeared from SGI. This information was announced on an OpenGL game developers list. Is this related to the cozying up of MS & SGI during the Fahrenheit deal?

Snorfle writes "The next Gimp.Org contest is under way! This time it is even more exciting... the topic is a logo for GNOME, and RHAD Labs is giving the winner a drawing tablet! There are a couple entries already, so hurry up and upload yours as well. Creating the official GNOME logo could be your chance to be famous!" This is a contest I could sink my teeth into. Wouldn't mind a drawing template either- I love those cool Wacom ones with the eraser built in.

Shaw Terwilliger asked me to plug The Linux Quake Page's new Logo Contest. You've got 10 days left to submit your entry. Special consideration given to Free Software. IMHO "Special Consideration" is a bad idea. If Free Software needed special treatment, I wouldn't have created all the images on Slashdot in The Gimp.

Tuomas Kuosmanen wrote in to let us know that 0.99.18 of everyone's favorite free Image Manipulation Program is available. I believe you also need GTK 0.99.3 so don't forget to snag it too.

Piotr Mitros was the first to write in and tell us that the new GTK is out- apparently it breaks Gimp 17, but 18 will be out soon. Hope I'll be able to compile these guys... the last few have been harry and I really want to check out the several improved plug-ins. Grap it off of Gimp.org.

Thank Adrian Likins for letting us know that The LinuxExpo Website has been updated. They now list costs, dates, events and lot's of other information. The dates don't overlap any of my classes, so there is a very good chance that I'll be there. Hope to see ya.

Manish Singh let me know that the Animated Gif Contest Winner has been posted to Contest.gimp.org. Virtual Wilbur & Ewing's cool animated Tux took the prize, although my favorite was the bizarre brown animated texture. Cool stuff if you haven't seen them yet.

This Paint Program for BeOS actually is capable of using Gimp plug-ins. This is the first I've heard of something besides the Gimp using its plug-ins, and while I know the the officially this is all good, why do I wish people would just run the Gimp? Thanks to Sengan Baring-Gould.

Adrian Likins, who seems to be the Slashdot Ambassador to all things Gimp, wrote in to let us know that GNOME has released 0.11. I'm gonna try to get K and GNOME running and see what I think of both of them now that they both have fairly up to date versions.

Shawn T. Amundson sent in a note to let us know that the Gimp Contest has announced the January Competition:a Gzilla Spinner. Ought to be very cool. The winner for October's Animated Gif contest will be announced soon. There were a couple of amazing entries, if you didn't check them out, you should.

Thanks to the zillions of you who let me know that both the Gimp and GTK have updated (0.99.17 and 0.99.2 respectively). Grab them from the ftp site. Off I go to grab my copy.