Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. (Panasonic) and Sony Corporation today announced their agreement to work in partnership on the development of an enhanced Linux®*1 platform for digital home electronic devices. The companies will aim to apply the fruits of their collaboration to their AV (audio visual) products and to make the source code*2 available to the public for free in order to encourage its broader use throughout the industry. While Linux is well known as an operating system for personal computers and servers, today it is also finding applications in the area of digital home devices. Therefore, users expect even shorter start-up times and improved response. The two companies plan to study the functions and performance required for digital home electronic devices, and develop a Linux platform that meets those requirements.

Valve Software have released a new beta of the dedicated server software for Counter-Strike.

Fixed a bug in Counter-Strike where the flashbang grenade would not always flash all of the players.

Nvidia have posted new Linux Nvidia display drivers!

Linux Display Driver
Version: 1.0-4180
Operating System: Linux AMD64
Release Date: December 11, 2002

3dgamers.com reports that Icculus and Electronic Arts have released the first beta dedicated Linux server for Battlefield 1942, allowing Penguin-powered PCs to host multiplayer games of Digital Illusions' vehicular first-person shooter. This beta release will expire in about 30 days but a new release should become available prior to that, and bug reports are solicited.

ATI have released a new set of Linux Drivers version 2.5.1! Here's what's fixed:

"Powered By ATI" products install properly. OpenGL Render reports product name accurately. fglrxconfig program lists Radeon 9000 Pro and 9500 Pro. Updated config program for improved multi-monitor setup.

Savagenews.com reports that Linux Kernel 2.4.20 has been released.

The latest stable version of the Linux kernel is: 2.4.20 The latest prepatch (beta) version appears to be: 2.5.8-pre3 The latest -ac patch to the stable Linux kernel series is: 2.4.20-rc4-ac1

Nvidia have released a new set of Linux nForce2 Drivers version: 1.0-0248! November 26, 2002

Added PCI ID support for nForce2 MCP2-T and MCP2-A to the i810_audio driver. Cleanup of spec file and Makefiles SRPMs and tar files now use local system's i810_audio.c file, and complain if not there (this makes them more distribution independent) Changed code to compile properly with gcc3.X and gcc2.X Added support for Mandrake9.0 and Redhat8.0 nForce2 support for network driver

We're happy to announce that we've successfully booted Windows 2000 without a legacy proprietary BIOS. We accomplished this by developing software that combined elements from two very successful projects: LinuxBIOS and BOCHS. The Etherboot project also helped in various ways.

Intel boosts its Pentium 4 and Itanium 2 and released version 7 of its compiler suite. On the Windows side, there is the plugin compability to the .NET enviroment, on the Linux side better compability to the GNU compiler.

Just got word that Rage3d.com have got news that ATI has released an Unified Linux Driver v2.4.3.

ATI Technologies Inc today continued its commitment to deliver the industry's most advanced, high-quality graphics with the release of its Unified Linux Driver Version 2.4.3. The new unified driver allows commercial and consumer end-users to reap the performance benefits from stable Linux-based systems, creating a richer graphics experience.

Macromedia Flash Player is the client for rich web experiences across multiple platforms. With Macromedia Flash Player, web users worldwide can view and interact with content developed in Macromedia Flash.

Thanks to Linuxcompatible.org for this.

The Linux NTFS Project has posted NTFS RPMs for Red Hat Linux 7.3/8.0.

If you know what you are doing, you should be able to install the RPM and mount an NTFS volume immediately. No reboot, no fuss. Below is a set of instructions that explain every step of the way.

Savagenews.com reports that Opera Software has released a new version of their excellent browser for Linux/Unix.

Following closely on last week's update, a new patch for Neverwinter Nights is now available to bring BioWare's 3D role-playing game to version 1.26. This release addresses over a dozen game issues, and as always it's accompanied by an updated dedicated Linux server. Auto Updater download is recommended.

OpenOffice.org is the open source project through which Sun Microsystems is releasing the technology for the popular StarOffice productivity suite. It is an international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format. The OpenOffice.org project establishes the necessary facilities to make this open source technology available to the developer community.

Nvidia have released a new Linux Graphics Driver - version 1.0-3123 Release Date: 9/10/2002. Here's what's new:

Improved SPEC Viewperf performance
GeForce4 and Quadro4 Support see products supported list
Support for Quadbuffered stereo on Quadro products
Support for up to 16 monitors

This patch adds ATA/133 support for both the VT8235 and VT8233A southbridges for Red Hat Linux 7.3, Mandrake Linux 8.2, SuSE Linux 8.0, and Red Flag Linux 3.2. A release note and instructions are included in the zip file.

Nvidia have released a new Linux Display Driver - IA64 version 1.0-3127. Release Date: October 3, 2002. Here's what's new:

Bug Fixes
Improved SPEC Viewperf numbers

Today the Xbox Linux Project announced that Xbox Linux Mandrake 9 has been released. This is the first complete Linux distribution for the Microsoft Xbox gaming console.

A 350 MB installation CD of Xbox Linux Mandrake 9 is available for download free of charge from the Xbox Linux website. It corresponds to a standard installation of the (free) 3 CD version of the well-known Mandrake Linux distribution, which has only been released a week ago, so it contains the graphical environments Gnome and KDE, as well as software packages such as OpenOffice.org, XMMS and Mozilla. Since Xbox Linux Mandrake 9 is 100% compatible with Mandrake Linux 9, all additional packages from the official Mandrake Linux 9 installation CDs or the Mandrake website can be installed into Xbox Mandrake Linux.

To be able to use Xbox Linux Mandrake 9, you need a "modded" Xbox and a USB keyboard and mouse connected to the Xbox by a Xbox-USB adaptor, which can be easily built by most users.

There is nice review of Lindows 2.0 at Extremetech.com. Lindows was hailed across internet as a breakthrough for Tux as ...