In terms of time, a SuSE 9.1 ought to be taking shape about now. Has anyone heard anything about a new release? Will SuSE's acquisition by Novell delay the next release? Will it include Ximian Desktop? If not, can we assume that a new release of XD2 will follow soon after?

From what I've heared from people at SuSE UK, it will be a 2.6 kernel with KDE 3.2 and either Gnome 2.4 or XD2 or both. When I asked they hadnt made a final decision. I've no idea on X or glib, but it should be released mid-april, and with samba 3.

I got wind that the desktop guys at my Fortune 250 company -- the people who mandate what the users run -- are thinking about taking a look at Linux, mostly because of how hard we've been hit by the latest email viruses. Obviously, I'll be recommending SuSE for such a thing, but I'd sure love to show them a new version with the speed improvements in the 2.6 kernel I keep hearing about.

Well come september one of the beacon schools in manchester will be using 9.1 on the desktop, using OpenOffice for the office suite, TotalRekall (possibly) as the database frontend and last year we paid for development on WINE to ensure that all the schools educational programs worked under it (our diffs are now included in the current build). We already have them using Moz as the browser, but oddly our biggest hang up was with the file manager, in the end were probably going to use Xfe. Its only about 120 machines + 60 laptops that will be pure linux, with prehaps 300 others dual booted along with 2000 users, but the status as a beacon school and technology college will cause other schools to take a look at and consider linux against the other leading OS. Plus were going to be able to hand out to the kids as soon as they start the software that they'll be using for nothing, and in my copious free time I intend to put together a knoppix varient so I can give them the entire enviroment :) Good Luck, Ben