"A first pre-release of the GIMP Animation Package for GIMP-2.0 has been made available on ftp.gimp.org.

GIMP-GAP is a set of plug-ins for the GIMP-2.0 that extends GIMP for creation of animations based on a series of frame images. GIMP-GAP is the next development step of the Video Menu that once was part of gimp-1.2."

Read the full thing here

We have good news for the Mandrake Linux user community. During the latest fiscal quarter ending December 2003, MandrakeSoft reported a net profit for the first time since 1999. If you would like to learn more, please see the latest shareholder letter at: http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/investors/newsletter/sn040123

In a very interesting analysis of Novell at LinuxWorld, MozillaQuest Magazine's (mozillaquest.com) Mike Angelo sees Novell emerging as the leading commercial Linux company. MozillaQuest Magazine (mozillaquest.com) reports: Novell is well on its way to being the number one enterprise and desktop GNU-Linux distributor. It might be there already. Novell dominated last week's LinuxWorld Exposition. Novell will push Red Hat out of its slot as the number one Linux distributor. It will eclipse IBM in the enterprise software arena. And it will help the Linux community to pull the GNU-Linux operating system installed-base ahead of the Microsoft operating system installed-base.

Looks like NVidia has updated their Linux drivers for x86 and AMD 64. The x86 version is at 1.0-5336 and the AMD64 is at 1.0-5332.

The x86 version Release Highlights

• Support for Linux 2.6 kernels.
• Fixed AGP failures on some VIA motherboards.
• Fixed a problem that prevented X from running on Samsung X10 laptops.

On January 27th, the KDE Project released KOffice 1.3 for Linux and Unix operating systems. KOffice is a free set of office applications that integrate with the award winning KDE desktop. KOffice is a light-weight yet feature rich office solution and provides a variety of filters to interoperate with other popular office suites such as OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office.

Grab a sneak preview of GIMP 2.0 and learn how to use it, too. In this excellent and easy to follow hands-on tutorial, you will learn how to use The GIMP's powerful layer tools by editing a photograph in the digital darkroom of MozillaQuest Magazine's (mozillaquest.com) Mike Angelo. If you do not know what layer tools are, or you never have used the GIMP's powerful layer tools, you are about to have your eyes popped wide open. This tutorial is based upon GIMP 1.3, the development version for GIMP 2.0. It is in effect a preview of GIMP 2.0. You can apply the basic skills, elements, and principles that you learn in this tutorial to edit and manipulate photos, clipart, scanned images and other digital graphics with The GIMP. You also can use the GIMP to design and create all sorts of stunning computer graphics and images from scratch. GIMP is an excellent, pixel-based, image manipulation and editing program. It's free and open source software. GIMP is a cross-platform (XP) program for the *BSD, Linux, UNIX, Mac, and Microsoft Windows platforms. GIMP looks and feels much like Adobe Photoshop. Unlike Photoshop, GIMP is free and does not need to be registered or activated. The GIMP 1.3/2.0 desktop and UI make GIMP as easy to use as Photoshop, perhaps even easier. Think of the GIMP and Photoshop as similar software products of comparable quality

Check MozillaQuest.com for the full story and links!

Gaël Duval and Mike Angelo discuss the Mandrake finances good news. MozillaQuest Magazine (mozillaquest.com) reports: For the first time in five years MandrakeSoft, producer of the very popular Mandrake Linux distribution, has shown a profit. It now appears that MandrakeSoft will be out of its bankruptcy in March 2004. Gaël Duval and the entire Mandrake Linux crew deserve lots of credit! Mandrake Linux ran into some financial problems and had to seek bankruptcy protection. The Mandrake folks rolled-up their sleeves, and set about to keep Mandrake alive and financially well. And they have done it. Not surprisingly the Mandrake crew got lots of help from the GNU-Linux community too. Congratulations to all the Mandrake people and the members of the Linux community that helped to keep Mandrake alive, and to make it financially well again.

Check MozillaQuest.com for the full story and links!

From Open:

While many are declaring 2004 'The Year of Linux on the Desktop,' the real news continues deep in the datacenter. Starting with high-end tape-storage, openBench Labs looks deep into the workings of Quantum's new SDLT 600, which turns the tables on LTO-2 in performance. But the big story is the introduction of a new level of manageability for both drives and media and the implications for library automation.

Due to numerous requests from Club members, MandrakeSoft is happy to announce that special ISO images of Mandrake Linux 9.2 -- with all official updates -- are now available just for Club members. We've also added some packages built for the Club such as Gaim 0.74 (which now supports Yahoo messenger), the latest Mozilla 1.5, and a new OpenOffice with additional patches and improvements.

Please note that these ISOs are not official versions and thus have not received the same Q/A cycle as official releases.

* Standard Club members have immediate access to the first 3 Download Edition ISOs
* Silver members (and above) may also download the first 3 PowerPack ISOs (complete with commercial plugins and drivers)
* Corporate Club members can download all of the above plus DVD ISOs

From the Cooker mailing list:

http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/torrent/MandrakeLinux-10.0-beta1.torrent

*kernels 2.6.1 and 2.4.25pre6
* glibc 2.3.3 with NPTL support
* pre version of XFree86 4.4
* pre version of KDE 3.2
* Mozilla 1.6
* new MCC
* new mdkwebadmin (to launch webmin locally)
* New menu structure after poll on Mandrakeclub