IDG is reporting that Napster is now in the top 50 visited US sites.

KDE and GNOME are competing for the linux desktop. ZDNet’s UK site has a summary of the two sides in the battle.

MacWeek readers
talk about their experiences
with Apple’s wireless networking device, AirPort.

Mount Linux and Protectix have announced a
development agreement for Olympus, Mount Linux’ secure remote
administration tool. Under the agreement, Mount Linux will provide Olympus
and development expertise to integrate Olympus with Protectix Appliance
OS. Protectix, specializing in Open Source security solutions, found a need
in their product line that both web-based or proprietary graphical interface could not fulfill, says a press release at LinuxPR.

LightWork Design has announced that its photorealistic rendering product, LightWorks, is now available on the Linux operating system. Support of LightWorks(TM) on Linux is a major part of LightWork Design’s commitment to providing its customers with
cross-platform toolkit solutions to their end-users’ needs, according to a press release on BusinessWire.

Major music distributors are jumping into online sales because of threats from services such as MP3.com and Napster, according to a story at InfoWorld.

From a Sm@rt Partner story: A poll circulating among various developer groups asks whether Sun should make Java Open Source. The developer who organized the poll calls Java “broken,” because it isn’t getting new features.

O’Reilly’s latest edition in the popular In a Nutshell
series, “Linux in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition” covers all the core commands
available on common Linux distributions. “Linux is changing rapidly, and so
are the needs of its users,” says Andy Oram, O’Reilly Linux Editor. “Among
the most significant features of this new edition are the in-depth tutorials on
each of the three graphical interfaces that confront users when they boot
Linux KDE, GNOME, and the older, but highly stable fvwm.” From a press release on LinuxPR.

A BusinessWeek story says: New e-payments technology being developed by a startup could let the record labels collect each time a music file is shared.

Upside.com reports on the gaming company’s efforts to make a name among several competitors: “One Linux company, Indrema, is diving into the pool head-first. Staking its life on the belief that current software development and hardware trends sweeping the embedded systems market will continue to sweep their way into the realm of gaming consoles, the company has been showing off its L600 Entertainment system, essentially a Linux-driven set-top box with a 600 MHz processor and the potential for 100 Mbs worth of broadband connectivity. ”