According to PCPro, yes.
This bit is intriguing:
As many of the engineers involved in the Firefox project are now also working for Google, it comes as no surprise to discover that improvements are planned for the integration with search. The objective is for the browser to adapt to the user’s search needs, rather than forcing a particular view of search on them.
Version 2.0 is expected to create a simple, flexible system that unifies all search back ends, make adding keywords easy and more obvious, allow for engines to be added and removed easily when upgrading and allow for simple configuration for business needs.
Among other things, they also mention “improvements to the tabbed browsing and other user interface enhancements”. Should be interesting…
20% is a really nice number. Not only because, well, it’s a lot of people, but because, unlike the MS fanboys/apologists usually say, Firefox isn’t just used by “geeks” or “technical people”.
Because, sure as hell, geeks (and I consider myself one) don’t comprise 20% of the world’s population. Not even 5%.
This proves that ordinary, non-technically inclined people are also capable of being aware of Internet Explorer’s many problems and lack of modern features, and when aware of alternatives (and here I have to praise Spread Firefox for doing a great job in letting people know that “Internet Explorer” is not “The Internet”), can actually switch.
(Source: XiTi. It’s in French, but the images speak for themselves.)
Much like Firefox, the last RC - in this case, 1.5 RC 2 - is the same as the final version. If you already have that one, you have the latest Thunderbird.
For everyone else, you can get Thunderbird here.
The number one web server on the Internet has a new stable version, 2.2.0. The previous stable version was 2.0.55.
New features include Smart Filtering, Improved Caching, AJP Proxy, Proxy Load Balancing, Graceful Shutdown support, Large File Support, the Event MPM, and refactored Authentication/Authorization.
I’ll keep using OpenBSD’s customized 1.3.29, here, which comes as part of the OS. OpenBSD isn’t moving to 2.x because of licensing issues. But I’m betting most Linux distros will include Apache 2.2.x in their next versions.
Yup, it’s here, as everyone else has already mention (don’t these guys sleep? :)). Auto-update should trigger at any time (unless you’re still using that horrid thing that came with the computer, which you probably call “the internet”… but then, what are you doing on this site if you’re such a technophobe?). You can also get it from the official FTP site, if you’re in a hurry.
From the Mozillazine post:
Firefox 1.5 introduces several new features, including an improved software update system, faster Back / Forward page navigation, a new options to clear private browsing data, drag-and-drop reordering of browser tabs, a redesigned Options/Preferences window and more robust popup blocking. Standards support is also improved, with support for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), JavaScript 1.6 and additional CSS properties. Accessibility is much improved (including new DHTML accessibility features), security has been enhanced and Mac OS X support has also been improved.
As any regular reader knows, I’ve been using 1.5 versions since the betas (which came before 3 release candidates), and even then they already worked better than the 1.0.x versions. So go get 1.5 without any fears of “using bleeding edge software”.
It’s out (saw it on André Costa’s blog). I’m already using it here; so far, so good, except that eAccelerator no longer wants to compile - I could try to muck around the source, but I’m in a lazy mood, so I’ll wait for a future version, and use PHP without it for a while.
EDIT: spoke too soon: Drupal 4.6.3 doesn’t seem to like it. Oh well…
One more release candidate. If everything goes well, this will be the last.
No big changes since RC 2, just fixes for a couple of crash bugs.
If you’re using a previous RC, the auto-update has probably already warned you about this. If you’re still using 1.0.x, you can probably wait a couple of days and update to the final 1.5.
It’s out. Auto-update (really “auto”, I didn’t even use “Check for Updates”) worked perfectly this time: this morning I fired up Firefox, browsed through a couple of usual sites, and after a couple of minutes I got a window saying it had downloaded an “important update” and needed to be restarted to complete the update (though I could optionally keep using the older version for any time I wanted until I restarted it, of course).
According to what’s on the FTP site, the upgrade from RC1 to RC2 was 390 KB. Not too bad.
Ricardo got there first this time. 
Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5 RC1 is out, and can be downloaded here. Or you can try the auto-update.
I’m using it right now, at work (on Linux).
My Firefox has just updated itself to 1.5 RC1. Seems to be pretty new - so far, neither Mozillazine not Slashdot have mentioned it yet. This may have changed when you read this, though.
From the release notes, it’s just bug fixes. Which are always a good idea.
Auto-update should work - to me, it did. If not, you can go to the Help menu and select “Check for Updates”. If you’re really desperate… nah, you shouldn’t be. Testing the auto-update system is good.
Note that the About box says it’s version “1.5″, but it’s not - it’s a release candidate. Then again, from my experience the 1.5 pre-release versions are already more stable than 1.0.7, not to mention faster, with a better Preferences interface, and the ability to re-order tabs by dragging them.
MySQL 5.0 is out (saw the news here). Haven’t tried it yet, since the 4.1 version didn’t like OpenBSD very much, and the OpenBSD port is still at 4.0.x (which I’m using, among other things, for my blogs). I may, however, try out 5.0 after I upgrade OpenBSD to 3.8, hopefully in November.
(yes, I could have downloaded a binary from MySQL themselves, but I prefer to compile from source, even if using a port.)
Anyway, from the MySQL site:
MySQL 5.0 delivers dozens of new enterprise features, including:
- Stored Procedures and SQL Functions — to embed business logic in the database and improve performance;
- Triggers — to enforce complex business rules at the database level;
- Views — to ensure protection of sensitive information;
- Cursors — to allow easier database development and reference of large datasets;
- Information Schema — to provide easy access to metadata;
- XA Distributed Transactions — supports complex transactions across multiple databases in heterogeneous environments;
- SQL Mode — provides server-enforced data integrity for new and existing data;
- New Federated and Archive Storage Engines — MySQL’s unique pluggable storage engine architecture allows greater flexibility, functionality and performance by making it easy to swap database engines in and out, based on users’ application requirements;
- New Migration Toolkit — A new graphical toolkit that completely migrates all data and objects from Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access and other database platforms to MySQL;
- Instance Manager — new management assistant that allows remote starting/stopping of any MySQL Server, as well as remote editing of configuration files, reading of error and query logs, and more;
- Updated Connectors and Visual Tools — new high-performance versions of MySQL’s ODBC, Java and .NET database drivers are now available, along with updated versions of the MySQL Query Browser and MySQL Administrator.
I have to admit (and call me a zealot for having a sense of ethics, I’m used to it :)) that I’d move to PostgreSQL in a minute, if WordPress supported it, because of MySQL’s recent deal with SCO. That was just plain wrong. 
OK, I’m a day late, and every blog in existence has already announced it, but… OpenOffice.org 2.0 is out. Looks and “feels” much better than the 1.x versions. I haven’t tried doing so, because I’m not much of an Office user, but people are saying that OO.org 2.0 reads old MS Office documents better than new MS Office versions do!
Whether you’re using Windows or Linux, you should really try this (assuming you need an Office suite at all - I, for one, use it only about half a dozen times a year). It’s free, it’s easy to use, and it opens your old documents. It’s not harder to move from any MS Office to OO.org than it is to move from MS Office 97 to 2003, for instance.
Also, it supports OpenDocument, which MS Office doesn’t (at least yet). That may well turn out to be the format of the future…
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