The latest issue of the Mandriva newsletter is a round-up of events in the world of Mandriva since the last issue came out last year - new releases, major changes to the website, rearrangement of the Club, and more.

If you buy Linux, you’re not only keeping money away from Microsoft, you’re telling OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), that you really do want Linux. And, if enough people do that, the OEMs will support Linux on more of their systems, their vendors will make drivers for Linux components, and the entire Linux desktop world will be the stronger for it.

The KDE Project is proud to announce the first beta release of KDE 4.1. Beta 1 is aimed at testers, community members and enthusiasts in order to identify bugs and regressions, so that 4.1 can fully replace KDE 3 for end users. KDE 4.1 beta 1 is available as binary packages for a wide range of platforms, and as source packages. KDE 4.1 is due for final release in July 2008. Highlights: Plasma grows up, Kontact returns, applications grow, refinement throughout the frameworks.

"I spend a lot of time working in front of a screen (many hours in a dimly lit room) and eye fatigue is an issue. A consistent color scheme, especially one which is easy on the eyes, is important — and it also helps to have way of doing that where the directives are not all scattered all over my Emacs-lisp setup. Enter Emacs Color Themes, available as the Debian package emacs-goodies.

With the release of KDE 4.1 on the horizon, and initiatives such as Krush days, recent call for help with documentation, and the perennial need for localisation it is very useful for end users to be able to easily get their hands on up-to-date builds. KDE4Daily VM, a self-contained Qemu image with a Kubuntu 8.04 base, aims to provide such a service.

Chani Armitage has been hacking on ZUI for KDE 4.1. It ’s far from complete, but it’s at least becoming something you can actually use now. Keyboard shortcuts can be used to navigate it quickly and clicking an activity containment will make it the active one. She also added an option for removing activities.

The well-known Bill Beebe gives his take on Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring - "It has truly come a long way and is worthy of first consideration as an alternative OS."

Are you in the mood for love? If your answer is "sí señor", then perhaps you may like these two open source films that I'm going to share to you. And yes, I said open source.