"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun! "

I've been writing these short reviews and other articles for the Gazette since issue number seven. Even with the short lead time inherent in a WWW-based publication it seems like new releases and URL changes often happen right after I submit an article. The status of several of the programs has changed since I wrote of them, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to list some of these changes.

By the way, I appreciate all of the email I've received in response to my articles; feel free to write if you have any comments or criticism.

• Moxfm hasn't been updated since version 1.00 was released several months ago, but it's working well in the current version. I've included it here because I've received several e-mail messages stating that the URL in the article wasn't working. The current URL of the Moxfm home page is http://sugra.desy.de/user/mai/moxfm. The source and binaries are in uuencoded form; just let them display on the screen of a web-browser, save them to a file, then run "uudecode filename.uue".
• TkDesk has been through several versions since I wrote of it; the current one is 1.0b3, released on Sept.25, 1996. There are many new features; one which I use often is a file pop-up menu-item which hands the file over to a running Xemacs on another desktop. There is a similar capability involving HTML files and Netscape (or another browser). Check out the TkDesk web-page for the latest news.
• FileRunner has been developing rapidly in the past few months. It's current version is 2.1.1, and many refinements have been made. It's FTP capabilities have been greatly improved; FTP downloads can now run as a background process, and directories can be displayed date-ordered. Remote FTP directories can be saved as bookmarks (accessible from a menu). Many configuration options have been added as well. The built-in shell windows which follow you from directory to directory are very handy. They allow you to see the output of non-interactive commands (such as compilation) and can be dismissed when not needed. There is a FileRunner web-page from which the source can be obtained, as well as from the Sunsite archive..
• Elvis has finally made it to a major release; version 2.00 was announced recently. It's available from its official site. Elvis is remarkable for the small size of the compiled binary, considering how powerful an editor it is. Elvis's ability to display HTML in a readable form meshes well with the HTML format of the extensive help files.
• Vile has a new official maintainer; Paul Fox has handed over the reins to another of the primary Vile developers, Thomas Dickey. Version 6.2 was released recently. For some reason Vile doesn't seem to be as popular as Vim and Elvis (judging by news-group postings). I urge anyone who favors vi-style editors to give it a try; it really grows on you. Vile's new official release site is ftp://ftp.clark.net/pub/dickey/vile
• XaoS in its current release (1.2) has a new feature which increases its usability for those running X with more than 256 colors: it'll run! Previous releases only worked on 8-bit displays.
• Yodl version 1.08 has been released; it's mainly a "small-bug-fix" release, i.e. if a previous version does what you want, you probably don't need it. It's at sunsite.
• Procmeter has been updated to version 2.2; changes include a choice of solid or bar-type graphing, and refinement of network packet transfer display.
• Xmosaic development has slowed since my review. The powers-that-be at the University of Illinois have decided that Xmosaic will be the second, rather than the first, GTK (Graphics ToolKit) client to be developed.The GTK is a programming toolkit which will take the place of Motif in Xmosaic. Scott Powers, Xmosaic's project leader, stated in a message to the mailing list that development will resume in a couple of months. The up side to this news is that the GTK is the "hard part", so that once work resumes on Xmosaic development progress should be rapid.