Beta 1 of Aethera is now available for download.  Aethera is an Open Source personal information manager:  mail client, contacts database, and notes, tasks, and journals manager for Linux/KDE.  It’s in a heated (but informal) competition with the Gnome-based Evolution to become the Outlook-killer for Linux.  Is this really a good idea?  I don’t know about everybody else, but I kind of like having separate programs for each of these tasks.  I handle my email much differently than I handle my journals and contacts, and Outlook’s insistence that I treat everything the same way irks me to no end.  I’d rather have individual programs that work well together, but don’t force me to treat journal entries and contacts in the same way.  Give me a decent email client and news reader, a calendar, and a journaling program.  I’d rather not have them combined, thank you very much.