About a month ago, NeTraverse contacted OfB Labs with an early release copy of Win4Lin 5.0, the follow-up to the already impressive Win4Lin 4.0 released in May 2002. Win4Lin, for those not familiar with it, offers near-native (or better) speed "virtualization" of a Windows box so that one can run Windows 9x (95/98/Me) inside GNU/Linux. Read the review at OfB.

"Who needs Internet Explorer, now that Jobs & Co. has its own browser? The much bigger threat is the growing chance that Microsoft will abandon Office for the Mac." Read the article at BusinessWeek.

Today we host an interview with Andy Tucker, Distinguished Engineer of the Solaris kernel. We talk about the internals of Solaris, the competition and the future of the Solaris OE. The 9th question was answered by Robert O'Dea, Director of Engineering at Sun Microsystems.

Representatives of the Junta of Extremadura (regional government) announced that a sweeping initiative has put 80,000 computers in schools across that region running a special version of Linux, GNU/LinEx. Our Take: I wish the government in my home country, Greece, also put together cheap $199 PCs (plus $60 1024x768@75Hz 15" monitors) and give them away to high-schools. Problem is, we talk for at least $50m in hardware/support -- Greece is a poor country. With time I guess...

In a new court document, the SCO Group criticizes Linus Torvalds, the guardian and copyright holder of the freely shared Linux operating system. Update: Two more articles, one at TheInquirer, one at Forbes.

New features and many bug fixes/updates are seen in SkyOS way. New screenshots too.

This article is a review of Linuxinstall.org 3.0, a Redhat 8.0 based distro aimed at the new home user . Some time back, after reinstalling windows for the umpteenth time I knew there had to be a better alternative. But the more I researched the more confused I got. Debian-Slackware-Knoppix-Redhat? etc,etc. Linux was totally new to me - I wanted stability and speed without the viruses, but I was starting to get overwhelmed from choice and command line phobia. I just wanted an o.s. similiar to Windows in ease of use, but stable!

Microsoft is breaking new ground with Longhorn, successor to XP. The upcoming WinFS file system will be the first to be context-dependent, and promises to make long search times and wasted memory a thing of the past. THG compares it to FAT and NTFS.

The dot is reporting on KDE's 3.2 release schedule and feature plan.

Everyone knows what Microsoft does by now. What some people do not know is that Microsoft releases a system integration software named Windows services for UNIX.

Here is a tutorial on writing your own OS. A help to start you out.

AmigaWorld.net has interviewed Matthew Kille, the founder of the software company Zeoneo who is also the designer of the default AmigaOS4 graphical user-interface. His company developes both for AmigaOS4 and the Amiga Digital Environment. Please note however that the currently presented AmigaOS4 GUI at various 'OS4 on Tour' events is not yet finalised. This includes a couple of the common UI components and the main overall color scheme.

I know this has been covered at length, but none of the reviews that I've read thus far were terribly helpful to me. I've written my own page, based on my own experiences, with specific recommendations for longtime Windows users who are contemplating the switch to Linux.

BeOS MaxEdition 3-beta1 is released (260 MB). This distribution of BeOS, based on BeOS 5 PE, has support for more hardware than the normal BeOS 5.0.3, including support for P4s and new AthlonXPs. Burning the booting image is a bit more involved than usual, as it is not a plain ISO image, so please read the readme file before burning the file. Elsewhere, there is a new donation project to help get OpenOffice ported over to the BeOS.