"The first thing I noticed about the new Mandrake 9.0 Linux is that the goofy cross-eyed penguin is gone. Mandrake is pointing itself in a more sophisticated direction - it's not drab like Red Hat, but elegant and inviting. It looks expensive." Read the review at NewsForge.

Microsoft Corp. today announced the availability of its Windows Powered Smartphone and Pocket PC software for CDMA and broadband CDMA (1xRTT) networks. The new release delivers the same Pocket PC and Smartphone software available for GSM/GPRS networks.

For the last 20 years or so, Microsoft has been playing the same old game. Sure, they morph and adapt along with the times, and they expand into new markets. But basically they are in the software business and one of the main ingredients in their recipe has been always this: "Keep the data format proprietary and take advantage of it."

"As much as Linux is pitted against Windows in the popular imagination, Linux has enjoyed perhaps more success supplanting Unix in the enterprise. The SCO Group's SCO Linux 4 (brand-new, despite its enumeration) can provide companies with an effective path to such migrations, particularly at sites that are running SCO's UnixWare." Read the review at eWeek.

"Windows XP Embedded with Service Pack 1 is the newest version of the Windows XP Embedded tools and database. New tool features are available, as are new embedded enabling components. Every Service Pack 1 binary is reflected in an updated component, and some new components have been added to make the entire system more flexible." Read the article at MSDN.

GTK+OSX is a native Mac OS X port of the Linux-based GTK+ open source graphical user interface library. GTK+OSX version 0.1 is an alpha release intended for developers.

"XP works best for medium-sized teams where a product can be delivered in stages, and where there's freedom to experiment with some of the more controversial techniques," author Ron Jeffries said.

"Although Microsoft Corp. doesn't anoint Windows .Net Server 2003 Release Candidate 2 as "feature-complete," this edition shows that Microsoft's next operating system revision will be a significant, incremental upgrade compared with the massive overhaul that took place going from Windows NT to Windows 2000." The article is at eWeek.

"We preview nVidia’s latest 3D wunderkind and handicap the inevitable battle with ATI. World exclusive benchmarks! Brought to you by Maximum PC." Read the article at Maximum PC.

"When Computerworld published its first issue in 1967, the private sector was still using vacuum tubes to exchange information. Technology and the world it has shaped have come a long way since then. Here is our list of the 35 products and technologies that have had the greatest impact on enterprise IT since 1967." Read the article.

Have you bought a PC to run Linux and received a copy of a proprietary desktop operating system you do not intend on using? Did the manufacturer collect a fee for the operating system you don't use? Walt Pennington, member of the San Diego Linux Users Group, concerned citizen, and esteemed tort attorney outlines the legal challenge of OEM agreements. Seeking a refund of his own unwanted copy of Microsoft Windows, Pennington relates his day in court and calls on other consumers to demand a refund on January 23, 2003.

The Turrican game series were among the best selling game titles released for the C64 and Amiga 500 little over a decade ago. Now Pekaro Software finished their Turrican recreation using Direct X (version 7 or newer) for Windows. More info about other Turrican games and inspired projects can be found at the Turrican SETA Project homepage.

This article looks at two behaviors of the scheduler. The first behavior is the reaction to adding more choices to the scheduler's switching decision. The second demonstrates fairness by performing a uniform workload in multiple threads. Source code is provided so you can experiment. Last month's column looked at bare context switch times by using the best primitives on both Windows and Linux. According to those results, context switch time under Windows takes only half as long as under Linux.

"The OpenBeOS Translation Kit BETA 1 is now available. It contains the Translation Kit library, BMP translator, StyledEdit files translator, TGA translator and the source and project files for all of the above. Also, the BMP and TGA translators should have more capabilities than the BMP and TGA translators that came with BeOS R5." You can download the beta at the OpenBeOS website.