CodeWeavers, Inc., today announced that it has licensed its award-winning CrossOver software technology to Xandros for use in the upcoming Xandros Desktop OS. The technology will enable Xandros users-many for the first time-to run popular Windows applications, including Microsoft Office, Lotus Notes, Intuit Quicken, and many more, dependably in the Linux environment.

LinuxWatch.org hosts two (rather short) reviews this week, for Lycoris B-53 and for Lindows 2.0.

A new program lets buyers of the Mac OS X Server sign on for three years of unlimited access to software upgrades for the same price Apple charges for a single, onetime upgrade.

IBM announced on Monday a microchip for personal computers that will crunch data in chunks twice as big as the current standard and is expected (but not confirmed yet) by industry watchers to be used by Apple. Apple was not available to comment, and IBM declined to comment on which computer makers would use the chip, but its plans would mark a change for the industry, which has emphasized the importance of the speed of a chip rather than its ability to handle heavy workloads. Read the report. Update: Read another report at ZDNews.

Some months ago we reported on Ton's effort to Free his powerful 3D rendering package under the GPL, Blender. After almost 4 months and 100,000 euros, Blender is now completely free for all.

Computer scientist and entrepreneur David Gelernter believes computers should imitate life. That means rethinking what it means to manage knowledge—and replacing the current PC and Mac desktop with a "narrative structure." Read the article at CIOInsight.

On Syllable 0.4.2 there are new GUI classes, public message ports, kernel fixes, a new POSIX threads library, Daryl's new preference apps. For a full list of changes, look here, and you can download 0.4.2 here. Installation notes here. Now that Syllable 0.4.2 has fixed a bug which has previously caused Samba to fail, it means that Samba now compiles and runs. A basic precompiled binary can now be downloaded, which you can install and use once you've upgraded to 0.4.2.

There is more to OS life than just Mac, Unix and Windows. Robert Szeleney did some good work for the past few weeks, porting Quake I and II to SkyOS, GCC and binutiles and developing a text programmer's editor to help him further develop the OS on a self-hosted environment. In the meantime, Marcus Overhagen continues to develop for OpenBeOS a MediaKit clone off the original BeOS, while MenuetOS gets lots of advancements in networking lately, same as TriangleOS does (expect a new version and a kernel re-write too for this new OS). Additionally, Syllable gets a CVS freeze in preperation for version 0.4.2, while Daryl Dudey continues his truly remarkable work on Syllable's preference panels.

The basic pen-based concept of a Tablet PC isn't new. Such concepts have come and gone, with the exception of those seen in PDAs. So what gave Microsoft the confidence to succeed where other players have faltered? With the new Acer TravelMate C100 Tablet PC, HardwareZone takes a look at the fundamentals as well as the operating system behind the Tablet PC. A very intersting article with many screenshots, especially pages 2 and 3 (showing the Windows XP TabletPC Edition).

Signals are the difficult of part IRIX emulation. However, before examining the way they work on IRIX, let us study the signals implementation in NetBSD/mips. A user process enters the kernel by a trap. When a trap is caught, the hardware transfers control to the kernel. Assembly code in sys/arch/mips/mips/locore.S builds a trap frame (this is a struct frame, defined in sys/arch/mips/include/proc.h) on the kernel stack, in which CPU registers are saved. Then the trap() function from sys/arch/mips/mips/trap.c is called to handle the trap. Read the article at OnLamp.

Ramen, Slapper, Scalper and Mighty may sound like Santa's new team of reindeer, but they are creatures far lower down the evolutionary ladder -- and much less welcome. These are worms that have infiltrated Linux servers in recent months, commandeering the servers for use in distributed denial-of-service attacks. Linux enthusiasts who once believed they were less vulnerable to attack than Microsoft users have begun to wonder whether they were overly optimistic. Read the article at NewsFactor.

Microsoft and its allies have quietly expanded an effort to gain acceptance for C#, the software giant's competitor to Java and a foundation for its next-generation Internet services. Read the report at CNet.

With all the hype surrounding the release of RedHat 8.0, I was eager to try it myself. I was particularly interested to see whether this really would be the release that the average user could install and run on a home pc. Regrettably, I don't believe it is. Reading the recent comments made by RedHat developer Havoc Pennington in reply to the question about the "Average Joe User" only confirmed my belief.

Robin writes: Just a bit of silliness to lighten up your day: "If your school, charity or government agency is suddenly graced with a visit by Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer offering to donate a free operating system or desktop office software, Linux.com will match that offer. Our software offer has no strings attached to it whatsoever. You don't need to start paying for upgrades after a few years or anything like that. Too good to be true? Bill and Steve might think so, but we don't!"