Glibc 2.3 is out and prelinking support was added for ELF targets, startup times are significantly reduced (C++ and Qt/KDE applications will be most benefited from this - with this support on glibc there is no reason to revert to manual prelinking KDE which reportedly created stability issues). Read-only stdio streams now use mmap to speed up operation. The malloc functions were completely rewritten. The runtime now can handle the ELF thread-local storage (TLS) ABI on some platforms. This release has been ported to PowerPC64/Linux. Download it in a bz2 (13 MB) or gunzip (17.5 MB) tarball formats.

Many of today's new Linux users wouldn't have a clue as to who Patrick Volkerding is. For the brigade whose main arguments are over the merits of this GUI and that, the word Slackware wouldn't ring a bell either. But for many others who jumped on the Linux bandwagon when it was exclusively for geeks, Volkerding is a hero. In early 1993, he started the distribution called Slackware which was basically an attempt to address many of the problems people faced with SoftLanding System Linux, the first and only commercial Linux at the time. Read the interview at TheAge.

Jordan Hubbard, formerly head of FreeBSD development, and now of Apple MacOS X/Darwin fame, talks frankly about UNIX, Apple's MacOS X, BSD, and the business of competing in the consumer computer world in this MacCentral article. In it, we see some of his impressions on the present and future of MacOS X, opinions on Motorola's CPU's in Apple products, and what it takes to get ISV support.

"Apple released Mac OS X last year. Having used computers for almost twenty years, I can say that this new operating system is undoubtedly the best ever. Yet, there is an undercurrent of disappointment. There is something wrong with this OS. It’s not the MACH microkernel, the UNIX core or the fluid motions of the new GUI. Well, actually it is the GUI. It’s not a bad interface, it’s probably the best yet, but isn’t it about time we stopped pointing and clicking?" Read the editorial at MetaMute.

IBM Corp is getting ready to take the wraps off the next release of its AIX 5L operating system for its pSeries servers. Sources familiar with IBM's plans say that the company is expected to make the announcement on October 8, Timothy Prickett Morgan writes. Read the article at TheRegister.

Sun on Friday will announce plans to release an unbundled version of the Solaris 9 operating environment for non-Sun x86 hardware for $99 for a single CPU system. After months of indecision, Sun will now ship Solaris 9 x86, unbundled, supporting both the Sun hardware platform, for both current and future products, as well as the same list of all hardware supported for Solaris 8, according to Sun officials in Palo Alto, Calif. Early access to the Solaris 9 bits will come in the next four to eight weeks, and the final product will ship in the January time-frame, they said.

Well, here on OSNews, there has been plenty of discussion about Red Hat 8, what it is, what it isn't, the Bluecurve look and many other features and issues. I ordered Red Hat 8 Personal Edition and decided to see how close Red Hat 8 may be to a distribution that Joe and Jane User could install and use.

David Mosberger, developer of the initial GCC port to IA-64 and lead kernel architect for Linux on IA-64, tells us why you should care about Intel's new 64-bit chip.

" I think you can see where I'm going with this - by moving software to .NET, Microsoft frees themselves from the x86 pit. They need to compile the .NET framework for each platform they want to support, and they need to write the final compiler stage that converts the IL to machine code, and bingo your code runs on the new platform!" Read the article at Kuro5hin.

It is always an honour to interview people who have 'served' and worked on operating systems at the "golden" times of the operating systems, the '80s and pre-Win9x days. Today we interview Adam de Boor, who was the CTO at GeoWorks, developers of the GEOS, in the begining of the last decade. Adam today works for OpenWave Systems. We discuss about GeoWorks, its past, its future, where it should have been.

Linux Orbit has reviewed Libranet GNU/Linux 2.7: "Other Linux distribution companies have tried to create commercial Linux products based on Debian GNU/Linux, but few have achieved long term success. Progeny Linux comes to mind as a commercial Linux distribution company whose Linux product met with good reviews, but couldn't remain in business. Libranet is a rare exception to this rule. Libranet GNU/Linux has been around quite a while and continues to build a devoted Linux user base on a commercial product based on Debian GNU/Linux. With their most recent release of Libranet GNU/Linux 2.7, Libranet continues to improve on an already solid Linux distribution."

"I sat down at my Macintosh at home to do some photo editing when I realized the pictures I wanted were on a Windows computer. Although the two machines are just a few feet from each other, moving the files from one to the other would, until recently, have required me to copy the pictures to some sort of removable storage unit, probably a recordable CD. Then plunk that into the Mac." Read the article at BusinessWeek.

From DistroWatch: "A new beta version of Lycoris Desktop/LX has been spotted on several mirrors. Build 52 is a development release; among the major packages only Mozilla has been updated to version 1.1. Download: cd1_en_binary.iso (517MB), cd2_en_source.iso (415MB), cd3_en_devtools.iso (193MB). As usual, a Build 52 bug reports forum has been opened." We featured a review of Lycoris recently.

A few months ago we were discussing the upcoming release of WindowFX2 from Stardock, which was to utilize the graphics 3D hardware to render cool animations and transitions on your Windows. WindowFX2 is now out, there is a demo, and a very cool video where you can see the new, very cool transitions in action.