"In the last episode, I explained that my Linux boxes run Slackware and XFCE and aren't encumbered by KDE and GNOME. I'm happy to report that they all still run Slackware -- and one of them now also has both KDE and GNOME, because I installed Slackware's 8.1 release candidate 2." Read the preview at LinuxPlanet.

Solaris 8 - Administrator's Guide is a book written by Paul Watters, and published by O'Reilly. The book is all about how to create and administer networks using Solaris 8. The book, published in January, is current even for Solaris 9, mostly because not many changes to the way Solaris works have been made in the new version of the OS.

With rival AMD showcasing its Opteron systems and its new 2200+ AthlonXP, Intel Corp. released new details of its Itanium 2 chipsets within the U.S. Read the article at ExtremeTech.

SkyOS now has a new beta web site, while Robert Szeleney updates SkyOS with many fixes for the TCP/IP stack, the VESA driver and the FAT mounting procedure and with some changes in the API. The new SkyOS version is expected soon. In other hobby-OS news, a new test version of MenuetOS 0.68 is out, while a new screenshot is showing the new window manager, borrowed by Gnome's CRUX theme.

For the first time, Hewlett-Packard has won top ranking in an annual study of the merits of different versions of the Unix operating system, displacing Sun Microsystems. Runner up was Sun's Solaris 8, while IBM's AIX followed.

Apple Computer has kept itself busy of late creating new recipes for marketing and sales. The company recently cooked up a public preview of QuickTime 6. To get a taste of Apple's future, CNET News.com sits down with Steve Jobs and bites into the issues. The interview is about the MPEG-4 issues, the iMac, while you will also find an article about eMac, now being sold to everyone, and not just to educational institutes and students.

"LynxOS v4.0, the newest release of the POSIX-conformant hard real-time operating system (RTOS), has support for Linux ABI compatibility -- where Linux application binaries can run unchanged in the LynxOS environment without necessitating source code recompilation. This white paper examines the issues surrounding ABI compatibility in general and describes the architecture of the Linux ABI compatibility layer on LynxOS v4.0." Read the article at LinuxDevices.

After many months of waiting, QNX RtP (now called QNX Momentics) 6.2 is released. The new version has many fixes, new features and more device driver support. It requires a PIII-650 or better (however, I have successfully ran its beta on a 233 Mhz PC with 64 MB RAM a few months ago), 128MB RAM and 1 GB disk space. QNX Momentics' primary target are embedded developers instead of end users. Please note that QNX 6.2 does not support anymore the FAT32-installed QNX boot image, but instead, it requires its own partition. The ISO available for download is 195 MB. You can read our world exclusive preview of QNX 6.2 we published last January, here.

"eWeek Labs' tests of SuSE Linux Inc.'s SuSE Linux 8.0, MandrakeSoft SA's Mandrake Linux 8.2 and Red Hat Inc.'s Red Hat Linux 7.3 revealed that the penguins have made some great strides in usability—to the point that users unfamiliar with Linux could comfortably find their way through a machine installed with any of these Linux variations." Read the review at eWeek.

Openwave Systems Inc., the worldwide leader of open IP-based communication infrastructure software and applications, announced that it has contributed its Open Usability Interface server-side programming library and source code to the open source developer community under a Mozilla License. Openwave is contributing Open Usability Interface as a code base for developers for developing mobile applications that can be accessed through multiple networks and mobile devices. Open Usability Interface is a server-side programming library that that abstracts the presentation of content from the underlying platform implementation details. In practice, developers code to the capabilities that each platform offers. The library presents the best possible user experience by adapting the application user-interface for the particular device and gateway requesting the service.

A new, test version of Gentoo is now available. Gentoo becomes the first distro to use GCC 3.1 by default. At this point, only a Stage 1 tarball is available, all the rest of the software will need to be recompiled manually.

KernelTrap has spoken with Peter Chubb who currently works for the Gelato Project. His efforts are currently focused on supporting large disks and partitions, utilizing 64-bits. Regarding the project's focus of improving Linux support for the Itanium 64-bit processor, Peter says, "Back in the days when the VAX was king, there was a general assumption amongst some programmers that `all the world's a vax'. In the Linux world, there's a similar assumption: `all the world's a pentium'." Peter lives in New South Wales, Australia, with his wife, Lucy, also a kernel hacker, and two daughters. He earned a PhD under the late John Lions, author of the Lions Book. His UNIX kernel hacking experience is with an impressively large number of kernels. KernelTrap has the full interview.

"Representatives from SuSE Linux are anxious to help clear the air about some misunderstandings they feel have arisen around recent news regarding UnitedLinux. And to accomplish this, they have revealed plans for a developer's release of the new distribution." Read the news at LinuxToday.

"Microsoft plans to release on Monday the first significant update to the Mac OS X version of Office and will also introduce a version of its instant messaging program designed for the latest Mac operating system." Read the report at ZDNews. On other Mac news, both DigiTimes and TheRegister are reporting that new iMacs, with larger LCD monitors will debut on the 3rd quarter this year.