Apple posted a Security Update for April 2002 which weighs 4.7 MB. Security Update April 2002 includes the following updated components which provide increased security to prevent unauthorized access to applications, servers, and the operating system: OpenSSH v3.1p1, rsync v2.5.2, groff v1.17.2, PHP v4.1.2, sudo v1.6.5p2, mod_ssl v2.8.7, mail_cmds.

"Smart Device Extensions (SDE) for Visual Studio .NET allow programmers to develop applications for the .NET Compact Framework, a new platform that maintains many of the features of the .NET Framework in a version optimized for handheld devices. This article shows how SDE provides access through Visual Studio .NET to a variety of .NET classes for devices running Windows CE, including classes for creating user interfaces. Data access classes and Web Services for the .NET Compact Framework are also explained. Following that overview, a sample Web Service called XMLList is built. Then the UI—the XMLList client-side application—is created." Read the rest of the article at MSDN.

"There are many ways to define distributed computing, and there are many different levels and types of distributed computing models and distributed application development techniques. Various vendors have created and marketed distributed computing systems for years, and numerous initiatives and architectures have been developed to permit distributed processing of data and objects across a network of connected systems." An excellent, must read, introduction to distributed computing. Especially, have a look at its interesting comparison with clusters and supercomputers.

With the 2.4 release of Linux come many new filesystem possibilities, including Reiserfs, XFS, GFS, and others. These filesystems sound cool, but what exactly can they do, what are they good at, and exactly how do you go about safely using them in a production Linux environment? Daniel Robbins, CEO and president over at Gentoo Linux (and creator of the sophisticated Portage packaging system) answers these questions by showing you how to set up these new advanced filesystems under Linux 2.4. In this final installment (Part 10/10), Daniel shows you how to get XFS up and running on your system and explores some of XFS's more advanced features. Recommended reading is also the previous article, Part 9, exploring XFS's features over the other Linux filesystems. In a similar recent article, Bert Scalzo for Linux Jounral, benchmarks ReiserFS, JFS and ext2/3.

"I have finally upgraded from Mandrake 8.0 to 8.2, and I am pleased to say that once it is installed, Mandrake 8.2 can be the base of a home or office desktop that is so fast, flexible, and easy to use that people ought to be lining up to buy it. And, strangely, Mandrake is giving it away instead of selling it." Read the rest of the editorial at NewsForge.

KDE 3.0 was finally released. The official announcement will come soon, but for now, you can download KDE 3.0 for Conectiva, FreeBSD, Mandrake, Red Hat, Slackware, SuSE, Tru64, YellowDog or the source code. Debian, IRIX, AIX or Solaris packages not available yet.

This is the sixth revision of Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 (codename `potato') which mainly adds security updates to the stable release, along with a few corrections of serious bugs. Those who frequently update from security.debian.org won't have to update many packages. However, most updates from security.debian.org are included in this point release.

Many interesting articles at O'Reilly's .NET corner, more than twenty articles, most published the last month. Among the very recent ones, you will find "Uncovering Rotor -- A Shared Source CLI", four parts of Web Services essentials, "An Architectural Tour of Rotor", "Get Your Rotor Running" (which includes some compiler speed differenes between FreeBSD and Windows) and many more.

The long awaited SkyOS 3.7 is now released, in a beta form. The new version includes a new networking stack, a media player and more. You can download the 7 MB archive and make sure you send feedback back to Robert if you encounter bugs. Update: A newer, fixed version was uploaded today.

This editorial at Rush Magazing talksback to Apple's request to hear from PC users. The author has a problem with the speed, price and "complete hardware" solution Apple is providing. On the pros, the auhor lists the way the machines look and the fact that underneath you are dealing with a BSD UNIX. On a similar editorial at ZDNews: "But as it turns out, our reviews team recently did a hands-on with the fastest Power Mac on the market, equipped with dual 1GHz PowerPC G4 processors. Though it's obviously the fastest Power Mac yet, it's interesting to look at what you get compared with a high-end PC. The system's P133 SDRAM, 80GB hard drive, 64MB Nvidia GeForce4 MX video card, and not-so-SuperDrive all look pretty pedestrian next to the Dimension 8200 and Pavilion 950, yet the Power Mac costs $3,000 without a monitor."

"In a sea change of philosophy, Microsoft Corp. is working to put security ahead of not just features and functionality, but also legacy application compatibility. In a meeting with eWEEK last week, several Microsoft executives responsible for security software development said the company is also changing the way it ships some products to make them safer and will begin developing its own line of security software." Read the rest of the report at ExtremeTech. In related news, a pair of Office XP bugs were uncovered while more security updates can be found here.

OSNews reader Sylvain Martin writes: "The Clicker Operating system is moving forward. With last release 0.8.0, the system is now able to start user-level programs from another user-level program! This is a major advance if you consider that versions 0.7.x required the user-level program to be embedded within a system module. A pre-compiled demonstration package of 0.8.0 should be made available in a very soon future."

I met Brad Wardell, Stardock's CEO, two weeks ago in San Fransisco. Stardock are mostly known for creating WindowBlinds. But Stardock has a long history, going back to the OS/2 days, releasing not only the most 'successful' OS/2 application ever, Object Desktop, but also a number of games. Today Stardock still releases games and UI enhancement tools for Windows, but the main focus is still Object Desktop. Read more for our interview with Brad, his views on theming, the future of UIs and more.

"The purpose of this paper is to provide a concentrated, yet pragmatic, overview of ADO.NET by highlighting the performance and usability benefits of using ADO.NET with Microsoft SQL Server 2000. The intended audience is architects and developers who are familiar with ADO and are interested in learning about data access in the Microsoft .NET Framework." Read the article at MSDN. "When developing the design-time architecture for the .NET Framework, Microsoft chose to use source code as the persistence mechanism for user code rather than a binary or other private solution. Code persistence allows users to learn from the code that the Designer outputs as well as be able to easily build projects outside of the Visual Studio .NET environment if desired. It also allows understandable and accessible customization for advanced scenarios and components." Read the article at MSDN.