"This will end up being one of the world's worst investments, I'm afraid," - David House, former Intel chief of corporate strategy said in the early 1990s. I've been fasinated by microprocessors for years and have been following the Merced debacle since back in 1994 when HP and Intel announced they were getting together to make some amazing new technology.

Great news for the Linux desktop users. Robert Love's patch which turns the Linux kernel to behave like a preemptive one, has been accepted to the development 2.5.x Linux source tree. Preemptiveness greatly improves UI responsiveness (for example mp3s won't skip when you do something CPU heavy at the same time and you won't experience as many UI "locks" during normal usage). Our Take: Let's hope that SGI's XFS will also make it to be included by default to the 2.5.x Linux kernel.

"ST Microelectronics Inc. has decided to put its graphics operations up for sale, placing the future of the Kyro graphics accelerator in limbo. The announcement comes after the troubled graphics accelerator, designed by PowerVR Technologies, itself a division of the U.K.'s Imagination Technoogies PLC, missed several major milestones that company executives outlined in an exclusive interview last June." Read the rest of the report at ExtremeTech. Our Take: With 3Dfx long gone, Matrox & 3DLabs already out of the 3D gaming market and SiS, VIA, Intel and Trident not been able to produce fast 3D chipsets, the ball is now only between the duopoly of ATi and (mainly) nVidia. I wish good luck to ATi, as I just can't handle yet another monopoly in the tech world. I want choice, I need diversity.

"Itanium--you've gotta start somewhere". ExtremeTech will take you from the genesis of IA-64 through the present day of Itanium, to the future: McKinley, Madison, and Deerfield. Then on to Hammer, PowerPC, SPARC, and more. "It's Nothing Like a Pentium": Ten years in development, 325 million transistors and counting. "The Good Stuff: the Instruction Set" 41-bit VLIW instructions are elegant... until they get weird. "But What About x86 Compatibility?" It's there, sorta. It probably won't be the most popular feature. Read the first article of a three-part series at ExtremeTech.

'Stubear' is a graphics artist who in his free time helps the OpenBeOS folks in constructing the User Interface for a future version of this new operating system. Particularly, this shot looks pretty clean, but the widgets still need some work to look sharper. These are just concept screens, but sometimes, especially if you have lots of time in your hands, it is nice staring at nice shapes and colors. Moreover, OSNews received an email (which contained a real screenshot) from a BeOS user who wished to remain anonymous. The screenshot shows a hidden feature ("easter egg") of the "Dano" version of BeOS which is called ZSnake! To enable this feature press and hold CNTRL+ALT+SHFT and then click on the "Menu" application under "Preferences". While this feature seems unfinished (zooming to the screenshot shows some pixels out of order) this is a neat little UI gimmick that it not supported by any other operating system or Toolkit so far and it looks at least interesting UI-wise.

Oliver Fourdan, a French developer who works his day job at embedded Linux company Anfora, explains how XFce got started: "Back in late 1996, I'd started working on HP workstations that used CDE and I really liked that interface. I was very disappointed with Microsoft Windows 95 and its 'Start Menu,' so I found the concept of the toolbar in CDE very much more convenient. I had been using Linux since 1994, so it sounded natural to me to try to reproduce a concept I liked, on Linux. And at that time, there were no other projects like this--well at least, none really usable." Read the review of the XFce desktop environment at NewsForge.

"Dell Computer Corp. has discontinued its Itanium-based workstation due to weak demand, marking another setback in Intel Corp.'s efforts to promote its 64-bit chip released eight months ago." Read the rest of the report at ExtremeTech. Our Take: It is astonishing (and truly disapointing) to see a super-chip (a real wonder in the CPU design), like Itanium is, not being able to sell well, mostly because sysadmins not wanting to give up on x86. I think, now I understand better when software companies choose to support legacy code, even if it bloats their product. It seems to be a necessary reason to commercially succeed, no matter what we geeks say about clean designs and speed. Let's see what the new Intel 64-bit CPU McKinley can do in the marketplace. The failure of Itanium so far also caused Intel to try competing with AMD Hammer in the x86-64 bit area.

"AppleScript is a built-in Macintosh automation tool that gives users the ability to control the operating system and several of their favorite applications. While this powerful scripting system has always had a loyal following of Macintosh aficionados and publishing professionals, the release of Mac OS X 10.1.2 may mean AppleScript is ready to strut its stuff in front of a wider audience. Here are some of the exciting AppleScript developments on MacOSX..." Read the rest of the article at OReillyNet.

No more hours of downloading for the four FreeBSD ISO CDs. FreeBSD Services has officially begun to distribute FreeBSD on DVD. You can pre-order the FreeBSD 4.5-RELEASE DVD here.

From the press release: "Sun Microsystems has embraced the Linux operating system, rolling out a multipart program that will significantly broaden the offerings of Linux on low-end Sun servers and commit new resources to the ongoing development of the Open Source operating system." Our Take: I am very concerned as to what this may mean for Solaris. Was this the real reason behind the Sun decision to drop support for the x86 Solaris? Did Sun took marketing/strategy lessons from IBM regarding Linux and its accompanied hype? Because technically speaking, Solaris is a far more advanced server operating system (in its core) than Linux is.

"What advocates of 'theme' or 'skinning' software fail to realize is that OS consistency is only truly realized when an entire platform is universally similar. As computers continue to dominate an increasing number of daily activities, it is ever more important that operating systems adopt the most idealistic standards to allow their users to be as productive as possible. In the world of user interface design, consistency is king. A consistent user interface not only can make a product more intuitive, but also can help users be significantly more productive. Unfortunately, the latest trend in 'user-friendliness' is allowing users to modify the interface of an operating system extensively by applying 'skins' or 'themes.'" Read the interesting analysis on the phenomenon of skinning at OSOpinion.

"I can only infer that Steve Jobs has a vision for the future of Apple Computer. I say this because after spending more than an hour with the Apple CEO recently, I walked away knowing more about what Apple won't do than what it will do. Here's an example of what Apple won't do: Steve says Apple will not get into the home entertainment business--not during the next 24 months, anyway. You won't find Apple doing a personal video recorder, à la TiVo or Replay, or an advanced set-top box, à la Moxie. According to Jobs, those devices have yet to catch on, a fact perhaps best borne out by Microsoft's recent staff cuts and reorganization of its UltimateTV unit. TiVo has had its problems, too." Read the rest of the editorial at ZDNet AnchorDesk.

"The operating systems debate tends to run on religious lines. In an attempt to shed some light on the issue, we assembled a panel drawn from various parts of the IT community (systems administration, systems integrators, market analysts, academia, and recruitment) and asked them to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of various systems for different network services: mail serving, web serving, database serving, file/Print serving, application serving, network services, staffing issues." So, which operating system is good for what exactly? Read what these professionals have to say at ZDNet Australia.

Today nVidia launches two new graphics chips and 3 new cards for each, making it six new products. While the GeForce4 Ti series of cards will be using the new high-end chip with the code name 'NV25', the GeForce4 MX value series (the chip used in the new PowerMacs) will be based on nVidia's new low-cost (and comperatively much slower) solution 'NV17'. Get the rest of the scoop & benchmarks at Tom's Hardware. On Monday both ATi and nVidia launched new versions of the ATi Radeon 8500 and the GeForce3 Ti-200 respectively, with 128 MB of RAM. Benchmarks showed that more RAM did not bring more speed and that such a purchase is not justifiable until the new games have such requirements. Update: Anandtech has some interesting benchmarks.