Caldera announced it has made Suites VII and IX of the AIM Benchmark available under the GPL. The AIM Benchmark Suites - "AIM Multiuser Benchmark" and the "Independent Resource Benchmark" - are expected to be available shortly as a SourceForge project. They are currently available via FTP from Caldera's site. The AIM Benchmark technology has proved useful for more than a decade in measuring performance of hardware and versions of the UNIX operating system. The benchmarks have been licensed by nearly all of the vendors of UNIX system hardware. In all, more than 70 companies have used these benchmarks to compare and tune products. In addition, because of the stressful multi-dimensional nature of the AIM Benchmark workload, many OS and hardware vendors have used the benchmarks as part of their quality assurance process.

Macslash.com reports that according to the Software Update readme, the 30.3 MB MacOSX upgrade brings the following: "The 10.1.2 update delivers improvements and new functionality, as well as expanded peripheral support for Mac OS X. Enhancements include: Updated and new USB and FireWire device support, including FireWire-based digital cameras, PC Card storage devices, including media readers, IrDA modem support for FireWire-based PowerBook models, Audio, Display, and Speech improvements, Networking and Printing improvements, AirPort v2.0, Apache web server v1.3.22, AppleScript v1.8". Update: Of the version that potentially will become 10.2 or 10.5, leaked screenshots have been released on the web.

Back in 1997, there was exciting news coming out of Cupertino. Apple had spurned Be and acquired Steve Jobs ... er... NeXT and announced its grand new OS strategy. We all know how the story ends, but it's fun to remember how the story began. The first article is a real blast from the past, since it talks about Apple's Network Computer strategy. The second article is a non-programmer's journey into Objective C prgramming with the NeXT tools, then called the Yelow Box, now called Cocoa. Enjoy!

Eclipse, IBMs open sourced development tool donation (which is now supported by an organization of a number of companies), just got a little stronger as the released their first plugin sub-project. The C and C++ IDE for the Eclipse platform, with focus on Linux development and deployment. On a similar note, developerWorks is offering a trial download for WebSphere Studio Application Developer for Linux which is a pluggable tool-development and integration platform that incorporates the technology found on Eclipse.

The KDE Project today announced the immediate release of KDE 3.0beta1 based on QT 3.0, the third generation of KDE's free & easy-to-use, Internet-enabled desktop for Linux and other UNIXes. This second pre-release of KDE 3.0, which follows two months after the release of KDE 3.0alpha, ships with the core KDE libraries, the core desktop environment, and over 100 applications from the other base KDE packages (administration, multimedia, network, PIM, utilities, development, etc.). KDE 3.0 is scheduled for final release in the second quarter 2002, with one or more intervening "RC" releases preceding the final release. Read the changes made to Beta1.

"A college computer technician who offered his school's unused computer processing power for an encryption research project will be tried next month in Georgia for computer theft and trespassing charges that carry a potential total of 120 years in jail." Read the unusual story at TheRegister, where this technician is facing jail because he installed the Distributed.NET client on some (mostly) idle computers. The authorities are charging him with "hacking" even if they realize that no hack took place. Our Take: When I left my pre-previous job, I left the distributed.NET client running on the Dell dual PII-450 PC I used to work with...

"WebSideStory, Inc., the world's leading provider of outsourced e-business intelligence services, today reported that despite much hype and expectation in recent years, Linux has failed to gain market share from Microsoft and Apple operating systems. As of December 17, 2001, Linux held a global usage share of only 0.24 percent, according to WebSideStory's StatMarket. This compares with Microsoft's Windows and Apple's Macintosh operating systems, which hold a combined global usage share of more than 98 percent. For almost three years, Linux usage share has fluctuated between .2 and .3 percent, with no substantial growth. Usage share is the percentage of Internet surfers that are using a particular operating system." Read the rest of the press release.

"November retail sales of Windows XP weren't so hot. But is the operating system a flop? Maybe not, analysts say. Microsoft's biggest operating system launch ever has failed to generate enough retail sales to push past its predecessor, Windows 98, according to market researcher NPD Intelect. Retailers sold 250,000 copies of Windows XP in November, its first full month of availability, down from 400,000 in October. The October sales account for six days on store shelves plus preorders. By contrast, consumers snapped up 580,000 copies of Windows 98 during its first month on store shelves and 350,000 during the following 30 days." Read the rest of the story at ZDNews. The market was also more favorable for the SONY PS/2 which outsold both the XBox and GameCube these holidays.

OSX is the beneficiary of more than NeXTStep core technology. Apple's new OS also inherited considerable expertise and terrific developers like the OmniGroup. These longtime developers for NeXTStep have been swept into the Apple world along with their preferred OS. In this significantly larger market, the Omnigroup has the advantage of exceptional depth of experience with OSX. OSNews spoke to Manny from the Omnigroup about their experiences so far.

At the end of November Microsoft posted a document on its Web site comparing the Windows XP Embedded and embedded Linux operating systems, with the emphasis on the technical and business inferiority of Linux. Embedded Linux distributors argue that the document not only distorts the value of Linux, but contains inaccuracies. Lineo, the embedded Linux company and one of the companies of which Microsoft is most critical, wrote a reply which is a point-by-point response to Microsoft's attack. Embedded Linux vendor LynuxWorks joined the growing chorus of responses to Microsoft's recent efforts to portray Embedded Linux as inferior to Windows XP Embedded from both technical and business perspectives. Read their reply at LinuxDevices.com.

The story of how a BeOS refugee (and not just everyone, but the author of the 'BeOS Bible' book) lost faith in the future of computing, resigned himself to Windows but found himself bored silly, tore out half his hair at the helm of a Linux box, then rediscovered the joy of computing in MacOSX. Scot Hacker will describe his personal adventures with today's operating systems after he was set out to find an alternative to his beloved (but with no apparent future) BeOS. Update: Make sure you read the second part of the article, a rebutal, found here.

"Phone and PDA firms Nokia and Palm are fuelling fresh complaints about Microsoft's monopolistic practices, according to reports on Dow Jones. The nine states which decided to stick out against a DoJ (Department of Justice) settlement last month will invoke Finnish outfit Nokia and Palm as witnesses to the alleged infringements. Nokia, which some analysts see as somewhat losing its edge this year, is probably concerned about developments such as the Sendo phone, which we reported on last month." From ActiveWin.com.

Saw that linked over from GeekNews: "Yes, that computer you see in the christmas tree is the actual one serving this web page and music! It is a Pentium 100 with 64MB RAM, running Red Hat Linux 7.2." Another interesting mini-report at Geeknews was about the ex-3Dfx employees, their loyalty and support (by releasing new drivers, working on them on their spare time!) to the history of 3Dfx and the never-released Voodoo5-6000 model, which had 128 MB of SDRAM on it.

"If you have ever considered Linux as an alternative operating system, but were not willing to invest the time for any of the following reasons, now is the time to reconsider. If you have been concerned about the steep learning curve, potential glitches, or the possible loss of valuable data, these concerns have been addressed. For the first time, Linux is accessible to the uninitiated user with the recent releases of the best, most refined, easy to install, and more user-friendly versions." ExtremeTech reviews RedHat 7.2, Mandrake 8.1, SuSE 7.3 and the Debian-based Libranet 1.9.1.