Kevin Carmony of Linspire/Freespire has announced that the first beta of Freespire has been released earlier than anticipated. Get it from the download page. According to Carmony, this release includes out-of-the-box support for proprietary formats such as .mp3 and WMV, plug-and-play support for Ati and nVIDIA cards without user intervention, Click-N-Run, and much more.

"VMware has just released version 1.0 of its free VMware Server. With VMware Server you can create and run guest operating systems such as Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, etc. under a host operating system. This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install the free VMware Server on Ubuntu 6.06 LTS."

The Shared Source Device Emulator is a compressed archive of the source code to the Device Emulator V1.0, buildable using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. The Device Emulator is a software simulation of an ARM CPU and motherboard, that runs the Windows CE and Windows Mobile operating systems. This source release can be used as an research and experimentation platform: the CPU emulator can be modified or replaced, as can the motherboard, peripheral devices, and emulator UI. If ported to Unix it will make easier the development, debugging and testing of ARM-compiled Qtopia and Linux-based applications for phones/PDAs.

Jeff Cogswell writes: "I'm about to make a confession. Even though I've written several books and articles about C++, I have a secret: C++ isn't my favorite language. I have lots of languages that I use, each one for different purposes. But the language I consider my all-time favorite is Python."

On Symantec's blog website, the company writes: "Researchers and engineers who are working in the security field must have strong constitutions - especially when it comes to weathering negative backlash and tired conspiracy theories whenever security and Mac OS X are mentioned in the same breath. With that in mind, in an effort to improve the quality of the dialogue, I would like to discuss some important issues regarding Mac OS X and security. Let's start with the hot-button issue of Mac OS X viruses. Simply put, at the time of writing this article, there are no file-infecting viruses that can infect Mac OS X."

Dru Lavigne explains the basics of DesktopBSD. "DesktopBSD provides many features that will allow a complete Unix novice to start using the operating system immediately." She concludes: "If you have been hesitant to try FreeBSD because you heard the install was difficult or were afraid you would have problems configuring the GUI or sound or networking, now is a great time to take the plunge. Both PC-BSD and DesktopBSD provide you with a fully configured, ready to use system so you can be up and running in under half an hour."

Here's a quick guide on how to install applications using various types of package formats in Linux. It is aimed at people new to Linux. "Installing software in GNU/Linux looks quite different to the way you’re probably used to from Microsoft Windows. This is due to philosophical reasons. GNU/Linux is a free (as in freedom) operating system. Most of the software is free as well. Thus, the programs can better cooperate with each other and often depend on each other for getting a job done."

The new KDE://radio podcast site keeps you informed and on the leading edge of KDE4 development. It holds at the moment 7 interviews which were recorded at the KDE Four Core developer meeting and deal with the new liveui framework, Akonadi PIM Storage Service, the Human Interface Guidelines, and more.

Motorola's Linux-based Rokr E2 mobile phone looks ready to challenge Sony/Ericsson's Walkman phone in the hot emerging market for converged PMP phones (portable media player phones), according to this hands-on review. The phone uses the Chaemeleon API (enhanced Qt, no SDK available).

OpenCyc is the open source version of the Cyc technology, the world's largest and most complete general knowledge base and commonsense reasoning engine. OpenCyc can be used as the basis for a wide variety of intelligent applications. This is release 1.0 of OpenCyc featuring the complete Cyc ontology of over 260,000 terms and their definitional assertions numbering over 1.8 million. OpenCyc requires about 500MB of disk space and performs best with over 512 MB RAM. One GB of RAM is recommended for Cyc when accessed by Java applications.

"The KOffice team is announced KOffice version 1.5.2. This is mainly a bugfix release but also contains numerous translation updates. Especially KWord, KSpread and Kexi have received critical bug fixes."

After an 18-page in-depth review of Intel's new processor line, The Tech Report concludes: "After years of wandering in the wilderness, Intel has recaptured the desktop CPU performance title in dramatic fashion. Both the Core 2 Extreme X6800 and the Core 2 Duo E6700 easily outperform the Athlon 64 FX-62 across a range of applications - and the E6600 is right in the hunt, as well. Not only that, but the Core 2 processors showed no real weaknesses in our performance tests."

AMD executives said this week that they will promote its '4x4' enthusiast platform to counter the Core 2 Duo. AMD also plans to push a sort of 'performance number' into the market to redefine how consumers should think about power. The 4x4 platform will place two physical sockets on a motherboard, connected by AMD's Direct Connect architecture. Mounted on each socket will be an AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor, for a total of 4 cores. An eight-core '8X8' program will roll out in 2007.

eWeek reviews IIS 7 Beta. "Versions of IIS prior to 6 were the main points of attack for major worms and viruses such as Nimda. With IIS 6, Microsoft moved the Web server to a default profile that was much more secure. This and other security improvements have paid off, as IIS is nowhere near the major security problem it once was. To a certain degree, IIS 7 carries on this move to greater security with a default install that is even more secure than Version 6's and improvements in security management."