A series of patches has been proposed on the Linux kernel mailing list earlier by a team of engineers from Red Hat, ClusterFS, IBM, and Bull to extend the Ext3 filesystem, adding support for very large filesystems. After a long discussion, the developers came forward with a plan to roll these changes into a new version: Ext4. LWN covered the changes as well as the arguments put forward for a new filesystem a few weeks back.

Apple sent a seismic shockwave through the Mac market a year ago when it announced that was ditching its long-time processor suppliers IBM and Motorola in favor of chips from occasional arch-nemesis Intel. The announcement came on June 6, 2005, during Steve Jobs’ Worldwide Developers Conference keynote - by the end of 2007, the Apple CEO said, all Mac hardware would be running on Intel processors.

OpenOffice.org 2.0.3 has been released. It contains performance improvements, improved compatibility with Microsoft Office formats, support for Intel MAcs, and much more. Release notes, download page.

"At the Worldwide Developers Conference in August, Apple plans to provide a sneak preview of the next major update to OS X, code named Leopard. Apple is typically tight-lipped about what to expect from Leopard, so we have no idea what new and improved features await us in August. But that's not stopping us from coming up with a list of things we'd like to see in OS X 10.5." And for when you're done reading.

Microsoft released a new version of Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications on Tuesday and detailed how to remove the controversial antipiracy software. "Our customers have told us that they were disappointed with their WGA Notifications experience, and we have made an effort to improve that with this update," a Microsoft representative said.

KDE is ditching the GNU autotools for development and building of their next version, KDE 4. Its replacement is CMake, developed by Kitware. Alexander Neundorf explains the choice in favor of CMake was mainly due to its support for all platforms KDE4 is meant to run on: Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, Solaris, and even Windows. CMake generates specific command files for each of the 'native' build tools from one common source: Makefiles (for GNU make) or project files (for XCode on OS X, for MS Visual Studio, for KDevelop3). Current KDE 4 modules already build (with CMake) on more platforms than KDE 3 with autotools ever did, with full configure checking on all platforms and all compilers/IDEs. Scribus is now also moving to CMake.

In the SCO case a new order severely limits SCO's claims. finding that 186 out of 294 items in SCO's final disclosures are not up to the standard ordered by the court. IBM disputed 198 items for not being specific enough and the court granted the motion on 186 of the items limiting the case to 107 items.

A couple of years ago, PHP sat at the top of the powerful-but-easy-to-use scripting languages heap. And then - suddenly, Ruby on Rails hit the programming world like a ton of bricks. Did you really want a ditch it all for Ruby on Rails and start over? Of course not! What was needed was a new framework that incorporates many of these new advantages without dumping your previous PHP work in the garbage, Thus, the Zend Framework was born. This article shares the concepts behind the Zend Framework, including the Model-View-Controller pattern and the PHP coding standards.

"I would like to introduce a new addition to the WebKit open source tools - a JavaScript debugger. Drosera, named after the largest genera of bug eating plants, lets you attach and debug JavaScript for any WebKit application - not just Safari. One of the unique things about Drosera, like the Web Inspector, is that over 90% of it is written in HTML and JavaScript. This is a true testament of what you can do with web technologies today and the rapid development that WebKit allows."

Linux has one, last, chance to become the No1 OS in a particular consumer-oriented market (not counting servers): the mobile phone market. The open nature and yes, the hype around Linux has made lots of mobile-oriented companies to consider using Linux for their next-generation cellphones. But there is a major problem on the way to success, a problem which is created not by Linux itself, but by the greed and close-mindness of these same companies that endorse Linux.

Yesterday, Magnussoft, via the ZETA-OS site, announced the launch of the new Beta Test program. A difference in this beta test program is that the testers will not only work with the OS itself but also with beta applications, drivers and even kernel modules (when you apply you can choose if you want to test only one of those or all of them). What's also nice about this is that everyone can apply, without the need for prior experience in beta testing.

Could many smaller Linux distributions be in violation of the GPL? That's what Warren Woodford, the man behind the popular MEPIS distribution thinks. As detailed in Bruce Byfield's excellent NewsForge story, "A GPL requirement could have a chilling effect on derivative distro", Woodford recently ran afoul of the GNU GPL (General Public License) requirement that downstream distributors of GPL code are obligated to provide source code to users in an easily accessible format.

Sun Microsystems plans to deliver support for the Xen virtualization technology in Solaris 10 by the middle of 2007. Sun is preparing to release to OpenSolaris sometime in July a snapshot of code that will run on top of Xen and which provides Dom0 (Domain zero) support using Solaris Dom0, which supports 32-bit and 64-bit Linux and Solaris DomU's, said Tim Marsland, Sun's CTO of operating platforms, at a media briefing on virtualization at Sun's San Francisco offices June 27.

A new version of Plan 9 has been released. "Major changes were made to /sys/src/fs, removing some dead code. Some major bugs were fixed. New features were added and the memory limit was increased." More information can be found in the mailing list message. For those that don't know: "Plan 9 was born in the same lab where Unix began. Underneath, though, lies a new kind of system, organized around communication and naming rather than files and processes. In Plan 9, distributed computing is a central premise, not an evolutionary add-on."