Marc G. Fournier has launched a new project with the intention to show hardware vendors that there in fact are a lot of BSD users out there. "We are trying to demonstrate to hardware and software vendors out there that BSD should be viewed as a serious operating system, not just as a hobbyist system, for support (i.e. hardware drivers) purposes."

"It is with great delight that I announce the first bulk shipment of free Linux disks from the Free Linux Disk project. This shipment will put Linux into the hands of people from around the world. This would not have been made possible without support from the contributors, the sponsors, and your donations. A huge thank you to everyone that continues to help and make the project a success. I would like to give special thank you to the project contributors. They have shipped over 1000 requests at their expense. They are a tremendous help to the project and their efforts are very much appreciated."

Geert Hendrickx has announced the availability of a second release candidate of NetBSD 3.1: Improvements over the first release candidate include: fixed the build of NetBSD-vax; fixed a buffer overflow in PPPoE/ISDN PPP; closed a socket leach in accept(2); removed references to sushi(8) from the afterboot(8) manpage; fixed an integer overflow in FreeType; disabled threading in named(8) to avoid a crash on sparc and sparc64, etc.

Microsoft is at a crossroads, and the operating system that follows Vista will likely mark a serious break from the past. That is, if Microsoft can figure out how to do things differently. Also, the 'MEDX' team shares desks, ideas on the look Microsoft wants.

"Can't wait to upgrade your Windows XP machines to Vista? eWEEK Labs tests show that a clean install is the faster, less-problematic, option. While our upgrade experience was fairly good, we recommend that administrators opt instead for a clean install, teamed perhaps with Vista's Windows Easy Transfer utility for carrying over files and settings from the previous install."

RISC OS cannot be saved by simply open sourcing it, said RISCOS Ltd boss Paul Middleton. He added that Castle's wish to open source RISC OS "would have no effect on RISCOS Ltd's products". Paul told subscribers over the weekend: "Making RISC OS open source, or free as some people want, is not the panacea for suddenly taking RISC OS forward. No operating system can be developed solely for free."

On many systems, a large portion of boot time goes into providing legacy support for MS-DOS. Various projects, including LinuxBIOS and Open Firmware, are trying to replace the proprietary BIOS systems with streamlined pieces of code able to do only what is necessary to get a Linux kernel loaded and running. This article gives a brief overview of the field.

The SkyOS team has released build 6179 of SkyOS. Highlights: "Mono 1.1.13.8 and updated MWF (System.Windows.Forms) port; embedded Gecko widget; remote command interface for applications; binary image caching; inital DDK [ed. note: trust me, Robert's making a lot of people happy with this one)." This new build also includes new ports, such as Quake III, Python, SDL with OpenGL support, and much more. You can find details in the changelog.

Time is up for the Haiku Icon Contest submissions, and it is now everybody's chance to make their voice heard. Please vote for the theme that is more usable, clean, recognizable and less tiring.

Paul Thurrott has posted the first two parts of his review of Windows Vista build 5600 (RC1) along with a list of five of his favorite features. Update: Vista has a long way to go to be finished, blogger says. RC1 is good, but it's not perfect, and NeoSmart lists the reasons. Plus, it still can't synchronize with mobile devices, even though it's supposed to be code-complete.

Speech-enabling your software is easy, says Stephen Morris. If speech is added in a sympathetic fashion, it can raise the standard of your user interface in subtle but powerful ways. This approach potentially opens up new markets to your software products; for example, reaching visually impaired users. Developments in web standards are also dictating that speech-enabled software is essentially a commodity item. Read on to find out more.

"Screen savers have always been a staple free software for RISC OS, with the likes of the venerable Out to Lunch, AlphaSave, and the now GPLed Delirium all acting as saviours of the CRT for many years. However, it was not until RISC OS 4 that graphical screen saver capabilities shipped as a standard part of the OS." More here. Additionally, RPCEmu has been ported to the Mac OS X platform, allowing RISC OS 4 to run alongside Apple's shiny desktop.

Here are some screenshots of the new test version of Ubuntu, and a video showing no slowdown after loading over 40 applications on a 1 GB RAM, P4 desktop.

This howto will show you how to store your users in LDAP and authenticate some of the services against it. It will not show how to install particular packages, as it is distribution/system dependant, instead it will focus on pure configuration of all componenets needed to have LDAP authentication/storage of users. The howto assumes that you are migrating from a regular passwd/shadow authentication, but it is also suitable for people who do it from scratch. On other business/networking software news, check this review of the Hula calendaring server and app.