Xandros has announced the immediate availability of Xandros Desktop 4. You can get the two different version from their online store. A set of screenshots is also available. "Xandros Desktop Home Edition and Xandros Desktop Home Edition - Premium provide a complete media experience on the secure, stable Xandros Linux operating system. The new products cover the digital home lifestyle spectrum with music management, wireless networking, photo management, Internet calling, DVD burning, iPod support, and more." Update: More screenshots.

Novell's board of directors on Thursday named Ron Hovsepian CEO and president to replace Jack Messman, and ousted the company's chief financial officer. In a conference call on Thursday, company executives said the changes were made to accelerate the growth at Novell, which has had disappointing financial results, particularly in its Linux business.

"Learn how IBM DB2 9 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows exploits multiple page sizes. With the introduction of the POWER5+ processor architecture, the IBM AIX 5L operating system added support for a new 64-kilobyte page with properties that are similar to the current default 4-kilobyte pages. In addition, AIX 5L Version 5.3 TL04 also introduced a new 16-gigabyte huge-page feature for this hardware architecture. DB2 9 automatically exploits the 64-kilobyte pages to deliver high performance for database applications on this platform. In addition, DB2 also supports the enablement of 16-gigabyte huge pages."

"The Cell processor has seemingly picked up a reputation for being incredibly difficult to program. However, this seems to be based entirely on expectation rather than experience. What’s the real story? Is it really that difficult? This article looks at the concepts involved in Cell programming."

Magnussoft has announced a delay of a month for Zeta 1.21, a bugfix release of the Zeta operating system. The extra month will be used to improve Firefox and Seamonkey, as well as working on the driver situation.

The executive who coordinated Microsoft's anti-Linux campaign has quit the company less than three months after moving to a position revamping MSN's marketing. Martin Taylor, a 13-year Microsoft veteran and advisor to chief executive Steve Ballmer, has left in an apparent rush and without official explanation. Such was the speed of Taylor's exit his name still features on one of Microsoft's latest press releases.

"The Fedora Project announces the first release of the Fedora Core 6 development cycle, available for the i386, x86_64, and ppc/ppc64 architectures, including Intel based Macintosh computers." This test release includes KDE 3.5.3, GNOME 2.15, a new printing system, and much more. Check the release schedule for, well, release schedule information; downloads are available in .torrent and 'ordinary' .iso. Update: Screenshots.

The BumpTop structures files and programs as 3D cards with weight that you can shuffle around and move about the desktop. You can throw a bunch of similar cards on a pile to represent stuff you'll get to later, or stack them neatly to represent stuff you've already seen.

In reponse to several inquiries, we are extending the deadline of our Alternative OS Contest. The original deadline for entries was this Thursday, however, to allow more time for experimentation and writing, we are extending the deadline to Friday, July 14th. So fire up those download managers, grab yourself an ISO, and join the action!

Microsoft will release updates to the beta of Windows Vista every month until the gold master release to corporate customers in November, the software giant's Australian Windows chief revealed today. Jeff Putt, Director, Windows Client, Microsoft Australia revealed the plan in a briefing to journalists at Microsoft's headquarters in Sydney today. "We're on the bug-hunt", he said.

The AROS team posted its latest monthly update. Foremost, a new version of the hosted AROS-PPC has been released: "This release depends on glibc 2.3.2 or newer. You need to give AROS some more RAM than the default allocation of 16 MB (leaves about 4 MB for applications). Start it using: ./aros -m 64 This will allocate 64 MB. As with all X11 hosted AROS versions you need to add Option "BackingStore" to the Device section of xorg.conf." The other news is that the website has been translated to German.

"Let's face it. Google pretty much owns the Internet landscape. Unless something truly unexpected happens within the web community, I see no real indicator that they'll lose their market share anytime soon. This also opens them up to other online opportunities should they decide to pursue them. One such opportunity is believed to be the much famed idea of a Google OS. The rumors have been floating around back and forth for awhile now and many people believe that it's simply a matter of time. Well I'm here to tell you that this is never going to happen; at least not in a form that we might expect to see, that is."

"GNU/Linux live CDs are increasingly playing an important role in the free software community. They serve as advocacy tools, they make it possible for newbies to try out software without having to install anything and they make fantastic rescue disks. While all the best known live CDs are GNU/Linux variants, there are also several *BSD live CDs out there. I decided to give them a test run."

"IBM and the Georgia Institute of Technology announced today that their researchers have demonstrated the first silicon-based chip capable of operating at frequencies above 500 GHz - 500 billion cycles per second - by cryogenically 'freezing' the chip to 451 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (4.5 Kelvins)." Now that's what I'd like to see in the new PowerBook. Oh, wait.