The server market was slapped and dropped on its head during the first quarter of 2006. We haven't seen anything quite like it since 2000. What's the big shocker? Well, Sun Microsystems actually enjoyed one of the stronger runs during the first quarter by most metrics, while Dell proved one of the worst performers. Beyond the server vendor rumbles, AMD continued to gain gobs of share on Intel in the x86 processor market.

Whichever BSD you use, the basics of package management are similar. Each member of the BSD family has a slightly different approach in this area, but all share common themes, as David Chisnall discusses in this article.

"At PC World, we spend most of our time talking about products that make your life easier or your work more productive. But it's the lousy ones that linger in our memory long after their shrinkwrap has shriveled, and that make tech editors cry out, 'What have I done to deserve this?' Still, even the worst products deserve recognition (or deprecation). So as we put together our list of World Class winners for 2006, we decided also to spotlight the 25 worst tech products that have been released since PC World began publishing nearly a quarter-century ago."

From eWeek: "Symantec Corp. has admitted to using a rootkit-type feature in Norton SystemWorks that could provide the perfect hiding place for attackers to place malicious files on computers. The anti-virus vendor acknowledged that it was hiding a directory from Windows APIs as a feature to stop customers from accidentally deleting files but, prompted by warnings from security experts, the company shipped a SystemWorks update to eliminate the risk."

With the first Origami devices out the door, Microsoft is setting its sights on the next generation of tiny tablet PCs - products known within the company as "Vistagami" devices. The new minitablets are likely to resemble the first of the ultramobile PCs, though they will run Windows Vista, rather than XP.

Remember Yoper? Yoper is working towards version 3.0 of their Linux distro. For those of you that want to help with the beta testing, a download is now available. Yoper is optimized for i686 processors and speed. You can also find a short review of Yoper 3.0 beta over at Tuxmachines.

"The NetBSD Project is proud to announce the list of projects accepted for this year's Summer of Code. While the list of proposals was impressive and of particularly high quality, a choice of eight applications had to be made Details about each project will be posted to the NetBSD SoC SourceForge website."

Google Labs has released Picasa for Linux, ported using Wine by CodeWeavers. The free Picasa download is available now. My Take: The software requirements are fairly hefty in that some features require cutting edge programs like HAL and a 2.6+ kernel, but this is fantastic news for Linux users. Picasa is an excellent program that rivals iPhoto. Update by AS : Google ported Picasa using Wine, but it was still a LOT of work and the result was completely effective. Please read more on the WineHQ mailing list. Update 2: You do not need Wine installed to run this - it's a self-contained Wine lib. Also, the Picasa download apparently doesn't work from all countries. Update by TH: Here's a review.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer denied reports that Vista will be delayed by a few weeks. In the meantime, a day after Microsoft announced availability of Windows Vista Beta 2, the first testers are overcoming download bottlenecks and obtaining bits. While many are finding the latest build to be more stable and better-performing, they also are still hitting driver and application compatibility issues, among other system problems.

"It is my great pleasure and privilege to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.5-RELEASE. Work done between the 5.4-RELEASE and this release has mostly been bugfixes. Some 'vendor supplied' software has also been updated, mostly due to security concerns (specifically BIND and sendmail). This is the last planned release on the 5-STABLE branch."

The Mozilla Foundation has said it is committed to rewarding the community that helps develop its software. Mozilla's suite, which includes the Firefox Web browser, is partly developed by unpaid programmers, often working in their spare time. Mozilla on Wednesday said it could not afford to pay all of its voluntary contributors, but instead may contribute by providing hardware to some developers.

If it is up to Microsoft, the omnipresent JPEG image format will be replaced by Windows Media Photo. The software maker detailed the new image format Wednesday at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference here. Windows Media Photo will be supported in Windows Vista and also be made available for Windows XP, Bill Crow, program manager for Windows Media Photo said in a presentation.

The AROS team posted its latest monthly update. Several applications were ported or updated, including Lunapaint (read an interview with the developer, or take a look at some screenshots), a Commodore 8bit emulator, and various CD/DVD burning tools. Other than that, various bugfixes and such have also been implemented. For some screenshots of new applications and AROS features check the AE Gallery.

"Sun today announced new benchmark results involving the performance of the open source MySQL database running online transaction processing workload on 8-way Sun Fire V40z servers. The testing, which measured the performance of both read/write and read-only operations, showed that MySQL 5.0.18 running on Solaris 10 executed the same functions up to 64 percent faster in read/write mode and up to 91 percent faster in read-only mode than when it ran on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Advanced Server Edition OS." Take a look at the item below, though.