Six months ago, architects from two dozen desktop-oriented Linux projects gathered in Portland to work together on creating the best possible Linux desktop. Thus was born the Portland Project. Now, in Mainz, Germany, the expanded group is meeting again on May 8 and 9 to see how far it's come and to look at what's ahead.

The Solaris Containers technology addresses this void by making it possible to create a number of private execution environments within a single instance of the Solaris OS. This paper provides suggestions for designing system configurations using powerful tools associated with Solaris Containers, guidelines for selecting features most appropriate for the user's needs, advice on troubleshooting, and a comprehensive consolidation planning example.

"IBM's contribution to the launch of the new Open Ajax Initiative aims to increase accessibility to the powerful Web programming technique through the Eclipse Foundation. To help prepare developers for the new tool set, this article introduces two existing runtime tools - Dojo and Zimbra - which will be supported in Eclipse's Ajax Toolkit Framework."

Torvalds has indeed chimed in on the micro vs. monolithic kernel debate. Going all 1992, he says: "The whole 'microkernels are simpler' argument is just bull, and it is clearly shown to be bull by the fact that whenever you compare the speed of development of a microkernel and a traditional kernel, the traditional kernel wins. The whole argument that microkernels are somehow 'more secure' or 'more stable' is also total crap. The fact that each individual piece is simple and secure does not make the aggregate either simple or secure. And the argument that you can 'just reload' a failed service and not take the whole system down is equally flawed." My take: While I am not qualified to reply to Linus, there is one thing I want to say: just because it is difficult to program, does not make it the worse design.

The successor to the Linux-based GP32 handheld games console will launch in the UK on 18 May, promising to bring gamers a gadget capable not only of playing native games and well-known titles under emulation, but also movies, music, and picture slideshows. The GP2X contains two 240MHz processors, 64MB of RAM, and 64MB of Flash. It sports a 320 x 240 LCD and is powered by a pair of AA batteries - enough, claimed the console's UK distributor, for six hours' gameplay. There's an SD card slot for expansion, and a USB port for PC connectivity.

Despite the advent of lower-power designs from Intel and AMD recently, today's processors are still power-hungry beasties. One company says it has a solution to the problem, which may lead to the kind of clock speed increases we used to see back in the heyday of Intel's 'it's all about CPU speed' fixation.

PC-BSD achieved a milestone recently with the release of their first stable version, 1.0, as reported by OSNews earlier. Two members of the PC-BSD team, founder and developer, Kris Moore, and language co-ordinator and contributor Charles-Andre Landemaine, have been interviewed for this release.

GNU/DOS 2006 SR1 was released today. It features various minor updates and bug fixes. Also, due to popular demand, the installation CD is now bootable. Download it here. GNU/DOS is a distribution of FreeDOS with various packages included, such as the OpenGEM GUI, a webbrowser and email client, the VIM editor, and much more.

Kevin Carmony has taken the heat from some in the FOSS community for offering non-free software in Linspire, and in particular, for attempting to lure the FOSS community into contributing to Linspire via Freespire. Don Parris spoke with Linspire's Kevin Carmony to learn more about his position. Are the community's accusations fair? What other options are there?

"CUPS 1.2.0 is the first stable feature release in the 1.2.x series and includes over 90 new features and changes since CUPS 1.1.23, including a greatly improved web interface and 'plug-and-print' support for many local and network printers. For a complete list of changes and new features, please consult the 'What's New in CUPS 1.2' document."

"It is my great pleasure and privilege to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE. This release is the next step in the development of the 6.X branch, delivering several performance improvements, many bugfixes, and a few new features. These include: Addition of a keyboard multiplexer. This allows USB and PS/2 keyboards to coexist without any special options at boot. Many fixes for filesystem stability. High load stress tests are now run successfully on a regular basis as part of the normal FreeBSD QA process. Automatic configuration for man Bluetooth devices, as well as automatic support for running WiFi access points. Addition of drivers for new ethernet and SAS and SATA RAID controllers."

Microsoft used the annual Mobile & Embedded DevCon to announce the availability of a beta release of Windows CE 6, the next generation of its real-time software used to build customized operating systems for devices such as internet protocol set-top-boxes, Global Positioning System-based devices, and industrial automation and medical devices. With a redesigned operating system kernel architecture, expanded capacity for simultaneous processes (up to 32000) and newly integrated tool set, Windows CE 6 promises help device makers more quickly create devices that support a range of applications for high-demand categories.

News reports out of LinuxTag late last week have Andrew Morton, the second highest ranking Linux kernel developer, calling for a bug-fixing cycle to cut down on the growing number of bugs found in the latest kernel release. NewsForge contacted the number one man on the Linux project, Linus Torvalds, who acknowledged it might be the right time for a "bug cycle".

"New security features in Windows Vista will largely eliminate the need to run separate antispyware or firewall software, according to a new analyst report. Due out early next year, the next major release of Microsoft's flagship operating system promises not only to increase security for consumers, it will also dramatically affect the $3.6 billion market for Windows security products, according to a Yankee Group report scheduled to be published Monday." That same report also claims that Vista's security measures will hurt in the enterprise sector, and it advises companies to stick with XP SP2 until 2008.