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.

Greg Kroah-Hartman has announced the availability of a Linux Device Driver Kit; a CD image with a copy of the "Linux Device Drivers" book, pre-built copies of all in-kernel docbook documentation, and a copy of the Linux kernel source to build external modules and to take a look at the source. In coordination with the FreedomHEC, the attendees at said conference in Seattle will get a free copy.

Roumen Strobl, a Sun employee, has created a five minute flash demo to show how easy it is to create dynamic websites using NetBeans 5.5 and Java EE 5. In the demo, he uses two new wizards in NetBeans 5.5: one creates entity beans from a database; and the second creates JSF pages from the entity beans. The wizards automatically take care of the relationships between entity beans. This was previously discussed on OSNews. A beta of NetBeans 5.5 is now available for download.

"Earlier this month, Intel held a 'reviewer's workshop' event where they invited a number of representatives from hardware review sites to spend a few days benchmarking and learning about their new Core 2 microarchitecture. The star of the show was Woodcrest, which is the top end of the Core 2 lineup and will be replacing the last Netburst-based Xeon processor in June. The participating reviewers got to benchmark both Dempsey and Woodcrest, and the results of those benchmark runs are now available. In all, Woodcrest looks like a stellar performer that massively improves on its predecessors in both raw horsepower and power efficiency."

Linux.com reviews SUSE 10.1, and concludes: "With SUSE 10.1, Novell has embraced and extended its role as the leading desktop distribution. Given the amount of eye-popping eye candy and playtime 3-D effects available on this desktop, it's easy to forget that Novell is all about bringing Linux to the corporate - not the home - desktops. Yes, the money is all in the server market these days, but after the revolution Linux will inherit its rightful share of desktops, too."

Belenix 0.4.3a has been released. "Another release of the LiveCD this month. The significant feature of this release is the inclusion of JDK 1.5 under the new Distributors License for Java as announced by Sun on May 16th in JavaOne. See the JDK Distros Project for more details."

All BeOS users rejoice as Stephan Assmus ('Stippi') has recently checked in code which allows sliding window tabs for Haiku. Sliding tabs are undoubtably one of the most-loved features from BeOS. Sliding tabs allow multiple windows to be overlayed on top of each other, where individual windows can be accessed by selecting their appropriate tab. Sentimental value, almost.

Microsoft is sponsoring a contest that challenges developers to use Windows CE Shared Source in a real-world project, and offers Xbox 360 game console prizes. The grand prize includes the Xbox 360 console, a 34-inch HDTV, games, and accessories.

It's conventional wisdom that computers need to be "easier to use." But do they? More reliable, yes. Easier to troubleshoot, yes. But now that so many people use computers so much, I think there's something to be said for making them less easy-to-use and less intuitive.

"The KOffice team today released the first bug-fix release in their 1.5 series. Critical bugs in KSpread, KWord and Krita were fixed, thanks to the helpful input of our users. We also have updated languages packs. You can read more about it in the press release and the full announcement. A full changelog is also available."

Samsung will early next month ship the first notebook PC and the first ultra-mobile PC fitted with 32GB of solid-state NAND Flash storage instead of a regular hard disk drive, the company announced today. The two machines - respectively, a version of Samsung's Q30 12.1in notebook and its Q1 UMPC - are both fitted with the 32GB SSD (Solid-state Disk) the company unveiled in March this year. Both PCs will go on sale in South Korea for KRW3.5m ($3700) and KRW2.3m ($2430), respectively.

During the Bill Gates keynote at WinHEC 2006 Microsoft demonstrated the new Windows Hypervisor (codename Viridian). In the demo two unique features for a virtualization platform were demoed: 4 virtual CPUs per virtual machine and live modification of virtual hardware while the virtual machine is powered on (i.e. adding a NIC or more virtual memory while the guest OS was still running).

AnandTech reviewed AMD's new socket-AM2 in its usual in-depth fasion, and concluded: "And there you have it, quite possibly the most unimpressive launch from AMD (from a performance perspective), but given what we had already seen prior to today there shouldn't be any surprises. The introduction of the Athlon 64 FX-62 means that there is an even faster alternative for those looking to spend as much as possible on a desktop or workstation CPU, but the new 5000+ isn't really all that appealing, especially if you're a gamer."