"Generally, file systems are not considered 'sexy'. When a young programmer wants to do something really cool, his or her first thought is generally not 'dude, two words... File system'. However, I am what is politely termed 'different'. I find file systems very interesting and they have seldom been more so than they are right now. Hans Reiser is working on getting Reiser4 integrated into the Linux kernel, the BSDs are working on getting a journaled file system together, and Sun Microsystems just recently released a beta of ZFS into OpenSolaris. This is an excellent time to be me. This article will be on file system design and specifically the new file systems that are just appearing. We will start with the basics, UFS/FFS, and then proceed to our first modern file system, XFS.

"I first demoed Versora Progression Desktop at LinuxWorld Boston in February of 2005, and was impressed by what it could do. Basically it takes all of your essential data and program settings (and even some decidedly nonessential settings) and transfers them to GNU/Linux. I hadn't heard much from the company since then - until Linspire announced a partnership with them recently. The deal is, Progression Desktop will move you from Windows to Linspire without any hassle."

A Dutch company has released an Alpha emulator for Windows XP (what's with the buzz around Alpha lately, people?). From their website: "The PersonalAlpha software lets you run your Alpha/OpenVMS software on a standard Personal Computer. Imagine running your VMS- programs on your office PC, notebook or computer at home. Develop, test and run Alpha/OpenVMS applications wherever you are. This product proves that Alpha-virtualization in software is possible and commercially available. PersonalAlpha is the 32-bit prelude to a suite of 64-bit VirtualAlpha software products that Emulators International soon will release. These solutions allow you to replace your Alpha computers without changing the applications."

Apple's decision to unleash Intel-based Mac systems six months ahead of schedule is proving less successful than the company anticipated. Two weeks following the Macworld Expo San Francisco keynote, sources report that sales of the Intel-based iMac are lower than Apple expected, even taking into account the seasonal post-holiday sales dip, suggesting the 2006 transition to Intel is going to be more difficult than the company has expressed. UPDATE: Good news for our Mac friends: new data now made available suggest that the iMac actually sells well.

"Samba 4 is the ambitious next version of the Samba suite that is being developed in parallel to the stable 3.0 series. The main emphasis in this branch is support for the Active Directory logon protocols used by Windows 2000 and above. With 3 years of development under our belt since Tridge first proposed a new Virtual File System layer for Samba3 (a project which eventually lead to our Active Directory efforts), it was felt that we should create something we could 'show off' to our users. This is a Technology Preview (TP), aimed at allowing users, managers and developers to see how we have progressed, and to invite feedback and support."

"Of all the various Acorn hardware emulators out there, two in particular are supplied with source code: ArcEm and Arculator, plus its new cousin RPCemu. Being a RiscPC emulator with source code gives an interesting insight into the task of reverse engineering the legacy Acorn computer, which Tom had to go through and without access to the various relevant datasheets. Although VirtualRiscPC successfully emulates a RiscPC environment on PCs, its internals are rightfully protected as being commercially sensitive."