"The Fedora Project announces the first release of the Fedora Core 5 development cycle, available for the i386, x86_64, and PPC/PPC64 architectures." This first test release includes modular Xorg, GNOME 2.12, KDE 3.4.92, a Xen 3.0 snapshot, better OSS Java support, and much more. Download torrents here, .iso's here. Update: here are a few first impressions on this release, screenshots.

Microsoft has released a new build of Windows Vista to Vendors and Beta Testers. The build is 5259, and was compiled on November 17 2005. Screenshots of 5259 started appearing on forums yesterday (more here). 5259 contains new versions of Media Center, Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Media Player 11, but little new when it comes to GUI. Microsoft Antispyware has also been fully integrated in this build. There is more on Vista's new fonts here, and more on TCP/IP here. Update: more, high-res this time, screenshots here.

"In this article I will try to share my experience with the best piece of hardware I ever used - a 12.1-inch iBook G4. I focused the article on giving my comments on different aspects of the iBook - software, hardware and the overall appearance. The article is accompanied by screenshots, photos and a small video."

Microsoft Windows captured the lead for the first time in server operating systems during the third quarter, boosted by continued demand for inexpensive servers selling for less than $25000 (EUR 21190), according to a new report.

"Microsoft dropped a bomb on ODF with its Ecma announcement. Today, it just bombed with the release of its promised 'covenant not to sue,' which it publicly posted just a few minutes ago. I was able to get an advance copy and do a line-by-line legal analysis, as well as a direct comparison to the covenant Sun gave to OASIS in support of ODF. There's no comparison."

"The release of Firefox 1.5 is almost certain to drive adoption rates even higher. PCMag.com recently reviewed the new version, and found that the most noticeable improvement is the ability to reorder tabs via drag-and-drop. Navigation is significantly faster, as Mozilla has implemented 'intelligent caching' on the forward and back buttons. The final, gold-code release of Firefox 1.5 should arrive before the end of November." UPDATE: One more review.

"Does Microsoft's monopoly power extend to government and media? That seems like a rhetorical question given their little power play in Massachusetts. Is now the time to share our experience with the rest of the world?"

The Inq pays attention to Advantage Six' upcoming A9 Home machine. "AdvantageSix's new machine is a tiny blue fanless aluminium box about the size of a couple of floppy drives - 168x103x53mm. The A9 Home is a sealed unit - it comes with 128MB RAM and a notebook-size 40GB hard disk - which you can't upgrade, not that you'd want to; this is masses for RISC OS. There is a small external power supply brick which puts out a stonking 20W. It has to be that much to power a few USB peripherals - the machine itself draws about 3W under load. "That's actually quite a lot. We haven't enabled most of the power management yet."

SchilliX 0.3 has been released. The announcement was made on #opensolaris (and the 'real' announcement is here), and it stated that SchilliX is close to having a self-hosted platform now; one that is not Sun-supplied. Schillix 0.3 features build 27a with ZFS support of the OpenSolaris kernel. Download here. Elsewhere, here are some first impressions on the just-released Nexenta OS alpha 1.

"Yesterday, Microsoft let the other shoe drop in a two-pronged attack on the support that has been building for the OpenDocument OASIS Format. It's still far too early to say that the dust has settled, but I'll attempt to pull together here the most significant pieces of information that I've located since last night's post, and what it all means."

Here is an 8 minute documentary about the recently unveiled 100$ laptop. It shows the laptop in action, and also discusses its aspects with one of the team members, such as the screen, the cheap keyboard, and much more. The video is in Quicktime, and this mirror gives better performance. My take: I am very, very, very impressed. The thought put into the details is just stunning. Every aspect of this machine has a function. Just astonishing.

While programs in the Java language are theoretically immune from memory leaks, there are situations in which objects are not garbage collected even though they are no longer part of the program's logical state. This article explores a common cause of unintentional object retention and shows how to plug the leak with weak references.

Microsoft intends to submit file formats for its new Office 12 applications to the European standards body ECMA International. The company hopes this will allay concern about its level of control over document formats. Update by AS: For the curious, here's a sample Office 12 file and a sample XPS file. (Note: Right click > Save As..., we're not configured to serve these files just yet.)

After a long gap, the latest edition of the Syllable Development Newsletter is now available. This covers progress in the last eight months, including the 0.5.7 release, Whisper updates, SDL and games ports, along with much more.