Fans of the classic computer game Ultima V (from the c64/Apple][e era) have re-created the game, using modern game tech, thanks to the Dungeon Siege engine. The Ultima re-make, called Lazarus, is free for download, runs on Windows or Mac, but needs the Dungeon Siege engine (commercial software) to run. More details at the Ultima5 Lazarus site. Update: URL fixed.

MSDN has posted a video interview with Rob Short, the MIcrosoft VP in charge of the team that "architects the foundation of Windows Vista," and members of his team. The interview goes deep into kernel development, and they even ask the question that's on everyone's mind: "do you ever wish the registry had never been developed?"

"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce that release 3.0 of the NetBSD operating system is now available. NetBSD 3.0 continues our long tradition with major improvements in stability, performance, networking, security, also includes support for two new platforms (iyonix and hp700), and many new peripherals. Far reaching improvements to the network stack will not only provide better performance but also make NetBSD an excellent choice for a VPN gateway. PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) framework adds more flexibility to NetBSD's user management and simplifies integration into heterogeneous networks. The kernel, libraries and utilities can now handle filesystems larger than two terabytes, and support for Xen 2.0 allows hosting many virtual servers on a single machine." Read the full changelog here, and downloads are here.

"Welcome to the MultiOS Browser Test Website. Here you will find capabilities to test your browser. You can test CSS, Document Object Model, Graphics file formats, iFrames, JavaScript, Browser plugins, SVG-Graphic, XML and XSLT." You can do these tests in English or in German.

"Progression Desktop allows you to transfer files and settings from Windows desktops to Linux desktops in an automated fashion. Desktop "personalities" and data are quickly moved across operating systems and applications to ensure a seamless transition to Linux. Progression Desktop moves critical data, application settings, network shares, desktop settings, directory structures and more in a predictable and repeatable fashion. Migrate Microsoft Outlook/Outlook Express to Novell Evolution, KMail, Mozilla or Thunderbird, Microsoft Internet Explorer to Mozilla, Firefox or Konqueror, Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org and more."

CoolTechZone claims that Microsoft has bought Opera. "In a recent conversation with one of our insiders at Microsoft, the source revealed that Microsoft has acquired Opera Software, makers of the Opera browser. The insider reported that both Microsoft and Google were trying to bid on Opera, but in the end, the software maker took the lead. At the moment, the deal is almost through with Microsoft and Opera planning on locations for the browser’s research and development centers throughout the world." Update: Opera has officially denied the rumours (thanks to Nemesis11).

"Uim is a multilingual input method library, whose goal is to provide a secure and useful input method for all languages. Uim works in many environments, including of course general desktop systems such as GNOME or KDE. It also supports Linux Zaurus, Mac OS X." Version 1.0.0 has been released.

The Fluendo people have fully licensed the mp3 audio codec with redistribution rights in place, meaning that future versions of Fedora or Ubuntu will be able to support mp3 out of the box. "In order to improve the GNU/Linux and Unix multimedia experience Fluendo announced today the immediate availability of their MP3 plug-in for the GStreamer multimedia framework. The MP3 decoder is available free of charge both for individual end users and GNU/Linux and Unix distribution makers. In addition to making their licensed binary plug-in available to the public Fluendo also released the source code to this MP3 plug-in under the very permissive MIT license allowing all kind of developers and companies access to it."

The SCO Group's revenue continued to fall in the fourth quarter and during fiscal 2005, as Unix sales slumped. Management, however, tried to put a positive spin on the results, released after Thursday's market close, saying that cost-cutting measures have made SCO's Unix business profitable again and adding that plenty of cash remains to continue a legal battle against IBM.

Xcode Build Settings allow you to customize your build process in an intuitive way, giving you greater control managing complex project settings. This article shows you how.

"The ReactOS Team is pleased to announce version 0.2.9 of its operating system, designed to be binary compatible with Windows drivers and applications. This release brings improvements to the network model allowing applications such as firefox to run, significant improvements in Plug and Play support now provide a basic working model able to detect and load drivers, plus many other feature additions and bug fixes. We also now provide vmware player images on our download page. The full changelog can be found here, and screenshots are available here."

AnandTech has published part II (part I discussed here on OSNews) of their performance preview of Intel's upcoming Yonah. "We've updated the benchmark suite considerably, including modern day games and a few professional-level applications hopefully to get a better perspective on Yonah's performance. We've also included an Athlon 64 X2 running at 2.0GHz, but with each core having a full 1MB L2 cache, making the Yonah vs. X2 comparison as close to even as possible (not mentioning the fact that AMD has twice the advantage in this round, with both a larger L1 cache and an on-die memory controller, but it should make things interesting)."

The Cairo vector-based graphics library now has a BeOS port, courtesy of Christian 'biesi' Biesinger. The Cairo library is used in Gecko 1.8 - the engine behind Firefox 1.5 and Seamonkey 1.0 - for SVG and CANVAS tag support, although future plans involve it receiving heavier use for general rendering, and is also receiving increasing use within GTK+, with 2.8 having inital support for it. The availability of this library on BeOS should aid the native porting of GTK+ in the future as well as ensuring that Mozilla products have a future on the platform, and its almost certain to see wider adoption in the future.

"NetBSD is well-known for its portability, but since the release of NetBSD 2.0, the project has also included tons of interesting and unique features. While waiting for the upcoming 3.0, Federico Biancuzzi interviewed Roland Dowdeswell, the author of the Crypto-Graphic Disk system."