A month behind schedule, Nokia starts shipping its Linux-powered 770 Internet Tablet in Europe, sporting a 4-inch 800x480 display, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth 1.2, Opera 8.02 browser and more. UPDATE: Many thanks to Toni Leppänen for sending us a screenshot of Opera rendering OSNews.

FreeBSD 6.0 has been released, but an official announcement is not yet available. You can download the .iso images here (mirror list). More information, documentation and release notes for the various architectures can be found here. Note: read this. Update: It's official.

Why would anybody want to simulate hardware when developing a device driver? This linux-based article lays out the problem and proposes an approach to solve it. Part 2 of this two-part series, "Debugging simulated hardware on Linux, Part 2: Device driver debugging." gives you a strategy for debugging the complete code flow of your drivers.

"I was impressed by the way GoboLinux handled. This distribution clearly has a well-defined identity of its own, and the authors' philosophy shows in every detail of the system. The system is fast, without a grain of bloat in it." GoboLinux' most defining feature is its filesystem layout, which does not follow the Free Standards Group's Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, but is more like OSX' layout.

"S3 Graphics and Fujitsu Limited today announced that Fujitsu will be producing the new range of S3 Graphics' high performance graphics processors, which leverage Fujitsu's 90 nanometer process technology to enable the realization of graphics processors that feature high speeds and industry-leading performance per watt."

"Excellent open source Outlook Express alternatives are available which provide similar and additional features. Such is the case with Mozilla's Thunderbird, which is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux users. Moving away from Outlook Express is a no-brainer, as our screen shots illustrate."

GNU Classpath now features more efficient painting for large Free Swing GUIs. Improved accessibility support. HttpURLConnection rewrite. Official CORBA VMCID assigned. Start of RMI over IIOP support. Qt4 support for OS-X. Much improved Free Swing Metal theme. Free Swing Demo includes theme switcher example (Metal, Ocean, GNU). JBoss now starts up and Jonas testsuite passes for 95%. Support for the javax.sound.midi framework and experimental DSSI and ALSA service providers. Early version of the popular StAX API. Now has 96% coverage of 1.4 API.

The upcoming 1.3.0 version of the XINS technology will allow requests from browsers, SOAP clients and XML-RPC. All at the same time and without the need to reconfigure or redeploy the server. The trick is an HTTP parameter "_convention" to be supplied in the request URL. When this parameter is set to "_xins-soap", then the request is interpreted as a SOAP request. If it's "_xins-xmlrpc" then XML-RPC is assumed.

The source to the PC card software developed by Aleph1 to control second processors on Acorn machines is now available under the GPL.This software is responsible for providing a BIOS, drivers and interfacing with the RISC OS desktop when using x86 second processor cards in Acorn RiscPC machines or the slower x86 expansion cards which fit into Acorn podule slots.

Users will be free to comment on the upcoming complex and technical draft versions of the GNU General Public License 3.0 in an easy way, according to Eben Moglen, general counsel for the Free Software Foundation. However, Moglen said Wednesday, speaking at the Open Source Business Conference here, the rewrite of the GPL is not an election and there will be no voting on its clauses.

A new release of Blackbox in the latest 0.70 series is now out: 0.70.1 cumulates new features and bugfixes added to CVS over the last 8 months. Read on for a list of the most notable changes.

More than 2 years ago we reviewed the excellent "Core Mac OS X and Unix Programming" book. Now, a new edition has been released and it's renamed to "Advanced Mac OS X Programming". We take a quick look as to what has changed since the first edition.

"MandrakeLinux always had a reputation as an ideal distribution for beginners. Now that the renamed Mandriva has included technologies from Conectiva and Lycoris into Mandriva Linux 2006, this reputation seems more justified than ever. From its installation program to its selection of software and desktop design to its package design and security options, Mandriva is one of the easiest to use distributions available today." Read more here.

"Yesterday OpenBSD, the proactively secure Unix-like operating system, released version 3.8, featuring several improvements to networking, RAID management tools, and increased security. At openbsd.org you can download installation files or order the official three-disc CD set, which supports 16 processor architectures out of the box. I took this new release as an opportunity to perform my first ever OpenBSD install." Read more here.