One of the most expected virtualization release, Workstation 5.5 (build 18463) brings in a lot of new features and improvements. This announcement is made before the VMware official one (which should go public on 11/29/05).

With the new Xbox console out, Redmond's next target is games for mobile phones, with plans to overhaul the business as we know it.

AROS has seen a lot of under-the-hood work lately. Firstly, Joe Fenton has been able to run AROS PPC on his iMac using Fedora Core 4. Joe and Markuss Weiss are working hard on them, in order to give us a PPC version of AROS. Secondly, Bernd Roesch has compiled an AmigaOS-68k hosted version of AROS called AfA (AROS for AmigaOS): "AfA OS is a way to use AROS source without changes and compile them on every AmigaOS based operating system. It can run and be build hosted on every AmigaOS compatible system and provides a compatible API to all systems."

The GIMP toolkit (GTK+) matures to include yet another platform. This project aims to bring native GTK+ support to the Apple Mac OS X platform. The basic implementation is sponsored by Imendio AB and the work so far has been done by Anders Carlsson (of Imendio).

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.

There's now a preview release of Visopsys 0.6 online at the Visopsys website. This upcoming version will introduce an array of new features that have been in development over the past year. As always, you can demo this hobby OS from a floppy disk or live CD image. See the changelog for details, and you can download here. Update: screenshots.

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.

"I have been a Linux user way back from the first time I was introduced to an alternate OS than windows. Even though I was aware of other Unixes like FreeBSD and Solaris, I hadn't come around to installing them on my machine. Two days back, things changed when I downloaded the latest FreeBSD version 6.0 from their official website."

"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.

"We are all aware of AGEIA and its desire to bring a PhysX processor for physics processing in order to make games look and feel more realistic. We all want the characters to move and act realistically, and that's exactly what AGEIA's PhysX will accomplish once it debuts. However, in order for the technology to work, it requires an expansion card for the motherboard. ASUS will debut the card in February 2006 when more games become available to take advantage of AGEIA's innovation."

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."

Samba 3.0.20b and CUPS 1.1.23 have been ported to Syllable. Work has now begun to integrate the two into Syllable. Michael Saunders has also been active on the porting front and has ported a number of games and emulators to Syllable.

"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."

"TheOpenCD team is pleased to announce the release of TheOpenCD 3.1. Core applications including OpenOffice, Firefox and Gaim have been upgraded to major new versions. The popular game Battle for Wesnoth has reached 1.0 and a range familiar programs appear in minor version updates. The Live CD component is now based on Ubuntu 5.10. Blender has returned in version 2.37a and the MoinMoin Desktop Edition has been added."