Knowing a little bit about how the Linux 2.6 scheduler treats CPU affinity can help you design better userspace applications. Soft affinity means that processes do not frequently migrate between processors, whereas hard affinity means that processes run on processors you specify.

Microsoft has released three papers designed to help mobile application developers from other platforms migrate their applications to Windows Mobile. The first and second papers involve migrating developers and applications from Symbian OS and the third paper is a guide for developers moving from Palm OS.

Motorola's CEO Ed Zander added fuel to persistent speculation about Apple's interest in producing its own phone. "And we know that they are going to build a smart phone - it's only a matter of time."

This version of Glade (Glade-3) is a complete rewrite of the original Glade codebase. One of the main differences from glade-2 is that C code generation has been removed from glade-3; the preferred way to use glade files is with libglade. Another main difference is that glade-3 was designed to make maximal use of GObject introspection, thus easing the integration of external toolkits and handling widgets, signals and properties genericly. It has a few useful new features such as stacked Undo/Redo and Multiple Project support and respects the same XML format as glade-2.

Sun has released a beta edition of the upcoming version 5 of NetBeans. The most notable feature in this new release is the Matisse GUI Builder (demo) which makes it significantly easier to develop Swing GUIs. Other improvements include more refactoring tools, better CVS integration, support for more application servers, better support for web-development, and small tweaks to the editor.

SUSE's 10.0 release announcmeent has barely hit all four corners of the globe, but development for 10.1 is already underway, and alpha 1 is now available. The biggest changes since 10.0 are a new kernel (2.6.13.2) and KDE 3.5 Beta 1. Download locations can be found in the release announcement.

MEPIS recently released the latest beta of its lightweight Linux distribution MEPISLite 3.3.2-test01, thus making it the first vendor to release a Linux based on the Debian Common Core.

"The standard Unix permissions scheme works fine if you have simple needs, but juggling groups and users can grow unwieldy very quickly. FreeBSD's Access Control Lists give you more control over who can access files and directories. Dru Lavigne explains how to understand and use them."

"If you have used disk drives during your career, I am sure you are well aware of the issues that arise when a device unexpectedly dies. This short article describes how to use smartmontools to view S.M.A.R.T status information, which can be used to predict if and when a device may fail."

Despite some high-profile departures to Google and other rivals, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer say Microsoft Corp. is still in a position to attract the top talent needed to ensure the company's strength as it enters its fourth decade.

The MorphOS Development Team would like to inform that a new version of the MorphOS Free Edition for PowerUP accelerator boards is immediately available for download. The download is available at the PowerUp MorphOS site.

The operating system's group at Technische Universität Dresden is pleased to announce the release of version 1.2 of the Fiasco L4 microkernel. This release fixes many bugs, a few features have been added as well. For a list of changes please consult the CHANGES file. Get the package from the download directory or from CVS. Refer to the README file for further information.

Built upon Apache's Geronimo J2EE 1.4 server based on open source components, Gluecode is an application server platform that encompasses key open source projects and groups them together in a layered architecture. This article takes a look at Gluecode for beginners, explains how it is composed, and how Gluecode can help organizations plan for more effeciate IT infrastructure.

In this article, Rickford Grant, author of "Linux Made Easy" introduces his book and explains the rationale behind it. Grant bases his assertion that "Linux is easy" on Xandros 3, generally considered one of the most user-friendly desktop Linux distributions. The book comes with a Xandros 3 CD.