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.

After a month of news largely dominated by pro-ODF announcements, such as the release of ODF-compliant office suites, patent non-assertion pledges and the like, the opposition has just lowered the boom. And if they are successful, it's a big one.

Nokia released today a number of updated development PDFs on their 'S60 3rd Edition' platform on top of Symbian OS v9.1: "S60 2nd/3rd Edition: Differences In Features", "Introduction To The S60 Scalable UI", "S60 Platform: Scalable UI Support", "S60 Platform: Source And Binary Compatibility", "S60 Platform: Avkon UI Resources". Nokia also released a new web browser based on KHTML. Except the innovative zoomable interface, the browser also supports pop-up blocking, visual history, find-as-you-type, integrated RSS support, DHTML with AJAX support and Netscape-style plug-ins for Flash Lite, SVG-tiny and audio. The new web browser (check the flash demo) is available to all new Nokia phones using the 'S60 3rd Edition', like the impressive and newly announced N80.

Samba Team co-founder John H. Terpstra kicks off a six-part, two-month series that can help Linux administrators master Samba-3 management. This first installment introduces the Samba series and covers a tutorial on Windows network ID basics.

Silicon Graphics Inc. today issued a melancholy press release confirming that it has been kicked off the New York Stock Exchange, and will now trade as a 'penny stock'. SGI was the high-bandwidth, visualization-rich, media-savvy computer systems company that flourished in a decade when media pundits clamored for a winner in what they called 'the convergence space'. SGI obliged, and spared nothing - for a while its budgets were flush for R&D and fancy architecture. "Oh, SGI, we loved you and you screwed up. Bigtime."

Sun Tuesday launched the latest assault on the proprietary Microsoft Word document format by offering a new Sun Grid utility service that will convert Word files into ODF. Another Sun Grid utility will convert text files into audio files for podcasts or for playback on Web sites, said Tom Goguen, vice president with Sun's software group.

The Schillix OpenSolaris project has announced its second release, SchilliX 0.2, and a Live CD available for download. Highlights of 0.2 include 30 second boot time, boot from CD or USB-stick, installation to hard drive, and self-healing services. Software includes cdrecord, star, bash, bz2, fakeroot, gmake, gpatch, gtar, gzip, pod2man, texinfo, unzip, wget and much more.

Firefox 1.5 RC1 has been released. New and improved features include automated updates, better navigating performance, drag and drop re-ordering for browser tabs, better support for Mac OS X, and much more.

Glynn Foster wrote on his blog that Sun's throwing away the desktop which is based on GNOME because of different problems they see in maintaining it. There is also a full article about it on LXer.

Eclipse is an open source community focused on developing a universal platform of frameworks and tools that make it easy and cost-effective to build and deploy software. This article gives you information about the latest version of Eclipse, and a guide to some of the most interesting Eclipse projects. Learn what Eclipse is good for, why it is important, how you can get started, and where to learn more about it.

As a kind of follow-up to ArsTechnica's previous round of technical articles on the hardware that powers the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360, they decided to step back a bit from the technical details and take a broader look at how the next generation of consoles fit into the home entertainment picture.