Next week's 'Patch Tuesday' was already going to be quiet, with an update only for Windows. On Friday, Microsoft pulled that update, saying more testing is needed. In related news, officials at the Mozilla Foundation on Friday acknowledged that a potentially dangerous code execution hole exists in fully patched versions of its flagship Firefox web browser. Update: Seems like there already is a (temporary) fix available.

Trolltech has released version 3.3.5 of Qt, featuring new compatibility with OSX Tiger, Visual Studio 2005 and GCC4. It also features bug fixes to many of its tools and classes, and as is normal with minor-point Qt releases, features binary and source compatibility with earlier releases in the Qt 3.3 series.

Windows uses a file system called NTFS, today's Linux distributions primarily use ext3, and like two warring tribes, the two barely speak. Fortunately, there's a handy tool from Paragon Software Group called NTFS for Linux, which acts like an interpreter for these battling nations. For Linux users hampered by lack of communication with Windows, Paragon's NTFS for Linux presents an elegant and effective solution.

"The Sun Cobalt was open-sourced by Sun Microsystems at the end of its product lifecycle in December of 2003. OffMyServer, a provider of custom built servers and storage solutions, sponsored the porting of the Cobalt RaQ software to the FreeBSD operating system. The open source project, codenamed RAQdevil, is focused on providing an interactive community to encourage developers that are interested in working to improve the software."

"Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 is now available for download. This is the first Beta release of our next generation Firefox browser, to be released later this year, and it is being made available to our developer and testing community for compatibility testing and to solicit feedback." Read the release notes, and download.

"Until yesterday, there were 4 different variations of the Aqua theme used by Apple for OS X: the standard Aqua theme, the new Platinum theme, the much distained Brushed Metal theme, and the funky Woody theme. Commentators have pointed out on more then one occasion that while Apple's Human Interface Guidelines has guidelines for which theme to use where, even Apple disregards those rules and uses whatever theme some unknown source in the company chooses."

Engadget posted a batch of old BBS entries from 1985. Some quotes: "We still think this Macintosh thing is an overrated, underpowered poor stepchild to the Lisa." On Microsoft: "We don’t really know how they think they can take on the Macintosh user interface, though, so don’t be surprised if the little Arizona startup that could, well, can’t."

Mobile browser-maker Access announced Friday that it will acquire Palm OS developer PalmSource in an all-cash transaction for approximately $324 million. The acquisition adds operating system platform expertise and Linux development resources to Access's existing "content delivery and Internet access software" for mobile devices, the companies said.

The latest version of GNUStep's StepTalk was recently posted. StepTalk is a language independent scripting framework providing access to GNUStep's functionality, including the ability to dynamically load modules, utilize various programming languages, and other good stuff. This version contains a few additions and subtractions from the previous one.

The Gnome Project released version 2.12 yesterday. We had a quick look at it by using the latest Gnome Live CD (1.12-pre) and Foresight 0.9.0 (2.12 final) and here are our thoughts over 2.12 and Gnome's status in general.

The Mandriva developers have released the first (and maybe final) release candidate of Mandriva 2006.

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer delivered keynote addresses from the Microsoft Redmond Conference Center that were broadcast via satellite to customer events being held simultaneously throughout the USA and at major Microsoft subsidiaries around the world. You can find links to the webcasts here.

Here is an interview with the CEO of Opera. "There are obviously some users who go between Opera and Mozilla. They have Opera one week, Mozilla the next week, and back to Opera... But we have a shared common goal: we would actually like to see open standards prevail."

"The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.0-BETA4. ISO images are available for i386, amd64, pc98, alpha, powerpc, and ia64. Sparc64 is still in the process of being built and will be uploaded as soon as it is ready."