"Colony CD 4 is ready. This is the fourth in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Breezy development cycle, as images that are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD-build or installer bugs, while representing very current snapshots of Breezy. You can download it here." Bug reports can be filed here.

"Every major release of the 4.x series of Xfce has been pretty major. 4.0 was the result of over a years work, a major rewrite of the entire desktop. 4.2 saw the introduction of major features and enhancements that were incomplete for 4.0, and new developers as Xfce4 gained popularity. 4.4 is going to be a major upgrade to Xfce, with new components, major upgrades to old ones, and more tools for developers. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at what’s coming."

Open Virtuozzo (GPL/QPL) is an operating system-level server virtualization solution, built on Linux. Open Virtuozzo creates isolated, secure virtual private servers or virtual environments on a single physical server enabling better server utilization and ensuring that applications do not conflict. Each VPS performs and executes exactly like a stand-alone server; VPSs can be rebooted independently and have root access, users, IP addresses, memory, processes, files, applications, system libraries and configuration files.

SCO and MySQL announced Friday that the two would be working together to jointly deliver the commercial version of the MySQL database to SCO's latest Unix release, OpenServer 6. OpenServer 6 already includes the Apache Web server, the Apache Tomcat JSP (Java Server Pages) server, the PostgreSQL DBMS and the MySQL Community Edition.

Apple Computer without VisiCalc would have been an entirely different company. VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet, was a major cause of the success of the Apple II, and attracted the attention of IBM to the microcomputer market. Read about VisiCalc at creator Dan Bricklin's site and a brief history at Braeburn.

Objective Modula-2 (or ObjM2) is an extension to Modula-2 which follows the Objective-C object model and retains the bracketed Smalltalk message passing syntax introduced in Objective-C. Like Objective-C, Objective Modula-2 is a reflective, object oriented programming language with both static and dynamic typing. It is intended as a safer alternative to Objective-C for Cocoa and GNUstep software development.

Just weeks after releasing Windows Vista Beta 1, Microsoft has shifted our paradigms again, unveiling a preview of beta 2 at the TechEd 2005 developer conference. Also, "hardware vendors are going to love the news that Windows Vista is going to need very beefy hardware to run well. At Microsoft's TechEd conference, Dan Warne finally managed to squeeze blood from a stone - or rather, answers about Longhorn's hardware requirements from Microsoft."

"RuDI is an architectural approach whose goal is to achieve loose coupling among interacting software components instead of linking to libraries. A service is a unit of work of the desktop done by a service provider to achieve desired end results for a 3rd party service consumer. How does RuDI achieve loose coupling among interacting software agents? It does so by employing two architectural constraints: An extensible XML schema allows new versions of services to be introduced without breaking existing services. Second we send messages over a protocol instead of calling explicit individual member functions."

In this video (.torrent, Quicktime) "you will see great attempts at crashing the Haiku app_server, some commentary on the robustness of the code, and a staggering amount of threads for Java running on BeOS R5." Here is more about the video.

"Localhost is a program that lets you access a shared, world-wide file system through your web browser. This file system is maintained in a fully decentralized way by all of the computers running Localhost. The program uses BitTorrent technology, and new distributed hashtable technology called Kademlia. Every user accesses the system from the same root folder. You can change any folder (including the root folder) by adding files and/or folders to it."

The featured content section on Apple's Developer Connection has some interesting articles. First, "Learn about universal binaries, and how to get your applications ready for Intel-based Macintoshes." Secondly, "You need Xcode to build universal binaries. Read the latest on Apple's IDE." There are more articles, so feel free to look around.

This may not be news for the experienced Linux users here, but for those who are new to Linux, someone sent me a link to this new online Linux magazine geared towards new Linux users. The magazine is published by the same company as publishes the Linux Journal, it is well laid out and is free to subscribe to.

The Qt 4 Resource Center has added a new article to the collection. This time, it shows how to intercept signals and slots using a spying class. The article also shows how to implement a custom color-picker widget with support for both RGB and HSV.

Simon Wilson has released the first public version of his 3D graphics driver for Iyonix users. The software library, ported from BeOS and compatible with the popular OpenGL interface, employs the Nvidia PCI graphics card used in the XScale powered Iyonix. OpenGL based applications built with Simon's port should enjoy hardware accelerated graphics, thanks to the modest GeForece 2 MX card which, until now, has been left unutilised under RISC OS.