Have you considered setting up a PHP 5 on your Linux server, but not had the time to learn how? This article will help guide you through the installation of a PHP 5 environment using the industry's first integrated PHP environment that includes the IBMCloudscape database server. Installation and configuration is greatly simplified using Zend Core for IBM compared to setting up a complete development and deployment environment from scratch.

Yesterday, the Open Sword Group released a beta of Pixen v3. "Pixen is the best program for the pixel artist using Mac OS X. Pixen is specifically for small-scale or pixel art; it shines better there than any other application. Not only that, but Pixen carries no price tag: it's open source under the MIT license and absolutely free." As far as I know, this is the only application of it's kind, with no equivelant on either Mac, Windows or Linux.

Microsoft's decision to call the next version of its OS Vista might have a raised a few smiles last week but one Redmond resident is less than impressed. The boss of Vista, a software and services company for small businesses is considering taking legal action against the software giant.

Distrowatch reports that a new beta version of Mandriva Linux 2006 appeared on the mirrors over the weekend. Like the first one a week ago, the new beta release, labelled as 2006 0.1.1, has not yet been officially announced, but the good news is that the mirroring problems we mentioned in last week's DistroWatch Weekly have been solved and the new release is now available from the usual Mandriva mirror sites. OSDir has a handful of screenshots.

"Everyone of us always wanted to have the ability to compile for Windows and Unix in one makefile, right? Unfortunately, there is very few documentation on this topic and I had quite a hard time to get things working the way I wanted to. I wrote this small how-to to share the way I managed to build my toolchain with other people."

Do you want to make the most of your Mac applications? Like all operating systems, the Mac has many different levels of programming, and more than 80 percent of all applications built for OS X leverage AppleScript as an automation tool. In this introductory article, Matthew David tells you how you can best leverage AppleScript for your Mac applications.