Linux finally has a free mDNS/DNS-SD implementation (Apple Rendezvous/Bonjour, Zeroconf). Avahi 0.1 has been released yesterday and provides a LGPL'd embeddable mDNS core. See the homepage for more details.

ReactOS 0.2.7 has been released. The ReactOS homepage hasn't been updated yet to reflect the release, but you can download it from their SourceForge page. You can get a live-CD, install CD and a Qemu-image. Update: screenshots.

Crisot has made available a new demonstration video (xvid avi mirror1|mirror2 MPEG1 mirror1|mirror2) showing the AmigaOS4-beta implementation of the unique AmigaOS feature, screen dragging. For recent user screenshots of the AmigaOS4 pre-release look here.

"We all know that power management in Linux isn't all that it should be. All this is changing with the rise of Gnome Power Manager. This short article will show the progress we have made on the gnome-power mailing list, and the result of all the hard work from the various people contributing to the list. I'll cover what progress we have made, and detail some of the packages that exist at the moment."

Systemsim970 written in C, is a full-system simulation infrastructure and tools for the PowerPC 970 instruction set built upon the IBM Power architecture. It provides a Linux full-system simulation to develop, run, and evaluate PowerPC software stack solutions in the absence of PowerPC system hardware.

"10 days? Well that hardly sounds hard enough! Sure, it doesn’t sound so hard but take in account that over 500 million of us use a Windows OS at least once, everyday of the week and you too will see that going cold turkey from XP to KDE might be harder or more limiting than first thought."

Microsoft has once again stirred up a hornets nest in the open-source community, this time approaching the OSDL (Open Source Development Labs) to work with it on a joint, independent research project to do some facts-based analysis of Linux and Windows.

"So far, Windows Vista is an interesting OS. It does quite a lot of things much better than the previous versions but then it also requires way too many resources in order to work appropriately. There are also some slight glitches, but those are probably due to its beta status and nothing more. Besides, this is probably the most successful and productive Beta that ever came out of Microsoft."

It took 18 months for it to happen, but the hand of Bechtolsheim is about to touch Sun Microsystems. One of the more impressive features of the Becky Boxes is the way components can be replaced. Disk drives can be removed from the front of the system without pulling the box from the server rack and power supplies can be yanked from the back. Administrators can also remove fans by pulling the server only about 10 inches out of a rack. The system will ship in the same chassis as Sun's upcoming Niagara-based systems.

Sun Microsystems has set up its first department dedicated Open-Source software, in anticipation of more Sun Microsystems code being opened up to the public.

It appears that Marcus Overhagen, a well-known BeOS developer, has been recieving threats from YellowTAB. Marcus writes: "Using an alleged NDA (non disclosure agreement) breach, he promises to undertake everything that is possible to sue me. He claimes that even this mail is protected by the NDA that I signed with Yellowtab, but I'm certain that it doesn't apply here. At the end, he says that a copy of that mail was sent to their lawyer, who is now checking legal measures against me."

More than 90 Australian companies have been asked to pay a licence fee for Linux software in a move apparently backed by Linus Torvalds. Letters demanding US$5000 for use of the Linux name were originally dismissed as a hoax. But according to the Sydney Morning Herald, Linus Torvalds is dead serious.

Windows Vista beta testers have stumbled upon a networking feature in the operating system that could pose a security risk to them - but they say they're not worried.

You can turn your blue Linksys router into a Linux box with OpenWrt, an embedded Linux distribution for Linksys WRT54G and WRT54GS routers. This tiny distribution exceeds the default firmware functionality in many useful ways. Instead of having only a Web-controlled wireless access point, OpenWrt provides you with a fully interactive Linux system.