A new scripting tool targeted by a virus writer will not be part of Windows Vista, the next Windows client release, Microsoft announced Friday. Instead, the software maker is looking at delivering the command-line shell tool, code-named Monad, as part of its next major server operating system release, a Microsoft representative said. That release, code-named Longhorn Server, is due in 2007.

Bart Smaalders of Sun Microsystems has open sourced libmicro, a portable set of microbenchmarks designed to measure performance of basic system calls and library functions. This framework proved invaluable during Solaris 10 development as a way of identifying areas where performance was lagging behind other Operating Systems, as well regressions between Solaris builds. You can join the libmicro discussion at the OpenSolaris forums.

The big themes seem to be networking and minor annoyances, with a secondary focus on iChat and Mail, which always seem to have problems in the first release of a major Mac OS X version. It’s those changes—along with improvements to Tiger’s disk repair tools—that we’ll focus on during this inside look at Mac OS X 10.4.2.

There may not be fireworks. CIOs and IT directors may not be heaping their proprietary software on bonfires and dancing. Even so, the open source revolution is happening right now and will carry the day, said Bill Weinberg, open source architecture specialist and Linux evangelist for OSDL.

Read a long review titled "Mandrake Revisited: A Lycoris user revisits the OS he left years earlier". On a separate note, Linux Format issue 70 presents a Gaël Duval interview.

Bill Weinberg, OSDL Linux evangelist and speaker at next week's LinuxWorld conference, discusses the state of Linux adoption and its ongoing rivalry with Windows.

For those of you who just can't get enough Mighty Mouse news, here are a couple of tidbits: An intrepid tinkerer bought a MM, only to take it apart for all the internet to see. Also, WSJ tech oracle Walt Mossberg takes a look at the MM and compares it to Microsoft's latest Mouse offering. His verdict? "Stop the presses: Microsoft has beaten Apple on hardware design, at least in this one case."

This could be completely faked, but engadget has a screenshot of OSX x68 running on the x86 virtual machine VMWare. It's an interesting feat if its true, but it also has other implications. Since VMWare obviously does not implement any of the various DRM schemes, this would poke holes in the assertion that Apple is using Trusted Computing in its developer boxes.

Geronimo provides integration with third-party components through its unique GBeans feature. Apache Geronimo team member and committer, Jeff Genender, demonstrates this feature by showing you how to build and configure a third-party open source project with a GBean that integrates the OpenSymphony Quartz scheduler into Geronimo.

Over at IsComputerOn, an article discusses with Axel Dörfler, the Haiku move for the FreeBSD network stack. Also talked about is the thought of using ReiserFS instead of BFS.

AppleInsider is reporting that Sony's PlayStation 3 gaming console will support Apple's Mac OS X Tiger operating system. "Sony is expected to offer optional hard drives for the PlayStation 3 with potential memory capacity of 80 or 120 GB. It remains to be decided whether the standard version of the PS3 will come complete with a hard drive. The operating system has also yet to be clarified. The integrated Cell processor will be able to support a variety of operating systems (such as Linux or Apple's Tiger)."

There have been many rumors lately about a potential video iPod that's around the corner... However, what about the existing mobile A/V solutions? We took the RCA Lyra RD2780 for a spin, the audio/video recorder/playback jukebox that's currently selling for only $219 at Geeks.com.

MontaVista Linux claims that is has narrowed the real-time gap for Linux. The embedded Linux maker announced that is has successfully developed native, hard, real-time developments for the Linux kernel.

"RealSoftware's REALBasic 2005 - the popular cross-platform interactive development environment for Mac OS X and Windows - is scheduled to debut for the Linux platform later this month, perhaps as early as the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco. For the past couple of weeks, I've been falling asleep each night to the glow of beta versions of REALBasic 2005 running happily on SUSE Pro 9.3 on my monitor."