A senior Palm executive says his company could benefit from building a mobile computing device that runs on the Windows operating system made by once-bitter rival Microsoft but he is stopping short of confirming the maker will do so.

Find answers to some of the most frequently asked questions concerning Windows Vista and WinFX Basics. The Windows Vista Developer FAQ is designed to put a wealth of answers at your fingertips. From setup and hardware issues to questions about future plans and about what it all means, this FAQ is an excellent companion to the WinFX newsgroups.

The second beta of Mandriva Linux 2006 has been released. Read the release notes, and download it from one of the mirros listed on that same page. Update: screenshot gallery.

Microsoft recently posted to its Web site for download a user's guide for WAIK. Microsoft describes WAIK as "a new set of tools designed to help Original Equipment Manufacturers, system builders, and corporate IT professionals deploy Windows Vista onto new hardware." Read more.

As part of our OSNews v3 project, we have a framework in place that would allow registered users to not only comment on existing stories and suggest stories for OSNews editors, but also post their own thoughts on their own personal pages and allow others to comment on them. Read more to learn about some ideas we've had, and to give your feedback and suggestions. Most of all, we'd like to know whether this is functionality you'd be interested in using.

"It's unusual for a Beta 1 version of Windows to have both the final shipping name of the product and as many new features as this build shows. And that's a strong sign of two things. Firstly: Windows Vista remains an ambitious release of Windows, despite some of the features that Microsoft has pushed off the side of the boat. Secondly: Microsoft is trying to get serious, both internally and externally, about this development program. Windows Vista is now the company's top priority." Read on, ten pages, here.

One of the worst kept secrets in the Linux industry was revealed at LinuxWorld this week with the announcement that a group of Debian-based Linux vendors have formed an alliance to promote the enterprise use of the Debian GNU/Linux package.

One of the big unknowns of the Apple Switch that not many people are talking about right now is Rosetta, the translation software that Intel-based Macs will use to run legacy PPC binaries. Prior to the release of the first Intel-based Mac it's difficult to assess just what kind of performance Rosetta will yield on the majority of legacy OS X software. Will most legacy PPC apps be usable? Mostly usable? Barely usable?

The LinuxWorld Conference & Expo here this week has drawn fewer people who came to learn what Linux is all about and more who are ready to buy Linux products that can deliver cost saving, performance and reliability. That was the view expressed by several LinuxWorld attendees who took time out to talk about what they saw and liked at the show.

Sun Microsystems this week matured a bit as an x86 server vendor by kicking off a broad partnership with VMware that will see the companies team on engineering and sales efforts. Of most immediate help to customers is the support of VMware's highest-end partitioning product - ESX Server - with Sun's line of Opteron-based hardware.

Xandros Business Edition provides a desktop environment, Xandros is easy to install and maintain. As an added bonus, Xandros Business Edition includes the full edition of CrossOver Office 4.2. That means that if there is a major Windows software package that you can't live without, chances are you will be able to install and run it on Xandros through CrossOver. Read the full review at NewsForge.

One of the advantages of OS X's BSD heritage (via Darwin) is that it has access to all the scripting languages found in UNIX(-like) OSes. Here's an introduction to open source scripting.

Singularity is a research project at Microsoft to write an OS using managed code. Although it will probably never be seen out in the wild, it incorporates some interesting ideas nonetheless. Read about it here and here (ppt).

"Fans of BeOS still mourn its untimely demise all these years after the release of R5 and subsequent sale of its assets to Palm. Now ZETA, a successor to BeOS, has been released. Naturally, we had to review it."