A new revision of Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 "Woody" is now available: "This is the sixth and final update of Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 (codename 'woody') which mainly adds security updates to the stable release, along with a few corrections to serious problems.

Microsoft said Thursday that it will introduce new XML-based file formats for its Excel, PowerPoint and Word applications when the company launches its Office 12 software package next year.

Microsoft has agreed to make modest changes to Windows XP in response to criticism from an antitrust compliance committee.

Following on from my previous article, the Java platform has an even greater image problem that is more than skin deep. Coming under yet another two-pronged attack, you'll typically hear complaints falling into the two camps:

The second update to Apple's Tiger operating system will continue to focus on stability and reliability, delivering dozens of bug fixes to the month-old operating system.

Microsoft's Dr. Watson error-reporting tool will undergo a significant makeover in Longhorn, but changes in the way program crash data is collected and transmitted have raised eyebrows among privacy rights advocates. Also, the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, will feature support for RAW uncompressed digital camera images--which could change the way people view and edit photos.

Novell today introduced the Mono Kickstart program to provide for the first time developer support to organizations using Mono for new application development or migrations. Mono Kickstart includes 25 developer support incidents along with one server or 50 desktop licenses for $12,995. Additional developer support incidents, server licenses and desktop licenses can be purchased separately.

XFCE project released a new development version of its Xfce Foundation Classes, which is a "set of integrated C++ classes for developing Xfce applications on UNIX-like operating systems such as Linux". Here you gain access to the full annoucement (description, minimum dependencies, enhancements from 4.3.0, fixes and, of course, packages downloads).

The requirement for a fast CPU to decode H.264 HD video content will soon be a thing of the past. ATI (slides on Xbit Labs' site) is preparing a hardware-based decoder enhancement for future boards. With Texas Instruments, Analog Devices and other manufacturers releasing H.264 hardware decoders, it won't be long before NVidia and other manufacturers catch up, however ATi is not the first manufacturer to offer this specific feature.

Separation of concerns is increasingly on the programmer's radar. Given the growing range of data access products and platforms, it is now essential to separate data producers from data consumers. The observer pattern provides a simple but powerful model for achieving this crucial design goal.

NewsForge has a review of FreeBSD 5.4 up today. While it's better than the previous three releases, it still doesn't work as well as it should. Many bugs have been fixed, but some big ones still remain, especially on multi-processor and AMD64 machines.

Expert Zone reports: "A lot of reviews of the Pegasos have been published since its release, more than two years ago. Unfortunately, most were written from a fan point of view and were not really objective so I decided to write my own review. The goal of this article is to present the Pegasos/MorphOS couple so I won't mention anything about other OSs running on the machine, such as Linux, or even MacOSX." This review, translated from French to English at Expert Zone's request, covers the hardware and software of the Pegasos I machine. Photos and screenshots included.

Are sub $300 PCs the wave of the future or is this just another fad? Flexbeta examines the effects cheap PCs may have on Microsoft, hardware vendors and the rest of the computing industry.

Today Miguel de Icaza announced that Wikipedia is using Mono and dotLucene (the same search backend used by Beagle) to enable indexing and search for their large content base. As well, his blog announced that Mono 1.1.x has been integrated into Ubuntu and Debian.