Visopsys is an alternative operating system for PC compatible computers. Version 0.55 was released today. It is a maintenance and bugfix release that makes things a bit 'snappier' and more reliable, with some additional capabilities including installation support for all FAT filesystems, baseline PCI driver support, and a better organised device infrastructure. In addition, GUI window layout and resizing has been reimplemented and generally fixed. You can get it here.

Microsoft's next game console - the Xbox 360 - will integrate with the companies Windows XP Media Center 2005 operating system. This feature will allow consumers to view HD video and utilize the new Xbox's power for local processing. Microsoft has stated that this integration will have much higher performance than the original Media Center Extender that was offered last year for the first-gen Xbox. You can read the story here.

Long after no NeXT hardware will function anymore, future generations will be able to have a 'live' peek at the NeXTSTEP OS (as opposed to still screenshots) via Madonna's Rain video clip from 1993. I noticed it by watching the video on my Pocket PC and had to share it with you. Check in for screengrabs.

In an effort to stem the tide of misinformation that has swirled around this topic since the initial blog post was picked up several weeks ago, Kurt Pfeifle has authored an 18 point article , which clarifies the KHTML/Webcore relationship in hopes that the confusion will stop. Comments on this story on dot.kde.org indicate that a lot of work is going on behind the scenes; it is not being mentioned in public (such as through blogs) due to the amount of flaming the topic has caused thus far.

Nintendo, once the unrivaled king of the home video game business, released details of its planned new game console and unveiled a new mini-portable device called the Game Boy Micro. The new console is said to be "only" 3-5 times faster than the GameCube.

Lluis, explains how Mono is not mono-language with two excellent screencasts that demo debugging across Java, Boo, and C# and the more practical application of interop between the Boo and Java languages all running under one runtime, Mono.

The PlayStation 3 will feature the much-vaunted Cell processor, which will run at 3.2GHz, giving the whole system 2.18 teraflops of overall performance. It will sport 256MB XDR main RAM at 3.2GHz, and it will have 256MB of GDDR VRAM at 700MHz. It has 6 USB ports, 3 ethernet ports and Bluetooth (no WiFi support for gaming it seems and Bluetooth was chosen for controllers only as it has better latency over WiFi). There are also CF/SD and MemoryStick readers integrated.

The 10.4.1 Update delivers overall improved reliability for Mac OS X v10.4 and is highly recommended.

You know what's really laughable? When you visit launch.yahoo.com with Firefox and tells you that you need Netscape 4.7 to view its music videos, even if Firefox is perfectly capable of doing so! And when you open a bug report ticket with them, you get canned messages how to make your IE work with their service! It stinks! Therefore, here is a quick how-to on how to rip down their music wmv/asf videos and save them on your hard disk to view with the player of your choice. In fact, their videos are streamed in QVGA, making them an excellent choice for Pocket PCs that are used as multimedia devices too.

Novell's latest release of SUSE Linux, SUSE 9.3, demonstrates Novell's continuing commitment to delivering polished, off-the-shelf Linux distributions for the desktop and professional markets. October 2004, which is when the previous version of SUSE Linux was released, seems like only yesterday. So what's new--and, perhaps, why should people care?

Learn more about the inner workings of the Mach Kernel in this PDF article.

The last time Microsoft made a major change to its operating systems architecture with the 32-bit release of Windows 95, it staged massive launches around the globe. For its most recent evolution, to 64-bit computing, the software giant adopted a more restrained approach.

After it ships the "Whidbey" and "Orcas" versions of its popular Visual Studio tool set, Microsoft Corp.'s Visual Studio development team is headed for "Hawaii." Hawaii is the code name for a version of Microsoft's Visual Studio tool set two versions beyond Whidbey, also known as Visual Studio 2005, according to sources familiar with Microsoft's plans.

Have a look here for an appliance-like desktop environment.