Sun Microsystems has delayed the release of two major features the company has trumpeted as reasons to try its latest version of the Solaris operating system. Eric Schrock, a Solaris kernel programmer, said on his blog in April that he's "completely redesigning the ZFS commands from the ground up" after finding some deficiencies.

An engineer at Mandriva is writing a series of technical articles pinpointing some problems in the current development distribution and proposing solutions. An interesting reading for people interested in Linux distribution development. Includes research on package management and compares buildsystems.

Microsoft just released the official specs of the next XBox with more info.

As reported by C|Net Windows XP Starter Edition will only work on "Intel's Celeron chips, AMD's Duron or Geode chips, or processors from Via Technologies." If one tries to run it on a processor such as the Intel Pentium 4, the operating system will read the processor ID and stop functioning. This was done to prevent "Starter Edition from supplanting standard versions of Windows XP."

Microsoft is under attack by a bevy of competitors. But is the software giant really at its "most vulnerable moment in history"? In the second part of this BBC report they examine how Microsoft hopes to beat its rivals.

Usability has always been a controversial aspect of free software development, but one that is becoming increasingly important along with the uptake of GNU/Linux distributions in businesses and homes. Developers' discussions about usability are often marked by shrill accusations and defensive responses. Implementing usability suggestions can mean giving up months of feature-building. But according to a few developers and usability experts working on KDE, bringing usability experts into the hackers' work processes can be a big help.

An Apple Developer reportedly recommended that KHTML developers use Apple's WebCore engine (that's based on KHTML). This follows some controversy over Apple's habit of "giving back" updates to KHTML in unmanageable chunks, and many open source advocates crying foul. Update: This description was changed from an earlier version which implied that Apple would drop KHTML in favor of WebCore, which is not an accurate statement.

Shipments of handheld computers declined for the fifth straight quarter amid growth of so-called smart phones and other devices combining organizer functions with cell phone capabilities, the research firm IDC said. Worldwide shipments of PDAs — which lack telephone capabilities — decreased to 1.9 million units in the January-March period. That's a 12.1 percent decline compared with last year's first quarter, and a 30.6 percent drop from last year's fourth quarter. In contrast, shipments of so-called converged mobile devices combining cell phone, organizer and other functions more than doubled year-over-year for the third straight quarter.

Mozilla released a security fixed version of Firefox, 1.0.4.

With the release of Solaris 10, Sun Microsystems is attempting to revive some of the strength that the Solaris name once carried in the world of unix workstations and servers. At one point, Sun was the dominant name in commercial unix hardware and software. Then came the crash of the dot-com marketplace, so many of whom had heavy investment into Sun in both the hardware & software market.

The Web's leading standards body has launched a ground campaign to promote its mobile Web protocols in the real world. OSNews is already there via the Mobits mobile engine.

Recent PC sales numbers indicate a sluggish marketplace, though laptops are doing slightly better than desktops, and upgrades to flat panel monitors continue unhindered. Of the major computer manufacturers, though, Apple's sales have been extermely high, accorsing the Merrill Lynch analysts.

Through his private investment firm, PC Tycoon Michael Dell has invested $99 Million in Red Hat recently, according to an SEC filing.

To hopefully close the book on this sad saga, it appears that the controversial Mac emulator CherryOS has been removed from the market