After a decade of admiring Linux from afar, Claus Futtrup finally takes the plunge, choosing to dual-boot his Windows 98 system with Minislack. In this interesting guest column at DesktopLinux.com, Futtrup explains why he selected Minislack, and relates his experiences with installing, configuring, and using it as a newcomer to Linux.

De Raadt's team makes OpenBSD, an operating system, and OpenSSH, for secure communications. Here, he talks about why he does it, about industry use of open-source software, and about dedication to quality paying off.

Embedded Linux tools vendor Trolltech has announced a strategic partnership with web browser software vendor Opera through which the two companies will develop Linux products for the mobile communications and home entertainment markets. Elsewhere, Opera gets BitTorrent support.

Microsoft is planning to make RFID applications and tag-readers compatible with Windows. According to Scott Woodgate, group product manager of business processes for Microsoft, the company is trying to integrate RFID programs with the operating system and make the majority of devices work with plug-and-play functionality.

A Sun Microsystems desktop engineer has outlined plans to release the code for the company's Java Desktop System (JDS) environment and integrate it better with OpenSolaris.

Rapido is a visual profiler for Linux-x86. The program helps in visualizing and describing what's going on in the heart of the program. It helps developers in finding and analyzing bottlenecks in their applications.

Every Fedora Core release outshines the previous one, Fedora Core 4 maintains this pattern with an excellent collection of the latest open source packages and improved performance. Two areas that still need some work are out-of-the-box sound mixing and package management

Today, after several weeks of testing, we are pleased to present OSNews version 3.0. This document will serve as the definitive guide to using the new site, detailing the new features and perks.

When BeOS was still under active development at Be Inc, the project captured the hearts and minds of many who wanted to use a more advanced operating system. Though Be has since gone out of business, it hasn't stopped many of those same individuals from wanting to continue using the operating system. The fact that BeOS is no longer under active development has caused a handful of developers to take on the task of picking up where Be left off. Alan Wilder submitted the following editorial which analyzes the current status of three BeOS projects that are currently under development.

Novell Inc.'s SuSE Linux Professional 9.3 desktop gives not only other leading Linux desktop distributions a run for their money, but also enterprise desktops. Review is at eWEEK.

Matthew Dillon has made significant progress on DragonFly's journaling code, which can now mirror partitions. Essentially all that remains now is for the "reverse journaling" work to be completed (allowing for filesystem rollback), and for stability to be increased. More information here and here

Although Apple hasn’t announced which Intel chips will power the upcoming Mactel systems, the most likely suspects are microprocessors that have been dubbed Yonha, Celeron D 3515, Conroe, Woodcrest, Smithfield and Merom. For the rest of the week, we’ll offer a look at the chips and what they might mean to Mac users.

Microsoft released details on a number of projects today. One of those is Microsoft Student 2006, a suite that helps parents and students with their homework and assignments. Secondly, MS released Microsft Money 2006. In addition, MS unveiled more details on the November launch of Visual Studio, SQL Server and BizTalk Server, while also previewing the long awaited CRM update.

WindowMaker 0.92 has been released. Many bugs have been fixed, among other things. You can download it here.