HaikuNews has a screenshot of a test app running on the Haiku app_server (under R5, but does run under Haiku itself the same) using alpha blending and a number of interface kit widgets - buttons, radio buttons, text boxes, and textfields.

A new Sun BluePrints article discusses the differences between Containers and Zones, and how to get the most out of them. The pdf file is located here.

"What BitMover Got Wrong" over at The Better-SCM site analyzes the wrong state of mind that guided BitMover, BitKeeper's parent company in the long, eventful and sad history of its gratis product.

TrustedReviews published a review of OSX 10.4 Tiger, with screenshots.

Microsoft is getting ready to provide an early peek at new Windows software that aims to help consumers deal with the plethora of Internet logins. Also, more on Windows XP "Eiger", the lean Windows client.

"Opera Software recently released version 8.00 of its eponymous Web browser. I decided to see how the new version of the popular commercial browser compares to the open source Mozilla Firefox 1.0. I found both Firefox and Opera are capable browsers, and though they are very different, they each has much to offer any user." Read more at NewsForge.

The first development release of Ubuntu Linux 5.10, code name "Breezy Badger", is now available for testing. Colony CD 1 is the first in a series of milestone CD images that will be released throughout the Breezy development cycle, as images that are known to be reasonably free of showstopper CD-build or installer bugs, while representing very current snapshots of Breezy. Screenshots are available. If you're interested in following changes as we further develop Breezy, have a look at the breezy-changes list. Bug reports should go here.

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.

palmOne, Inc. today introduced the LifeDrive mobile manager. Designed for people with a significant volume of digital information, the LifeDrive mobile manager offers 4GB of hard-drive storage, a large 320x480 high-resolution color screen, and wireless access through built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless technologies. Reviews here, here, here and 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.

A group of Windows programmers is working on porting Gentoo's Portage over to Windows SFU. If you don't know already, Windows Services for UNIX is a full POSIX subsystem for Windows, enabling it to compile and run almost any software that will compile on BSD, Solaris, HP/UX, and Linux. Details to "emerge" soon.

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.

IGN has details on Nintendo's next-gen console: "Revolution will be 'two-to-three times more powerful than GameCube,' according to Nintendo, which also acknowledges that the next-generation race isn't solely about new technologies. By contrast, Microsoft's Xbox 360 console is 13-15 times more powerful than the first, according to the publisher. And Sony says it's PlayStation 3 is roughly 35 times more powerful than PlayStation 2." Pictures of the system can be found here

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.