Microsoft's Jim Allchin says that the number one design goal for Longhorn has been: "it just works." In other words, a lot of the fiddly, annoying tasks that computer users have become accustomed to (or never quite got the hang of) such as searching for files, defragmenting, changing network configurations, and tweaking security settings, will happen automatically.

A CIO Today editorial notes that security concerns are most often cited when IT managers consider a switch to Linux over Windows, but difficulty in replicating Microsoft Office functionality is a barrier. Why not use Macs? In addition to software-side security advantages, there are distinct security advantages to using a non-x86 platform as well. And you can still run Office.

This is a response to the previous article on global menubars and why they are the preferred way to present menus as opposed to attaching them to floating windows.

GCC 4.0 was released yesterday. Read all about it.

According to Tim Deal, a senior analyst with Technology Business Research in Hampton, N.H., Apple makes efforts to minimize compatibility problems between operating system upgrades. "It provides developers with a comprehensive set of tools that enables them to better create applications for each specific release of its operating system," he said. Also, Apple goes 64-bit with Tiger release of OS X.

"So the forces of existing userbase, the easiest-to-reach future userbase, cross-platform applications, and funded development efforts are strongly pulling GNOME 2 toward conservatism. I think GNOME 3 should be a fork for that reason". Read Havoc Pennington's blog entry regarding Gnome 3.

Review is here and the interview with its developers is here.

The wave of migration to open source in business has the potential to cause a tremendous porting traffic jam as developers move the ever-pervasive Windows application to the Linux platform. In this three-part series, get a mapping guide, complete with examples, to ease your transition from Windows to Linux. Part 1 introduces processes and threads.

What's the best way to: a. Improve usability in software applications? b. Review usability of existing software? c. Generate, encourage and review new ideas on software UI design? d. Make all this research work freely available to everyone (open source, proprietary, etc.)? e. Connect with all developer groups and individuals out there to share this work with them? Read more to find out.

This article provides on overview of the new features in Visual Basic 2005 including, My Visual Basic, IntelliSense, Edit and Continue, AutoCorrect, Just My Code, Windows Forms enhancements, and more.

Another Linspire review, this time at ExtremeTech along with screenshots.

Xen is a relatively new technology to enable several virtual machines (domU) to run on one computer. The purpose of this article is to determine what operating system (NetBSD or Linux) should be selected as domain 0 (dom0) operating system to get the best performance when running several CPU and disk intensive virtual machines at the same time.

Linux provides Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) semaphores, as well as pthread conditional variables to map the Win32 semaphore APIs. Both have their share of pros and cons. Get detailed code examples illustrating how to map Win32 to Linux with respect to semaphore application program interfaces (APIs).

I have written (and continue to write) an application called Desktop Manager for OS X. It provides virtual desktops to those refugees from Unix like myself :). Recently it became apparent that it would no longer work under Apple's forthcoming Tiger release of OS X. This proved a little bit of a problem for me since I have no copy of Tiger to test with and don't wish to risk Apple's wrath by obtaining a less-than-legitimate copy. Instead I have relied on a network of people I correspond with via my blog to tell me when things break. It also means I have to attempt to reverse engineer something I don't have in front of me. I am indebted to these people and would like to thank them for their hard work.