AnandTech describes their experience with Mac OS X and the Mac platform, Part II.

Arch Linux 0.7 was finally released today after delays waiting for kernel 2.6.10 (waiting for Reiser4 support that didn't happen). There are mirrors, torrents, and also docs. For those who don't know, Arch is an advanced Linux distribution blending the simplicity of Slackware and package management of Debian in it's lean framework. This release uses the 2.6.10 kernel with the -as patchset and the new 4.2 release of the XFCE desktop environment among other current versions of well known apps. New Arch users can then edit /etc/pacman.conf to enable the -Current and -Extra trees and download them. Editor's Take: A fantastic distribution, but it requires a substantial initial involvement by semi-advanced users to bring the distro to the wished configuration. After this point is passed, Arch will not dissapoint.

After a long time in development, version 0.9 of the Gecko-based K-Meleon web browser for Windows has been released.

Sun Microsystems is about to take the next step in its plan to refurbish the reputation of its Solaris operating system in the eyes of a small but crucial group: programmers.

When you have 20 or more windows open across nine virtual desktops, the complexity of window management can become overwhelming. A number of new tools are now available to facilitate effective window management. Elsewhere, you can tile your desktop windows in full screen no-gap layouts to simplify copy and paste, drag and drop, and visual comparisons. WindowSizer's window management engine will automatically resize neighboring windows to maintain a tiled layout.

Lismore Software Systems announces Guest PC a new x86 software emulator for Mac OS X. With Guest PC you can easily create and manage virtual x86 computer on your Mac. You can install Windows operating system and access the application created for Windows compatible computers. Guest PC 1.0 will be available in the beginning of February 2005.

The Mac Mini is the perfect candidate for a new geek-war for year 2005. Some love it, some say it is just overpriced old hardware. One thing is for sure: there are guys already experimenting a Linux and Mac Mini setup. All of the hardware, as you can read, is already supported.

The Independent Qt Tutorial has been updated and now has an Italian translation. Also, a new chapter about OpenGL and Qt has been added. The OpenGL chapter is based on NeHe's great tutorial.

Most people do not use OpenBSD as a desktop OS, though there are some people who swear by it. This chapter provides an overview of OpenBSD, including its development, features, and the tools available in this operating system for your business.

Colors are another form of data, and in light of the fact that the human eye can perceive more than ten million different colors, that's a potentially huge amount of data. Color theory helps you organize this data into manageable chunks. This chapter outlines color theory, both pigment-based theory and light-based theory.

Just knowing an object-oriented language isn't enough to create object systems. You also have to learn to "think in objects." This chapter explains why it's important to understand what it means to truly be "object-oriented" and how you can build your business by using object-orientation from top to bottom.

So you want to start programming UNIX shells. You could sit down with a dense volume of coding advice, but you're a techie. You want to jump right in and start coding. This chapter will help you get started right away with shell programming in UNIX.

Novell's Nat Friedman put up a bunch of demos demonstrating Beagle on Linux. Beagle is an indexing & search utility similar to Apple's upcoming Spotlight (both similar to Be's BeFS regarding "live queries" and metadata, but Be's solution could not search inside documents as both Beagle and Spotlight can).

Pieter Van den Abeele of Gentoo writes in his blog: "The Gentoo team has done an amazing job creating the most customizable meta-distribution on todays market. One of our projects codenamed Portaris, has been maintaining Gentoo Portage on top of Solaris9 and Solaris10 builds. I am pleased to announce that Gentoo is considering integrating OpenSolaris support into the machine readable knowledge base we call Portage."