This article looks at the impressive new features in Solaris 10 and also some flaws that prevent it from being perfect. Elsewhere, you can find 113 screenshots of the upcoming Solaris 10, Java Desktop 3 and CDE environments. (Caution: 130+ screenshots on page)

XLiveCD is an X Server that runs off of a Live CD for Windows. Put the CD in the drive and the X server and an Xterm both autostart, allowing you to ssh into a machine and run X-forwarded applications. This is great for use in public labs where you may want to run those remote Linux apps and don't have an X server installed. Built with Cygwin and a few other packages. See the home page for downloads, or just grab the torrent here.

Over on drobe.co.uk, issues involved in migrating to ELF from the native RISC OS object format, AOF are being examined. This includes the problems in moving to binutils and adding AOF to the bfd library.

Federal and state police now have the power to use computer spyware to gather evidence in a broad range of investigations after legal changes last week. The Surveillance Devices Act allows police to obtain a warrant to use software surveillance technologies, including systems that track and log keystrokes on a computer keyboard. The law applies to the Australian Federal Police and to state police investigating Commonwealth offences. Read More ("smhguy/pass" to access)

Following the Mozilla Firefox 1.0 stable release, the popularity of this open source web browser has increased in a major way.

This tutorial outlines how to speed up Debian by using hdparm, getting sound and video to work, and finally wrapping it up with printing. Read more at Linuxtimes.net

GnomeMeeting, the VoIP and IP telephony application for Linux systems, just released version 1.2. It will be the last release to support only H.323, as next release will also support SIP. The new version sports integration with Novell Evolution 2.00, PC-To-Phone calls with no additional hardware and free codecs, and Rendez-Vous support. See http://www.gnomemeeting.org for more info.

The Xfce project finally finished the second release candidate for the upcoming Xfce Desktop Environment 4.2. This second release candidate is expected to be the last release candidate before the final release, which is planned to happen in about 2 or 3 weeks. This RC2 includes several bugfixes, esp. the window manager has seen quite a few important fixes, and it is the first release in the 4.2 branch that builds and runs on Solaris out of the box. As usual, prebuilt packages for several plattforms are already available (as a highlight: Debian/amd64 packages) and the graphical installers have been update to 4.2RC2. Please check the Xfce website for further details.

The year is almost over, now it's time to tally up the best and most ground-breaking software innovations of 2004. Here is a Top 10 list to that effect.

There's always a lot of excitement when a major Linux distribution has a new release - there's the clamour for the release notes and changelog, as well as the insatiable urge for screenshots and the search for the torrent for the ISOs. The release of Xandros Desktop 3.0 last week was no exception, with OS fanatics everywhere curious just what was in store. Read on for details.

From Microsoft Watch: Microsoft quietly delivered a first private beta release of Windows Server "R2" to the first of about 1,000 testers on Wednesday, company officials confirmed Friday. Meanwhile, Microsoft is soliciting a wider pool of beta testers for a second R2 beta, which it is planning to deliver in the second quarter of 2005...

A "Tiger Technology Overview" has been made publicly available on the Chinese ADC (PDF link): it presents some new features which have not yet been published on the public area of the main Apple Developer Connection site.

Syllable 0.5.5 is now available. This release includes new and updated drivers and a large number of long overdue kernel enhancements. The full changelog is here, and it can be downloaded from Sourceforge.

Patrick Weber writes "The tutorials on the KDE-Cygwin site are very vague and they dont even have one for beginners. So I went out on my own and wrote my own tutorial. This is for anyone (even the people that have no idea what they are doing). I hope that this article is a help to everyone."