Borrowing a line from Allstate Insurance, Microsoft says it wants customers to know they are in good hands when they choose its software. Elsewhere, since May this year we've heard dribs and drabs about Microsoft's much hyped next generation Operating System. According to the internal calendar Longhorn is due to hit Beta 1 on February 16th 2005 and hit RTM May 22nd 2006. Don't be surprised if the Beta 1 date slips let alone the RTM date.

Here's an interview with Keith Davies of Find-A-Drug, a distributed computing project to find a cure for cancer. Anyone with a Windows, Mac, or Linux pc can run the client and pitch in for the cause.

OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt announced that Intel has refused his request to permit that the firmware for their wireless chipsets be made freely distributable. He explains, "I had asked for free terms under which we (and Linux, anyone) can redistribute the firmwares for their wireless chipsets. Without these firmware files included in OpenBSD, users must go do some click-through license at some web site to get at the files. Without those files, these devices are just bits of metal, plastic, and sand."

Serenity Systems International (SSI) has announced the release of their Serenity Virtual Station, SVISTA, family of virtual machine products . This is the latest entry into the hot field of virtual machine software which allows users to run multiple operating systems on their PC. A field dominated by VMWare and Microsoft's Virtual PC.

Today, we feature an interview with Ted Haeger, director of marketing for Novell Linux Desktop.

Pierluigi Fiorini discusses the future of his BeFree project and decides to use Qt for his goals.

Here is an in-depth review of Mandrakelinux 10.1 Official Edition, with screenshots.

As Mozilla launches Firefox for the masses, the group's president, Mitchell Baker, outlines goals for gaining more Web browser converts and focusing on a development platform play.

Trolltech today announced that it has released Qtopia version 2.1, a major upgrade to its development platform and user interface for Linux-based mobile devices. New features in Qtopia 2.1 include touch-screen phone support, full-screen handwriting input and new phone themes to extend customers' flexibility and options for developing customized, full-featured Linux-based mobile devices.

White Box Enterprise Linux (WBEL) is an attempt to fill the void left by Red Hat's decision to become a purely commercial product. It's not without problems, but but it does a bridge the functionality gap between the Fedora Project and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Tony Williams shares the joys and frustrations from a recent Macintosh migration from AppleShare IP (ASIP) under OS 9 to OS X Server 10.3. Although Apple tried to make this process as painless as possible, there are still some problems.

The Evaluation Edition software enables you to build Windows XP Embedded with Service Pack 2-based operating systems for 120 days from the day of installation.

After 19 months of development, two name changes and more than 8 million downloads of its preview release, the Firefox browser is finally turning 1.0. Firefox is scheduled to be available for free download at 1 a.m. PDT Tuesday. Our Take: Sky's the limit. After Thunderbird (and third-party NVU & Mozilla-Calendar), I would love to see the Mozilla Project build a multi-IM application (ICQ, AIM/iChat, MSN, Y!, Jabber, etc) with the same design/usability goals as Firefox, coupled with good voice and video support (support which lacks on all third party multi-protocol IM solutions today). UPDATE: It's out.

The second beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, code name "Nahant" is available for download and testing. Announcement, release notes, download location or from a mirror.