Microsoft wants to deliver its Windows Server 2003 update, known as "R2," in 2005. To make sure it will be able do so, the company is prioritizing its feature list and moving some R2 features into later releases. Elsewhere, Windows Server 2003 SP1 Build 1247 is now available for testers.

Microsoft released Service Pack 2 and millions installed it. Did boat anchors come with the enhancements? Short-Media threw 108 benchmarks at Service Pack 1 and Service Pack 2 in an attempt to declare a winner.

Novell Inc is lining up updates to its GroupWise and SuSE Linux Openexchange server collaboration software for the new year, including incorporating its iFolder technology with GroupWise and separating SLOX from the Linux operating system.

For those detractors who've been complaining that new RISC OS kit is too expensive, Castle are now offering a DIY option which could save you several hundred pounds.You purchase the motherboard, and a minimum of other parts from Castle and supply the rest yourself.More details on Drobe.

Zebra is open source TCP/IP routing software that is similar to Cisco's Internetworking Operating System (IOS). Flexible and powerful, it can handle routing protocols such as Routing Information Protocol (RIP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), and all of their various flavors. This article shows how to set up Zebra and use it to manage routes dynamically in conjunction with real Cisco hardware.

DotGNU is proud to announce support for XML Path Language, and IO communication ports, as mentioned on GetDotGNU homepage. Also on GetDotGNU there are new introductory articles to KDE DCOP and .NET integration, writing .NET applications using C language, and an overview of securing the XSP ASP.NET server.

MirOS BSD originated as a patch set against OpenBSD-current, a 4.4BSD-derived ultra secure operating system. This release includes bugfixes and enhancements for many system components, including libc, ld.so, ntpd, make, and others. There is support for PowerNow on AMD Athlon / Athlon XP systems. libexpat is in the base system now. gcc support for C++ and other languages is still missing.

A KDE dev has attempted to put ext3 and reiserfs to a real world test. The results are interesting, and confirms what many of us already knew. Check out the experiment for details.

Gavan Fantom of NetBSD, has imported a new port into the NetBSD source tree, the new NetBSD/iyonix port. The IYONIX pc is an ARM-based desktop machine. It offers virtually silent operation, low heat, and all the other odds and ends offered by a modern PC. NetBSD is one port closer to a NetBSD/toaster port.

There's a benchmark comparing Solaris to Red Hat at Sun's web site. Solaris 10 features a new TCP/IP stack architecture, project FireEngine. Sunay Tripathi posted some performance data on his blog as well that people might be interested in. He will also be posting details about the new architecture and how it allows Solaris 10 to perform exceptionally well on 1-2 CPU and also scale linearly across large number of CPUs. With the low end x86 platform moving soon to 8 CPU (and AMD's dual core, 8 CPU), scaling is something that can't be ignored anymore.

The purpose of this essay is to explain why I believe Perl 6, the way it currently seems to progress, is the wrong thing at the wrong time, and why I predict (with all the expected caveats of predicting something) that it won't be successful. I will also suggest a better alternative for the future of Perl which makes more sense at this point.

Microsoft is going to add "edit and continue" for C# on the next Visual Studio.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols says GNOME is nice, KDE is fine and the forthcoming Looking Glass may be wonderful, but the best Unix desktop is the one in the Macintosh. Elsewhere Apple seeds Mac OS X Server 10.3.6 build 7R20 while Amazon leaks Mac OS X Tiger release date?

Here's Update 1 for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 and the Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 Recognizer Pack.