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.

The 1.4.2 release of the IBM developer kit for the Java platform provides the most comprehensive security offering for the Java 2 platform to date. It differs from the Sun 1.4.2 JDK in that IBM has implemented providers for all the Java security components. It includes several IBM-specific security providers with new features and better security enhancements than the Sun 1.4.2 JDK. This articles discusses the new IBM JDK release and a solid foundation for developing and deploying security-sensitive, end-to-end enterprise applications. The new 1.4.2 JDK can downloaded from here.

While development towards Zeta OS 1.0 advances at a steady pace, yellowTAB has decided to do an interim release called Zeta Neo, so that users can enjoy the many enhancements incorporated into the Zeta OS so far. Zeta Neo has a long list of improvements over previous versions of Zeta, including two new applications, updated and new drivers, support for IDE hard disc drives larger than 120GB, redesigned Preference panels, improved and expanded localisation support, updated development tools, and an expanded Zeta Manual.

Intel is dumping plans to release a Pentium 4 processor that runs at 4GHz, saying will boost performance on next year's chips using other means that clock speed.

Open source advocate Bruce Perens and Novell Principal Engineer Adam Loughran appeared on Hawaii's Think Tech Radio last month, discussing the economic benefits of using open source software (OSS). In the hour-long interview, which is available for download, host Don Mangiarelli provides a forum that allows a wide audience to better understand Linux, open source, and free software.

Google has released a beta version of their desktop search tool which runs on Windows XP and 2000 SP3+. Details can be found here and more in depth reviews here and here. Its release is amid more concerns of privacy, many of which began when Google's Gmail system was introduced. Update: AOL wishes the same.

The second beta of Mandrakelinux 10.1 for x86_64 has been released. Update: Here's another Mandrake 10.1 review for your reading pleasure.