Great news for beta testers, Windowsbeta has just put Windows XP SP2 final for beta testers to download. The final build number is 2180 with digital signature, here is a screenshot of the build on WindowsBeta. Update: Windows XP SP2 ships to manufacturing.

As a writer, the only reason Ed Hurst ever got his first computer was because it was far more efficient than a typewriter, and certainly more readable than his own handwriting. To enjoy that efficiency, however, you need a working printer, and Ed explores accomplishing just that on FreeBSD in this piece.

Lycoris has announced that it has found a distributor in Taiwan. Thanks to their new distributor, the previously moribund Desktop/LX Tablet Edition will again be available bundled with tablet PCs, this time from two companies based in Taiwan, Dialogue Technology and MoBitS Electronics.

Apple has released Xcode 1.5, an update to its set of developer tools for Mac OS X. According to the release notes, the update includes "an enhanced version of the Xcode IDE with enhanced features and improvements to the user experience, speed, and the build system".

SkyOS now has more GTK+ applications to enrich its application base: Gaim and Sylpheed-Claws being the latest ports. The project also made available a beta for their upcoming Software Store. Elsewhere, the SkyOS Monthly newsletter has been released with articles about SkyFS/BeFS and the chances of SkyOS succeeding as a business.

Yoper Linux V2 was released a few weeks ago (July 13, 2004). After reading the release announcement on Yoper's website, I decided I had to try it. Yoper claims that version V2 "is the fastest Out-of-the-Box Linux system in the World".

Within the Solaris 10 OS, the event completion framework focuses on providing a scalable, performant & extendable framework that can incorporate new object & event types as they appear within the system.

SGI has released IRIX 6.5.25 to individuals/companies with a support contract, 6.5.22m overlays are avaliable to all supportfolio members. In a few days the release notes will appear here.

OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt recently announced that support for the SGI O2 architecture was soon going to be imported, primarily in an effort to hunt down and fix bugs in the OpenBSD codebase.

This article examines the role of code refactoring, and the refactoring techniques supported by Visual Studio 2005. Elsewhere, view the latest changes that are going to be a part of .Net.

Steve Langasek of Debian is introducing the release schedule for a new Debian release.

Ars Technica has an article on the beginning of the PowerPC era with the usual coverage on CPU internals and the involvement of Apple.

This paper discusses the collaboration between security and development in the enterprise software development lifecycle.

One of the most awaited features of Microsoft .NET 2.0 is generics. Generics promise to increase type safety, improve performance, reduce code duplication and eliminate unnessecary casts. The most obvious application of generics in the framework class library are the generic collections in the new System.Collections.Generic namespace. Much has been written about those, but they are not the topic of this article.