Kerneltrap covers recent progress with the Kqueue code in FreeBSD-current. Kqueue testing is a major focus area for the release of 5.3 and it looks like freebsd dev is making steady progress in knocking out major showstoppers. The code would also benefit from testing.

Patch management could easily be called the bane of every administrator's existence, the pain in the rear of system management, or that never ceasing headache that pounds at CIOs everywhere. Here are three articles on the topic, Part 1, 2 and 3.

Arvan Reese wrote a guide for beginners explaining all about source-based Linux distros.

"This browser sports a tag-line stating, 'The web browser that puts you in control.' I haven't been much of an Omniweb fan in the past, so reviewing this browser was a leap of faith for me. I’m in love with Omnigraffle but that is another review in itself, so my past grievances with Omniweb weren’t directed toward the company, but rather the browser itself." Read the rest of the review at MacCritic.

"The conclusion is obvious by the "Total Time For All Benchmarks Test." The best journaling file system to choose based upon these results would be: JFS, ReiserFS or XFS depending on your needs and what types of files you are dealing with. I was quite surprised how slow ext3 was overall, as many distributions use this file system as their default file system. Overall, one should choose the best file system based upon the properties of the files they are dealing with for the best performance possible!" Read the whole article at the LinuxGazette.

Here's a review of the recently released SuSE 9.1 Personal Edition, at the JemReport.

Distributors must solve setup and licensing issues for Linux to be a success on the desktop. For Linux to become a real competitor to Windows on the desktop, Linux distributors must refine their software installation and management systems. There are some loose ends that need to be tied up and some tricky legal knots to unravel, says eWeek.

Microsoft Corp. is driving toward its goal of shipping the next client and server versions of Windows in tandem. But the effort will come at the expense of a few wish-list server features, according to high-ranking company officials.

MandrakeSoft S.A. and Novell Inc.'s SuSE Linux division, recently shipped new versions of their respective mainstream Linux distributions, both based on the new Linux 2.6 kernel. eWEEK Labs tested Mandrakelinux 10 PowerPack+ and SuSE Linux 9.1 Professional—which each began shipping last month—and we were impressed with their ease of use and with the broadness of their capabilities.

This is the first official release of PearPC, 0.1, and there are still unimplemented instructions, mysterious bugs and missing features. The application allows you to run PowerPC OSes under emulation on a x86 machine.

This article shows how to grid enable applications using the first two of the six strategies so the applications can run as single or multiple instance batch jobs that are location independent. It explains the characteristics of applications using these strategies and details what the application developer must, should, and can optionally do to implement these strategies. A major objective when using Strategy 1 and Strategy 2 is to ensure that the application is as flexible as possible regarding middleware products.

Last Thursday OSNews had the opportunity to meet Miguel de Icaza, founder of Gnome, Ximian and among other things leader of the much discussed, Mono project. Miguel is a talented and versatile developer but he is also a very intelligent businessman able to understand the industry on many different levels. Talking to Miguel guarantees that you are very quickly taken away by his enthusiasm and optimism and his thoughtful strategies and vision on how OSS will take over the world.

Microsoft plans to announce on Monday that its Media Center OS is moving into new countries, even as the software maker works to make the entertainment software more ready for prime time.

Microsoft is giving away copies of Visual Basic.NET in a promotion called VB at the movies. In exchange for watching five relatively short "movies" you get a "free" (not for resale) copy of Visual Basic.NET (IDE and all needed tools). The movies themselves are a showcase of features available in Visual Basic.NET. Note that only 2 of 7 movies are currently available.