R. Kirk McPike wrote a comparison between Microsoft's Word and OpenOffice.org Writer based on his experience writing a term paper. It's an attempt to consider the end usability of both products, and how OpenOffice.org's challenge should be responded to by Microsoft.

Even if your work doesn't require you to reboot your Linux machine several times a day, waiting for a system to reboot can be a real drag. Enter kexec. Essentially, kexec is a fast reboot feature that lets you reboot to a new Linux kernel -- without having to go through a bootloader. Faster reboot is a benefit even when uptime isn't mission-critical -- and a lifesaver for kernel and system software developers who need to reboot their machines several times a day. Kexec is currently available on the x86 32-bit platform only.

Microsoft has recommitted to releasing Longhorn, its next-generation Windows client and server, into beta testing in 2005 even though its chairman acknowledged that security concerns threaten his dream of enabling seamless connectivity and Web services. Here is the transcript of Gates' speech yesterday and here is Jim Allchin's. Also, Microsoft combined the Windows CE, Windows Mobile departments.

Today, MacOS X has made Apple the world's largest Unix workstation manufacturer while Microsoft advertises (but can't yet deliver) a reinvented Pick OS for the Internet age. As someone like Dave Barry might say, you couldn't make this stuff up on a bet.

This interview with MontaVista CEO and embedded pioneer Jim Ready explains why Ready is preparing his small, privately held company for the "battle of the century."

BlueEyedOS reports that after a few weeks of hard work, compilation and linking of OpenTracker is now complete, and seems almost ready to make it work properly. In the meantime, OpenBeOS gets some ethernet drivers and the ability to run BeOS-native command line apps.

From Slashdot: Sun is putting out Java Desktop System Release 2. Some overview information is in this article while more technical information about the new management solutions are in this one.

Mandrakesoft today announced the availability of Mandrakelinux 10.0 Official for the AMD64 platform (Athlon64 and Opteron). Mandrakelinux 10.0 for AMD64 delivers all the features and robustness of Mandrakelinux 10.0 Official to the 64-bit platform from AMD, with an average performance gain of 20% compared to the IA32 version. Read more for the rest of the PR:

"At one time, NetWare was the network operating system for the PC world. In particular, there are still companies that depend upon its bread and butter networking on lovingly maintained NetWare 3.1x and 4.x set-ups. And why shouldn't they? It's been long acknowledged that for fundamental print and file services along with rock-solid stability, you couldn't beat NetWare." Read the rest of the article here.

A recent discussion on the lkml looked into a reproducable random file I/O regression in 2.6 compared to the 2.4 kernel. Alexey Kopytov posted the benchmark results, attempting to simulate the workload of a database under intensive load. The tests were tried with all I/O schedulers, including the anticipatory, deadline and CFQ, and in all cases 2.4 outperformed 2.6. Read the report at KernelTrap.

LinuxDevCenter takes a peek at the coLinux runtime engine, running under Windows.

The KOffice team is proud to announce the first bugfix version in KOffice 1.3 series.

"In a sign that demand is growing for alternatives to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows software, Red Hat Inc. will release a version of the Linux operating system and other programs tailored for desktop computers in corporations, universities and government agencies." The AP story is here, Red Hat's site here. It is available for purchase only in bulk volumes or as part of an RHEL "pack". Also, Red Hat's road map leads to SE Linux.

Microsoft's big new product is way overdue, according to Times. And Linux is challenging Windows' desktop dominance. What will it take to get the software titan moving again?