Xandros is preparing to release the business edition of their popular Linux desktop distribution. Here's what we found out so far about this new product.

The presentation subsystem in "Longhorn" (code-named "Avalon") provides powerful new APIs for input. This article gives an overview of these APIs: What services are provided to applications, the architecture of the input system, and how new input devices can be supported.

KDE has come a long way in usability, stability, compatibility, and features since I first used it. The latest release of the KDE, 3.2.1, was released March 9. But for this review, LinuxPlanet initially looked at KDE 3.2, which shows that Linux is increasingly competitive on the desktop.

In an effort to determine what the true performance benefit of 64-bit computing is, TheJemReport designed this benchmarking project using FreeBSD. The article can be found here. The article compares the performance of three test cases (Intel P4 Prescott 3.2E and Athlon64 3200+ in 32-bit mode and 64-bit mode) using stopwatch tests, openssl, and two synthetic benchmarks from the Ports system.

The Register takes a look back at that day a decade ago when Apple's announcement of a RISC-based Macintosh, the "Power Mac" really shook things up. The PowerPC was going to trounce the aging X86 architecture, and herald in a new era of fast computing. Problem is, Intel had a few tricks up its sleeve too. Apple's real achievement, though, was making the transition to a new architecture relatively painless.

The Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) version 3.0 for Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 or later, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 contains the tools and documentation you need to design, deploy, and support applications on these platforms. Tools include the latest versions of the Microsoft Windows Application Compatibility Analyzer that simplifies application inventory and compatibility testing, the Windows Application Verifier that assists developers and testers in locating common compatibility issues during the development cycle, and the Compatibility Administrator that provides access to the necessary compatibility fixes to support legacy applications in Windows.

Today, Microsoft is announcing (free reg. req.) that its shared-source program has one million licensed participants, from lone software developers to large corporations. The milestone, said Jason Matusow, manager of the shared-source initiative at Microsoft, shows that the company has responded to the demands of its customers.

The European Commission is expected (free reg. req.) to declare Microsoft an abusive monopolist, impose a fine of $100 million to $1 billion and order the company to make fundamental changes to the way it sells software in Europe. Such a ruling would be a significant setback for Microsoft after it overcame its most serious legal challenge by settling a sweeping antitrust case in the USA in 2001.

"I do not think any company except a few of the largest companies can offer any reasonable insulation to their customers from these types of judgments. You would need a market cap of more than a couple billion to just survive in the OS space." A very interesting read from S2's CEO about the legal side of OSes today. And it seems he is not far off the truth at all.

Rony Klein explains a few of the reasons why he prefers Gnome over KDE, an article accompanied by screenshots illustrating his case.

A. Domo has released a new version of his NTFS driver for QNX. The new version runs as a daemon.

MirOS announced the release of a new snapshot of MirOS BSD #7-current. Read more.

InnoTek GCC for OS/2 is a commercial distribution of the GNU C/C++ compiler suite and associated utilities for the IBM OS/2 platform. InnoTek maintains an OS/2 platform port of the GNU C/C++ compiler suite and provides comprehensive support for the compiler environment to enterprise customers. Read more at eComStation's web site.

The software industry is very fearful of open source software, but this fear is irrational. The software industry can quite easily combat OSS as similar challenges have been met successfully in other industries. Part II of "Why Good Ideas Fail" discusses the future evolution of the software industry, and the implications of this evolution for innovative ideas.