Microsoft’s chief software architect Bill Gates took centre stage at last week’s software developer day in London in a bid to convince UK software developers to stick with Microsoft’s roadmap, even though Longhorn, its next generation operating system, is two to three years away.

Java steward Sun Microsystems has sent a letter to members of Eclipse, urging the increasingly influential open-source project to unify rather than fragment the Java-based development tool market.

The FreeBSD status reports are back again with the 2003 year-end edition. Many new projects are starting up and gaining momentum, including XFS, MIPS, PowerPC, and networking locking and mutlithreading. The end of 2003 also saw the release of FreeBSD 4.9, the first stable release to have greater than 4GB support for the ia32 platform. Work on FreeBSD 5.2 also finished up and was released early in January of 2004 (our review), while we learned FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE is expected sometime next week with some critical fixes in it.

BeOS Max 3 is a collection of third party updates, drivers and new applications on top of BeOS 5 Personal Edition (e.g. enabling AthlonXP and P4 machines to work, install on its own partition etc). Because of the non-standard nature of burning a BFS ISO (discussed here and here) and also because the .cue file (needed to burn the BFS ISO) has a undocumented typo in it, many tried to burn it unsuccessfully (you need to edit the MaxV3.cue file with a text editor and enter the correct .iso filename in it). Now, the French print magazine Login carries the BeOS Max 3.0 in its cover disk. OSNews heard that BeOS Max 3.1 is ready for weeks now but its developer doesn't have the bandwidth to upload it yet.

Martin Hansen wrote a review of the 'Advantage Six' (first, second part), a PC solely created to run RISC OS and other StrongARM software in emulation. Martin is discussing the differences between using reference Risc PC, the Iyonix XScale machine and the emulator's hardware, and also benchmarks them.

Users will have to balance their IT security requirements with potential Java and .net performance problems if they are to take advantage of the features being introduced in Windows XP Service Pack 2.

Paul writes: "I've written an article, containing _mockups_ of an idea I've had for the Gnome desktop. It's called Scoop, and it's an idea for a container widget, to act as a "System Sidebar" on a users desktop. You can see the writeup here." Update: Paul writes: "I've updated the article with more ideas, and added a link to my Gnome AutoManager proposal, which can be seen here."

Thanks to Lindows.com, I was able to get my hands on a free copy of LindowsOS 4.5 Developer Edition just for being a reader of OSNews. Apparently a lot of other OSNews readers did as well considering the long wait in the queue for downloading. It is great that Lindows gave away their product this way. Update: The article was updated (look at the end of the article).

"What's really needed to settle this is a definition of Unix. Unfortunately, there's no obvious definition against which we might compare Linux. The systems we all accept as unambiguously Unix -- that is, BSD, HP-UX, Solaris and Tru64 -- have more functional differences than, say, Linux and Unixware." Read the article at LinuxInsider. Apparently, you also need to have the sign of approval to be called a "Unix" by passing some tests.

Tom Cosgrove has committed the OpenBSD pieces that make booting from partitions with offsets greater than 8GB.

Intel President and Chief Operating Officer Paul Otellini on Wednesday said the world's largest chipmaker would likely give its 32-bit microprocessors an upgrade to 64 bits once supporting software becomes available. UPDATE: Intel plans to demonstrate a 64-bit revamp of its Xeon and Pentium processors in mid-February--an endorsement of a major rival's strategy and a troubling development for Intel's Itanium chip.

Before I add 'my' two cents worth upon the current heap of Xandros reviews, let me introduce myself... rather my Linux self. I am a noobie. Perhaps not such a newbie as a newbie could be since I have been playing with and learning Linux since 'Corel Linux' (1999-2000?). Before Corel I'd purchased a copy of a 1998 Turbo Linux in a discount store and was beyond elated to find something to mess with.

WindowsForDevices has published an extensive interview with Scott Horn, director of marketing for Microsoft's Embedded Devices Group, in which Horn discusses the embedded marketplace in general and Microsoft's strategic roadmap. The interview is interesting to developers for its discussions of the embedded market as a whole, and for the view it provides of Microsoft's competitive strategies.

For almost 20 years, Windows has been an ever-evolving graphical environment which has focused on providing users, as well as developers, easy access to the latest technologies, hardware, and services. "Longhorn", the codename for the next version of Windows, represents a significant jump in the definition of what a Windows Application is, and is capable of achieving. In this episode of the .NET Show, MSDN TV provides a general overview of the larger technology "pillars" of Longhorn, introducing their concepts, as well as showing some of the coding techniques for gaining access to them. Use Windows Media Player on Mac/Windows or Win32_Codecs on Unix/Linux to view the videos.