theKompany.com announced the availability of BlackAdder 1.0-040112, a Windows/Linux UI development environment for Python based on Qt. BlackAdder combines a visual design environment with debugging, syntax highlighting, ODBC interfaces and extensive documentation into a comprehensive platform for developing Python applications with PyQt.

IBM announced two compilers for Mac OS X: "IBM XL Fortran Advanced Edition V8.1 for Mac OS X -- A new platform supported in the IBM XL Fortran family" and "XL C/C++ Advanced Edition V6.0 for Mac OS X -- A new platform for the IBM family of C/C++ compilers".

TechIMO has published the first preview of the next-generation SkyOS platform. With the new beta program gearing up, this article may provide some insight into what features one can expect when testing SkyOS 5. Many screenshots included. Ever busy with improvements, Robert and the SkyOS team have added the following to SkyOS 5:

ZetaNews.com posted some interesting all-around BeOS/Zeta news today: Opera 3.64 for BeOS now available for $10 USD, BeOSmax.org are explaining why the newest version is further delayed, an article about installing BeOS inside Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 and a hack effort to make BeOS believe that the machine has less RAM than it actually has in order to not hit its 1 GB RAM limitation and crash.

For all the talk of Linux sidelining Windows in the server market, the upstart Linux operating system instead has stolen more glory from the older Unix as buyers flock to cheaper systems. But Unix vendors, even those that have embraced Linux, aren't giving up on the old workhorse. They're touting Unix as a complement, and in some cases a grown-up alternative, to Linux on low-cost machines.

Xen is a virtual machine monitor for x86 that supports execution of multiple guest operating systems with unprecedented levels of performance and resource isolation. A port of Linux 2.4 to run on the VMM works well, and *BSD and XP ports are in progress. Version 1.0 was released a few months ago.

The GTK# toolkit 0.15 is out and Miguel de Icaza is providing news on Mono.

About 3 years ago I was looking around for something to add multimedia capabilities to my GNOME desktop. At that point in time there wasn't really that much around. I think the most advanced video player for Linux in those days was XAnim, which was neither were moving quickly or could qualify as free software, except in the beer context. Projects like Xine and mplayer had either just started up or not come into existence yet.

Red Hat today announced that it would assign all of its copyrights in the eCos open source operating system to the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The contribution will enable the Free Software Foundation to act as the sole copyright steward of the project and work directly with the eCos community and its maintainers on future development.

SciTech Software, Inc. today announced that Open Watcom 1.2 has been released and is now available for download from its website. This release contains a large number of new features, product enhancements and several fixes designed to bring Open Watcom to a higher level of quality and compatibility. SciTech, the official maintainers of the Open Watcom project, have also announced the availability of an updated Open Watcom CD, complete with SciTech’s installer for DOS, OS/2, and windows. Support for the update will be handled exclusively through the Open Watcom website.

Frenzy is a "portable system administrator toolkit", LiveCD based on FreeBSD. It generally contains software for hardware tests, file system check, security check and network setup and analysis. The system is oriented to Russian-speaking users, but this could change if project will get more popularity.

YellowTAB informed us that their testing of Release Candidate 2 of Zeta 1.0 has finished. They sent us two screenshots of Zeta 1.0-RC2 and Bernd Korz replies to two of our questions regarding the RC-2.

MandrakeMove is a Live CD distribution, or in other words, it does not need to be installed. It is an interesting concept, but not a new one, there are quite a few similar products, such as the famous Knoppix, SUSE Live, LindowsCD, Mempis, PCLinuxOS, Gnoppix and a few others.

Novell expects this week to begin offering SuSE Linux customers some legal protection for using the open-source operating system, the fourth legal umbrella to emerge from a computing industry grappling with legal threats brought by SCO Group.