Graham Shaw has released RiscPkg, a RISC OS package manager. The idea behind package management is relatively simple, but it can hide suprisingly complex details in its aim to ensure a system has the latest versions of software, along with making sure dependent programs are installed, and downloading these easily with an automated installation system.

Hyperion Entertainment and the OS 4.0 development team announced that OS4 development has now sufficiently advanced for a comprehensive Developer Pre-release of Amiga OS 4.0 to be distributed to all current AmigaOne owners shortly after the New Year.

FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long has outlined future plans for FreeBSD 5.3 now that FreeBSD 5.2-RC2 is getting close to release quality.

The battle over digital music is just another verse in Apple's sad song: This astonishingly imaginative company keeps getting muscled out of markets it creates. So what does Apple have to tell us about innovation?

This has been indeed an interesting year for Linux security. The point of this article is to offer a view on what I believe to be some of the most interesting happenings in 2003. The Linux experts that offer their view on 2003 are Bob Toxen (one of the 162 recognized developers of Berkeley UNIX and author of "Real World Linux Security") and Marcel Gagne (President of Salmar Consulting, Inc. and author of "Linux System Administration - A User's Guide" and "Moving to Linux").

This AfterStep release fixes numerous bugs and cleans up build system. In addition new WinTabs module had been added, althou it still remains undocumented and experimetal, but in future it will allow combining similar applications, such as text editors, terms, etc, into single window with tabs.

HAL is a hardware abstraction layer aiming to provide a live list of devices present in the system at any point in time. Version 0.2 was just released. Read more about it in our recent interview with its author.

Discover the malicious code that infected millions machines worldwide with insightful comments from people such as Mikko H. Hypponen (Director of Anti-Virus Research, F-Secure Corporation) and Graham Cluley (Senior Technology Consultant, Sophos).

So far this series has checked out Lindows 4.0, Libranet 2.8.1 and MEPIS 2003.10. Meanwhile both Lindows.com and Xandros have been busy little beavers and spat out new versions of their software, each on the same day. Since I am trying to find the best bang for my buck in a Debian based commercial distro, and since I am already a registered user of LindowsOS, I felt compelled to download a free copy of Lindows 4.5 to have a second look at this thing.

The latest of the FreeBSD 5.2-RCx series has been released. FreeBSD 5.2-RC2 fixes a showstopper filesystem bug that could occur when using soft-updates. Get it now from the main ftp server or try one of the mirrors. Promptly report any bugs you find as this is likely to be the last release candidate.

According to MorphOS-News the Pegasos-II System starts shipping to the end users.

According to MacWorld UK, quoting a report from Forbes, we'll be seeing some notably faster G5 chips this summer. And contrary to popular belief there is a G5 Powerbook on the horizon as well - possibly as early as January. But it will be at least two years before a 64-bit version of OS X hits shelves, according to analyst Peter Glaskowsk.

"Is Lindows for everyone? No, but that doesn't mean it won't find a niche" says Joe Casad in his review of LindowsOS 4 on UnixReview. Await a LindowsOS 4.5 review here at OSNews, tomorrow.

KernelTrap has an interview with Marcelo Tosatti. Marcelo became the maintainer of the 2.4 stable kernel when he was 18 years old, releasing his first kernel, 2.4.16, on November 26'th of 2001. Two years later, he recently released the 2.4.23 kernel and plans to soon put the 2.4 stable kernel tree into maintenance mode, only addressing bugs and security issues.