This article by veteran real-time trainer David Kalinsky provides an introduction to real-time operating system (RTOS) kernel services. The paper is of particular interest to developers new to real-time concepts and vocabulary. Kalinsky begins by offering a comparison of RTOSs and general-purpose operating systems. He then covers real-time kernel services including task scheduling; fixed-time task switching; intertask communication and synchronization; determinism and high-speed message passing; and, dynamic memory allocation.

"Since they cannot show infringement of SCO Unix code, SCO now plans to challenge the 9-year-old settlement between AT&T and BSD. If it can successfully do that, then its claims that Linux contains tainted code can be substantiated. If it can't, SCO is dead meat." Says NewsForge. *Updated*

Here are two new screenshots showing the SkyOS 5.0 transparent/freeform-windows and rounded-windows support as well as window shadows.

Sun Microsystems and open-source software maker JBoss Group have resolved a long-standing dispute over a key Java standard.

Byte's "Serving with Linux" columnist Moshe Bar writes a brief review of his new G5, the new 15" Powerbook & Panther. Read more for some feedback on the article from contributor Diganta Saha.

From Internetnews: "Shares of Sun jumped 10% after hours Monday on news that the company will help build a nationwide standard desktop software system in China. Sun said the China Standard Software Co. (CSSC) will use Sun's Java Desktop System as the foundation for standard desktop development and deployment in the People's Republic of China. CSSC is a consortium of Chinese technology companies backed by the Chinese government to produce a nationwide standard desktop software system, and Sun said it is now the CSCC's preferred technology partner for reaching this goal."

LinuxElectrons features a mini-review of Gentoo Linux 1.4 along with many screenshots.

Now that Solaris Express 11/03 is publicly available for download, Bryan Cantrill (Solaris Kernel Development) from the DTrace engineering team wanted to take a moment to post some slightly more elaborate examples of this new technology.

I recently picked up a copy of SuSE 9.0 Professional. I have never used or been familiar with a SuSE product before as I've only used Mandrake, Red Hat, and a bit of Debian. After using Red Hat for a while I decided to evaluate SuSE and I am now sorry for not having tried it sooner.

Adobe has disowned the anti-Mac comments made by one one of its employees in a recent book. Adobe's PR director, Russell Brady, who joined the company afer working at Apple, strongly denied any deliberate snub to Apple or any lessening of commitment to the Mac.

With today's announcement that Sun Microsystems, Inc. and AMD have formed an alliance to deliver a broad range of AMD Opteron processor-based systems, Sun also announced it plans to offer its Java Enterprise System on the AMD Opteron processor and is significantly extending the reach of its Solaris Operating System and leadership in the 64-bit space. The alliance intends to provide increased market opportunities for ISVs, OEMs, and channel partners by offering an industrial strength, affordable platform that has been fully optimized and tuned for the 64-bit AMD Opteron processor.

Apple has forced one of its employees to halt development of a popular shareware application, sources confirmed to Think Secret. Last month, the developer stopped sales and downloads of Netflix Fanatic after Apple claimed ownership over the source code. On other Apple-related news, Fink 0.6.2 released.

CoyoteGulch just posted an analysis of GNU C and C++ optimizations, using a genetic algorithm to discover the most effective optimization flags for different algorithms.

IBM writes: "So, your boss says you're moving from Windows to Linux. He's decided he wants the stability, flexibility, and cost savings of Linux, but you have many questions in your head. Isn't Linux like Unix? Isn't Unix hard? Will you be able to do it? Where do you begin to make sense of all of this? Is there a map you can follow?"