Microsoft is offering an open beta version of its Windows Server 2003 for systems using the Advanced Micro Devices 64-bit Opteron processor. The beta version of Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition for 64-Bit Extended Systems has been available to a small group of testers in a "technical beta" since October. With this release, the software is available to anyone interested in trying it out through a customer preview program, says John Borozan, a Microsoft product manager.

This article discusses how to get your FreeBSD system to act as a NetFlow probe exporting records to a collector. Elsewhere, FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long says that at the September DevSummit, Peter Wemm proposed changing the device driver API so that interrupt routines return an INT instead of a VOID, while FreeBSD's Greg Lehey discusses the future of Vinum and GEOM on FreeBSD. Greg says that with the advent of GEOM, there may be some overlap with the features and functionality offered by Vinum. On the other hand, GEOM and Vinum do some things not only differently but in an incompatible manner.

Visopsys 0.33 is primarily a bugfix release but with bootable CD-ROM support added. The download site now offers a bootable ISO image containing a complete distribution with source code.

RadiOS is a microkernel-based operating system written entirely in the i386 assembly language (NASM). It uses many ideas and implementation techniques from VSTa and QNX.

If you're a database specialist interested in growing your DB2 Universal Database skills, there's a good chance that you've already developed database skills with another relational database product somewhere along the way. This article shows you how to use your current knowledge of Oracle 9i to quickly gain skills in DB2 UDB for Linux, UNIX, and Windows Version 8.

Metrowerks Senior Software Engineer and veteran real-time programmer Bernhard Kuhn has created a Linux kernel patch that he claims enables hard, real-time performance in the Linux kernel by adding priorities to interrupts and spinlocks. Kuhn believes his approach to be more "natural" and akin to traditional real-time operating systems (RTOSs) than the dual-kernel approach taken by real-time projects such as RTAI and RTLinux, and he is hopeful that his patch might one day win enough interest and support to become part of the official Linux kernel tree.

Rick Collette discuss the projects' plans ahead and the roadmap for ekkoBSD.

Devices will be size of a handheld, have a hard drive, Wi-Fi and VGA display, vendor claims. A new type of mobile device that is barely larger than a standard handheld but runs Windows XP on an i86 processor was unveiled this week at the CES. Vendors said the device, which they are dubbing the ultra-personal computer (UPC), will be available in the second half of this year. Development of the device is being encouraged by Transmeta, which has a line of i86-compatible processors that is small enough and has sufficient heat dissipation to be put into devices without cooling fans.

"SUSE 9 offers a superb printed manual, a great installation interface, a modern KDE system in addition to the more standard, older GNOME interface, and a new kernel build. It's easy to see why Novell thought enough of the software to buy the company" says InternetWeek in their review.

Roberto Alsina writes: "Tired of long, carefully crafted tutorials trying to show you the quickest way to write a program? Here I take another approach. I just went and did a program (and the tutorial) while checking the clock." And so here you have it: the app, the tutorial, and the timeline.

Linus Torvalds released the final 2.6.1 Linux kernel. This release has a lot of changes since 2.6.0, many things have been merged from the -mm tree. This release includes a patch for the mremap() vulnerability.

Here is part 2 and part 3 of the AlwaysOn interviews of Miguel and Nat from Ximian and Chris Stone, Novell CEO. To find out more about why Novell made such a sudden change in direction, and what their plans are for the future, IBM talked to Chris Stone.

When Microsoft pulls the plug on Windows 98 support next Friday, it will offer a free CD designed to help users "make the most" of the aging operating system, without any further assistance from the software giant.

Here is another scheduled release of the GNOME Platform Bindings, which provide a GNOME development platform for programming languages other than C, in the style of those languages.