Security Pipeline obtained access to the first widespread beta of Microsoft's forthcoming Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) during the holidays. Microsoft has said that this beta represents a subset of what will be released when this software is finalized sometime during the first half of 2004. CRN tested the new software on a couple of test machines, and found it to be very reliable during a couple of days use.

Lindows.com announced today its official support for Reiser4, the next version of ReiserFS from Namesys, creator of the advanced filesystem available for personal computers. Read more for the rest of the press release:

The XFree86 core team has announced that it is disbanding. What does this mean for the pending XFree86 4.4.0 release which was going to be out in January? (currently the latest version is 4.4-RC2). We hope that someone puts a release together to give something new to users before freedesktop.org's XWin server comes out at the end of 2004 or early 2005.

After several months the BeFree project shows its first progress with a screenshot. The next version is planned before the end of the year or in the first days of the next year.

GWN is featuring an interview with Daniel Robbins, Gentoo founder, as part of their weekly newsletter.

Windows CE.NET was ported to Xbox when the device is modded. The basic kernel subsystem is in place. The IoCtl is about 90% done. ISR/IST is up and working. PCI enumeration happens properly. USB initializes and enumerates devices (but hangs if there's a gamepad connected). Mouse driver loads. Keyboard driver loads but is missing a layout, so it's not quite functional yet. A very simple video driver is in place. Screenshots here and here.

Japan, China and South Korea are reportedly planning to jointly develop Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), the next-generation Internet standard, a move that will challenge the U.S.-dominated market for current IPv4-based Internet technology.

The evaluation release of HP OpenVMS Version 8.1 for Integrity servers based on the Intel Itanium processor is out. OpenVMS Version 8.1 includes native compilers, and a substantial suite of functionality that ISVs and customers are eager to use, including clustering and a wide range of development tools and integration technologies.

Intel and Microsoft are gearing up to move toward the first major overhaul of the innermost workings of the personal computer--the boundary where software and hardware meet--during 2004.

In preparation for the upcoming FOSDEM confrerence, organizers have posted interviews with Jonathan Corbet, author of the reference book "Writing Linux Device Drivers" and Denis Oliver Kropp, one of the main developers for the DirectFB project, two of the planned participants.

When the technology community considers Linux, we know what sets it apart from the competition. But if you were to ask the average consumer, few could give you a legitimate answer other than maybe it doesn’t cost anything. (However there will always be those that look in vain for the free beer everyone keeps talking about.) Editorial contributor Doug Dingus offered the following opinion piece to osViews which proposes some interesting ideas to help differentiate Linux to consumers by way of hardware rather than just software.

I installed Xandros because I wanted an easy to use Linux distribution for home (I use Gentoo Linux at work. I don't have broadband Internet access at home so I needed something that wouldn't a lot of downloading to get going. I purchased the download edition of Xandros Deluxe 2.0 and had no problem downloading (from work) and burning the ISO's. I've been using it for about a week now and I'm fairly happy with it.

Opera now has a preview download of their new version, 7.50 available. New main features include RSS Newsfeeds, Opera Chat, Many improvements to the mail client, spell checker (not yet working on systems not using the lastest version of aspell), Menu/toolbar clean-up, new toolbar configuration dialog and more. Additionally, you can buy one Opera desktop license at regular price and send one extra gift certificate for Opera for any OS to a friend for free.

Amiga.org reports that bplan GmbH announced, the version of the Open Firmware shipped with the Pegasos II is faulty: after changes made by "setenv" the system does not boot anymore. There is also a small fix for a broken MorphOS 1.4 install script.