" I learned about Dropline Gnome, an optimized Gnome installation for Slackware. Anyway, the upshot was that my Gnome system was upgraded, my personal settings were retained but my Open Office file associations were broken. I could no longer open documents in Nautilus with an Open Office application." Read the tutorial at Linux-Universe.

As shown here Genesi has announced the Pegasos II Systems. Get a closer look and enjoy.

All applications which were used to configure settings like graphic, audio, themes, network, devices, keyboard etc. on SkyOS were rewritten as DLLs and are accessible through one application now: the System manager. Check here for two screenshots too.

Individuals who know what "Multics" is, raise your hand. Now, all individuals who know what a "Multician" is, raise the other hand. (Now lower your hands. Your coworkers are going to think you're a psychopath staring at your computer with your hands above your head.) For those without hands up, Multics is a historic 1965-2002-era operating system, which had a dramatic influence on computers as we know them today. osViews editorial contributor Kelly McNeill, authored an insightful and educational piece about the historic Multics operating system.

Find non-free code at GNU-Darwin, and get a reward from RMS. In preparation for this initiative, the team has greatly improved the software freedom status and GPL compliance of the newest free OS including the ports system, packages, on-line, and hard media offerings. It appears that the FSF wants GNU-Darwin to stay free. As always, many thanks to them, especially RMS, D. E. Evans, Eben Moglen, etc. It feels great to do the right thing, and that GNU-Darwin is finally inside the free software circle. There is also a longer article about this at Advogato.

The Microsoft Communications Protocol Program (MCPP) makes available by license over 100 proprietary protocols that enable your server software to interoperate and communicate with Microsoft desktop client operating systems.

I was able to try out and preview Mac OS X Panther 10.3 for the past few months after WWDC and for the last few days I am running a latest version. So, what to expect from Mac OS X when it comes out on the evening of October 24th? Come in and have a look in this preview article. Update: screenshots removed at request of Apple.

Microsoft Corp. warned consumers Wednesday about four critical new flaws in its popular Windows software as the company shifted to monthly alerts for serious problems that could let hackers break into computers. In the meantime, Windows XP SP2 is to be getting backported security enhancements from the Longhorn codeline.

ITRON, the first in a series of open-source specifications for the TRON architecture, answered a pressing need for Japan's electronics firms, which traditionally have written their own software for embedded systems. Read the article at LinuxInsider.

A few months ago I was a Slackware Junkie. I loved it, and laughed at those who used 'more automatic' distributions (ok, I didn't actually laugh). Then Arch Linux 0.5 came out and I was very intrigued by it. I was getting tired of having to compile updated packages myself.

Bill Gates yesterday confirmed that there is no official release date yet for the next version of Windows, named Longhorn. "Longhorn could be 2005 or 2006," Gates told a small group of journalists yesterday at the TechNet/MSDN seminar in The Hague. "This release is going to be driven by technology, not by a release date. Which probably means it is going to be late." In the meantime, tThe second Windows XP service pack will include a number of changes designed to allay security fears.

NetBSD's Alistair Crooks announced the appointment of a new NetBSD core team.

Well, you know... little girls & boys admire athletes, singers, actors... We, OS geeks, tend to respect and admire engineers (for the most part). Come in and vote for your favorite tech icon, let us see who is the "big tech star" these days!

How Linus Torvalds became benevolent dictator of Planet Linux, the biggest collaborative project in history. Read the 6-page article at Wired.