A 1995 contract sheds light on the conflicting Unix ownership claims by Novell and SCO Group, with SCO receiving broad rights to the OS but Novell retaining copyrights and patents. Updated

OSNews learned that the Gentoo project is porting their software distribution system, Portage, to Mac OS X. This makes Gentoo the third project developing such a system for the Unix-based OSX, after Fink and Darwin Ports. The Gentoo project also plans to create a GUI for OSX at some point, there is no ETA for it so far. Update: There might be some collaboration with Fink to also support their .debs. Update 2: The news are now on Gentoo's front page.

Another Debian installation guide with some screenshots. OSNews' is here.

FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long has uploaded FreeBSD RC1 for i386, he says that alpha RC1 is in the works. Kris Kennaway has uploaded i386 packages. Marcel Moolenaar is working on RC1 ia64, ISOs for which will be available sometime tomorrow. You can find RC1 at one of your preferred mirror sites.

TheRegister reports that Motorola boosting its PPC processors by 20 percent. According to the article, "With Apple expected to announce a shift to IBM's 64-bit PowerPC 970 processor in just a few weeks' time, the timing of Motorola's announcement takes on a new relevance." Additionally, iSync 1.1 adds broader phone support, Safari bookmarks while QuickTime 6.3 adds 3GPP, improves iApp support.

The latest OpenBSD 3.3 release arrives with even stronger attack defenses coupled with an amazing record of just a single remotely exploitable vulnerability in more than seven years, the best security track record for any general-purpose operating system around. Read the review at eWeek.

Today we feature a 4-page interview with Nat Friedman, Co-Founder and Vice-President of Product Development at Ximian. We discuss a lot of interesting topics, ranging from Ximian's products, to Apple, to Linux on the desktop and much more. Four screenshots of the upcoming Ximian Desktop 2 are also included, so come in and have a pick! UPDATE: Eight more screenshots added! Update2: Yaay... one more screenshot for your viewing pleasure!

AppleLinks offers an overview of the Pegason PPC platform. OSNews' is here.

Thomas Weibel wrote a Syllable 0.4.4 review with lots of screenshots and info.

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"Mandrake is known from it's ease of use and configuration tools, and is commonly regarded as a "newbie" distribution. I am a long-time Gentoo user and before that I have used Sorcerer and Debian among others, so I regard myself as an "advanced" Linux user. This review tries to find out how good distribution Mandrake is for "advanced" users." Read the article here.

Secret software interfaces hidden in Windows and previously only available to Microsoft's own developers have been exposed to the wider developer community. Using NSELib Namespace Extension Library, created by software engineering firm Whirling Dervishes, developers can create applications that reside in Windows Explorer.

According to a news item at WindowsForEmbedded.com, Microsoft has launched a new program in its 'shared source' initiative. This one enables the sharing of 'platforms', allowing, for example, hobbyists 'to convert an old PC into any number of Windows CE .NET-based devices, such as a digital audio receiver,' using files downloaded from a community repository. Free and time-fused tools are available for download from Microsoft's website to facilitate the process.

Visopsys is a new operating system for PCs. It has been in development since late 1997. The kernel is small and fast, operates exclusively in 32-bit mode, and features real preemptive multi-tasking and virtual memory. The package includes a small suite of UNIX- and DOS-like commands, with which most users will be familiar, although Visopsys is not - and does not try to be - a clone of any existing OS. The binary distribution features an easy-to-use Java installation program, which works on Linux, Windows, and Solaris. You can install and demo the distribution on a floppy disk. Screenshot.