Apple has posted a countdown timer on its web site to a release date of October 24, 8pm.

Robert Szeleney updated upcoming SkyOS 5 with an accelerated VMWare graphic driver, a port of the Links text/graphics web browser (fully supported by OSNews.com) and some development fixes.

Kaffe 1.1.2 has been released. The announcement mentions many bugfixes, improved support for NIO, JSSE, RMI, JVMPI and further merges with GNU Classpath. Furthermore, kaffe 1.1.2 can run Java applications like tomcat4, eXist , and javax.sound applications like JavaLayer and JOrbis.

Heres a snip from the Gentoo weekly newsletter: Jose Alberto Suarez Lopez gave a presentation at HispaLinux 2003 where he demonstrated the load-time performance of the official Gentoo Linux 1.4 release. Gentoo Linux 1.4 for Pentium III, with and without prelink, were compared with a default Mandrake 9.1 installation on a Pentium III. The results - Gentoo Linux 1.4 with prelink did better than Mandrake 9.1 across the board, and even without prelinking Mozilla loaded nearly twice as quickly in Gentoo, and NetBeans loaded more than twice as fast.

Despite Sun Microsystems' recent financial calamities, industry veterans say the battered company is hardly on the verge of collapse. Can it draw on its history of being a technical innovator? Elsewhere, "the new Java desktop has the Windows look-and-feel, but its StarOffice has so far had a lukewarm response. Can Sun convince users accustomed to MS-Office, to switch from Windows? Read at CIOL.

"When people say they don't have a choice, they often mean there is no other product that has all the benefits of Microsoft's products without having the drawbacks. Give it up. I would love to own a car that is as fast as a Corvette and gets the gas mileage of a Honda, but it isn't going to happen." Read the opinion piece at TechNewsWorld.

The JourneyOS people published an article on their upcoming window system called Frontiers.

SUSE today announced the expansion of the SUSE LINUX Server family with the release of SUSE LINUX Standard Server 8 – aimed at small and medium-sized businesses. Available for Intel and AMD 32-bit processors (x86) and supporting up to two CPUs, SUSE LINUX Standard Server 8 includes features such as Internet access, e-mail, file and print services, plus graphical configuration wizards – enabling Linux novices in small and medium-sized organizations to easily set up the server as a Windows domain controller, file and print server in Windows environments, Internet gateway, E-Mail server, application server, DNS server and DHCP server.

Microsoft's ambitious next-generation business applications are now due out in the "Longhorn" time frame, according to a top Microsoft executive. The upcoming product line, dubbed Project Green, will be built on what Microsoft Senior Vice President Doug Burgum calls a new "global" code base.

It's an oft-repeated maxim that one of the reasons that Windows operating systems are plagued by so many viruses, worms, and security exploits is because they are so popular. Extrapolating on this, many have remarked that if Linux, MacOS, or other OSes become more popular, they will attract the attention of virus writers. That may be true, but the increased attention will not necessarily yield the same quantity of viruses and other exploits, says a Register article. Update: Rebuttal article.

In the past in order to make good home movies one needed either a Mac or a Windows PC. There were no good video editors for Linux in the past. Today with Jahshaka and Main Actor the things that could only be done on a Mac or a Wintel machine can now be done on a Lintel machine as well.

The first release of the Syllable 0.5 development series has been released. The Changelog lists a huge number of changes, notably the inclusion of the new Media Framework, USB support and yet more new drivers. If you are upgrading from Syllable 0.4.5, then you must ensure that you read the upgrade notes.

There has been a new Mono release, v0.28. Mono has now integrated sourcegear's webservice enhancements and there has been a lot of improvement in XML, serialization and web services.

After OpenBeOS gets a preliminary version of Java, Dr. Richard Lipes is currently working on the MorphOS Java Virtual Machine. If you are interested in assisting him, you can contact him through the MorphOS Developer Connection.