The Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 1.0 SP2 Developer Redistributable includes the latest .NET Compact Framework 1.0 SP2 CAB files for all supported processor types. On othe Microsoft releases, here is the Developer Power Toys for the Windows Mobile platform and the Windows CE Utilities for Visual Studio .NET 2003 add-on pack which enables Visual Studio to connect to devices running Windows CE 4.1 and later.

Mark Wong recently posted a series of benchmark results that show how the Linux scheduler has improved since early on in the 2.5 development cycle. The results were generated with Rusty Russell's Hackbench, a modified 'chat benchmark'. Read the full story at KernelTrap.

Within three years, most bank machines that dispense cash will run on the Windows operating system, according to a study published last week.

A ZDNet article has figured out what to do with all that extra processing power that Moore's Law keeps giving us: use brute force to make our computers secure. Encrypting everything, between machines, and also between processes might do the trick. Of course, you can't keep your keys in software, so that's where hardware tricks like "Trusted Computing" come in. So let me get this straight, because we're all afraid of viruses and hackers now, we're going to get back on the processor upgrade treadmill and give up ultimate control over what's on our PC to our motherboard and OS vendors?

New York Times writer David Pogue recently wrote an article about the recent rash of computer viruses in which he stated the old maxim that most viruses target windows because it's the dominant platform. Welcome to the OS Wars, Pogue. In a follow-up column, he notes that he received quite an education on the subject from readers who emailed him in, and notes that he's learned that Unix-based/Unix-like OSes like OSX and Linux are inherently more virus-proof for several reasons.

Sun Microsystems is struggling to correct a big mistake - its lack of support for Solaris x86. "One of the biggest mistakes we made a few years back was not supporting Solaris x86," Jonathan Schwartz, executive vice president at Sun, said in an interview. "Scott (McNealy) will tell you the same thing." Read the article at TheRegister.

Novell is delaying shipment of its much anticipated Linux services for NetWare product until the end of this year, due to a decision to integrate software code from Ximian, a recently acquired ISV that is very active in the Linux space.

Some first pictures of the soon to be released Mini-ITX form factor AmigaOne PPC board have been released here. A round up of recent AmigaOS4 news: Pagestream to support AmigaOS4, AOS4 Tour goes downunder and Amiga recently released another CAM article "ExecSG in detail: Memory" written by Thomas Frieden of Hyperion.

"Sun finally unveiled the full dimensions of its quest to change the computing landscape this week. It's fundamentally a more monolithic landscape populated by pre-integrated components either acquired by or developed by Sun. It's an alternative to Microsoft Windows abstracted from the operating systems (Solaris and Linux) and processors (SPARC and x86). It's also Sun's attempt to become a leading solutions provider competing against IBM, HP and Microsoft." Read the editorial at ZDNews.

Bill Gates and IBM Software chief Steve Mills joined together to give an update on their companies' combined work in advancing Web services.

With the push of a new campaign, Tools to Compete, Microsoft has effectively admitted that they see Linux as a legitimate threat. Even with the massive reduction in the cost of Windows in big deals, Microsoft has still lost customers. It almost causes one to ask - a passing trend, or the beginning of the end?

Slackware 9.1-beta2 is ready for testing, changelog here. The second beta includes security fixes for OpenSSH/Sendmail, updates to GNOME 2.4.0, Galeon 1.3.9, GNOME Office 1.0, KDE 3.1.4 while XFree86 was also updated. Here is a ready-made unofficial ISO of yesterday's Slackware.

Sun Microsystems Inc. is readying a series of new features for its Solaris OS, some of which will become available to participants in its early-access program in the next three to four months. Elsewhere, Scott McNealy and company are trying to change the business model for software and in the process revive Sun’s prospects, Fortune Magazine is noticing.

Athene 3.2 is now available for download. In conjunction with this release a port of SDL is available, along with a number of games at rocklytefiles.com. ZTerm has also been upgraded to provide full terminal emulation and is now installed by default in the 3.2 release. Rocklyte Systems also announced that the latest release of the freely distributed Athene for X11 overcomes one of the X Window System's most pressing speed constraints. Testing of the new release demonstrates graphics throughput approximately twice as fast as previous releases of Athene, by bypassing conventional X11 programming techniques and using the 'shared imaging' hack to copy graphics to the X video display.