"OS X 10.3 Server is not an essential purchase for every Mac user. It is essentially Mac OS X with additional network muscle, so network administrators and Web developers alike will find it more accessible and flexible than ever." Read the review here.

MacNN reports that Mozilla.org has released Mozilla 1.5.1 for Macs, an update to the open-source browser. New features include a spellchecker for MailNews and Composer, additional MailNews improvements, improvements to Mozilla Composer, an overhaul of the ChatZilla IRC client, improvements to tabbed browsing, and other enhancements. Anyone knows the status of the Mozilla Calendar development, as last big update was last May? (screenshot)

The GNOME Development Release 2.5.0 which will lead to 2.6 is ready for testing. It is available from ftp.gnome.org and mirrors. This version includes the new spatial Nautilus, the new GTK+ fileselector (however applications don't use it yet) and among the proposed new apps for inclusion are Ximian Evolution and RhythmBox. A stable Quick Lounge and gThumb would be great to be included too.

ClarkConnect transforms standard PC hardware into a dedicated broadband gateway and easy-to-use server. It includes firewall and security tools, along with file, print, web, e-mail, proxy, and VPN servers. Version HomeEdition 2.1 was just released (iso here), while a few days ago the similar product SmoothWall released version Express 2.0-RC1. These are excellent choices if you have an old PC sitting unused in a closet and if you need a gateway/firewall/etc to serve all your machines at home.

Marcelo Tosatti has released the final 2.4.23 stable Linux kernel, three months after 2.4.22. This latest kernel includes a number of changes, including the removal of the OOM (out of memory) killer among other significant VM updates. Laptop users will appreciate Jens Axboe's "laptop mode" which can extend battery life, also merged in 2.4.23. Find this latest stable kernel at a kernel.org mirror.

Today yellowTAB and BeUnited announce a milestone in the post Be world: they will be co-operating on porting Sun's Java J2SE version 1.4 to Zeta and OSBOS.

Phoenix Technologies is sounding the death knell for BIOS - the bread and butter of its current operations. While Phoenix is comparatively the "Microsoft" of the BIOS world, it has spent years endeavoring to modernize the aging standard. If all goes according to plan, a new product the company dubs Core System Software (CSS) will serve as the foundation of PC architecture.

"This week's big feature is the long-promised SUSE 9 review, courtesy of Paul "madmanx" Ehrenreich and Charles "ctkrohn" Krohn. Stephan "windi" Windischmann discusses less, the replacement for the standard more pager. We also demonstrate Linux's pluggable authentication module system. Finally, Anders "w.anders" Widebrant introduces you to the awesome desktop animation tool vnc2swf." Read the review at ArsTechnica.

"An inductive, or task-based, user interface is one that is based on "tasks" rather than applications (as in OS X) or documents (as in Windows 95/Office 95, sort of; Microsoft backed off of this concept pretty quickly as the benefits of a task-oriented UI became more obvious). Here's an example. Let's say you want to print a digital photo." Read the article at WinSuperSite.

The Storm Operating System is based on x86 family architecture with paged, protected memory, heavy proccess software multitasking and GUI. Storm OS is being created with asembly (NASM compiler) and General C (GNU GCC compiler) language.

FreeBSD's Scott Long announced the availability of 5.2-BETA ISO images and ftp install sets for i386 and alpha. Amd64, sparc64, ia64, and pc98 sets will be available shortly.

This week MacWorld is going to show the Panther Server operating system in general, identifying the new tools and structures and offering a closer look at the evolution of the user and share-management tool called Workgroup Manager.

Linus Torvalds has released his final 2.6.0-test kernel, calling it the "Beaver In Detox". Following this release Linus says that 2.6 development will be lead by Andrew Morton. The kernel's name refers in jest to the previous release, which Linus had named "Stoned Beaver". It contains a fix for the aic7xxx driver, proper error handling in do_fork(), some firewire fixes, and correction of a few skbuff leakage points. Download it from a kernel.org mirror.

It seems to me that a lot of attention lately in the commercial Linux development area has concentrated on either large enterprise customers, or wooing the home user who can barely turn a computer on. Even distros claiming to offer the perfect solution for both ends of the spectrum don't quite seem to fit what I am looking for.