The benchmark at Barefeats -- Power Mac G4 and G5 versus Pentium 4, Dual Xeon, and Dual Athlon -- has being updated to include new information and tests.

"While it's common knowledge that Microsoft has been working on Windows XP and Server 2003 for the AMD64 architecture for some-time, little is known about the workings and limitations of this new operating system. We recently got the chance to try out the first publicly released variant of the operating system (Build 3790), and combined with reading through loads of tech docs and talking with folks over at AMD, we've comprised a summary of how we think the OS is shaping up, where it's headed, and we'll try to answer some of the common questions about the OS in general." Read the preview article at the GamePC web site.

Storage is an exciting project to replace the traditional filesystem with a new document store, database-based. It is part of a larger design for a new desktop environment, more details on that to come in the future by GNOME's Seth Nickell. The current implementation, built under Gnome for now, offers natural language access, network transparency, and a number of other features. Some additional info is here. Update: Seth is replying at Slashdot about Storage.

Amy Reynolds offers her perspective on the current state of skinning (or thememing as it is also called) one's operating system. As a professional user interface designer, Amy has concerns that the very existance of themes and skins does a dis-service to an operating system or platform. Amy also offers her insight for a hotly debated topic that has been making the rounds on the KDE mailing list which asks, "How configurable should the KDE desktop be?" She characteristically says "I applaud Gnome for having taken the high rode in this case."

Stepping up its campaign against the Linux operating system, Microsoft has released file and Web serving benchmark results that, it claims, show that Linux on the mainframe lags behind Windows 2003 on Intel systems in terms of performance for the money. Read the report at ARNnet.

The OpenBSD project has made available information as to what is new in the upcoming 3.4 release in November, while pre-ordering is available too. On other BSD news, Simon Schubert has offered to provide daily snapshots of DragonFly, the recent FreeBSD 4.x fork.

A common security breach involves exploiting one application to gain access to another. Keeping separate applications separate can limit the potential damage. Mike DeGraw-Bertsch explains how FreeBSD's jails can help secure necessary applications. On other FreeBSD news, a specific schedule for the release of FreeBSD 4.9 is now available.

"Prejudices and misconceptions about Microsoft make it hard to evalute the company's merits. The biggest myths about Microsoft are that its desktop products are overpriced, it doesn't respect its customers, and reliability and security are poor. And some think the company is downright evil. In nearly two decades of studying Microsoft, I've been able to dig through the hype that the company generates, as well as the misconceptions its detractors create, to see more of the real company than most of you can ever experience." Read the opinion-piece at InternetWeek, written by Rob Enderle.

GTK+ 2.2.4 is now available for download here. This is a bug fix release and is source and binary compatible with previous releases in the 2.0 and 2.2 series. This is an emergency release to fix a critical GtkTreeView problem which broke context menus in several applications.

The GNOME Desktop 2.4 Release Candidate 1: "Kublai", is available for immediate download on ftp.gnome.org and mirrors.

A Singapore-based company claims to have created in operating system for mobile devices that can run software created for Windows, Linux, and Palm platforms. Called MXI, the OS "performs a sophisticated form of emulation that enables the non-native program to perform as smoothly and quickly as it would on its native OS." It also includes a server-based component for connected devices that allows the heavy lifting to be performed on the server side. I'll file this in the "I'll belive it when I see it" folder.

SciTech Software, Inc. today announced that it is has released SciTech SNAP Graphics for Linux 2.0 – The Simple Driver Solution. This release is based on SciTech’s SNAP (System Neutral Access Protocol) architecture and targets the Linux enterprise markets with a host of features designed to reduce the total cost of ownership associated with maintaining Linux on corporate enterprises. Read more for the rest of the press release.

An identified security issue in Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications could allow an attacker to compromise a Microsoft Windows-based system and then take a variety of actions. Windows and Office users should update their system.

Built on grid computing and due to debut at Oracle World, Oracle 10G marks the company's biggest technology release in a decade. Can Oracle tackle the grid & PeopleSoft, too? Read it at eWEEK.