IBM today announced the availability of a 'special edition' of SciTech SNAP Graphics for OS/2. The SciTech System Neutral Access Protocol (SNAP) Graphics for OS/2 IBM Special Edition (a.k.a. SNAP Graphics/SE) is a set of graphic adapter device drivers (GRADD) supporting a variety of chip sets from the leading chip set manufacturers. SNAP Graphics/SE is the new compatible replacement for previous versions of SciTech Display Doctor for OS/2 IBM Special Edition (SDD/SE).

Nicolas writes: "This is an article I wrote with Fabien Vallon about GNUstep, published previously in Linux-mag in France, along with an interview of three core developpers of the GNUstep's project."

Slashdot carries a story about Sun trying to speed up the UI of Java applications by using native OS looks. Sun released J2SE version 1.4.2 beta1, release notes here. Footnotes ran an interview about the integration of Java and GTK+ and they feature three screenshots. In other developer/GTK+ news, Inti 1.0.7 is released. Inti is a C++ wrapper for GTK+ (similar to gtkmm).

Michael C. Barnes updates his in-depth look at leading desktop operating system options on the market. In this long 4-page exclusive article at DesktopLinux.com, Barnes addresses reader feedback to his popular first article and evaluates today's Linux distributions. Barnes offers practical considerations and discusses what software can best meet your home or office needs.

The main commercial company behind NetBSD is Wasabi Systems. The company has contributed advances and big chunks of code to the open source project, while they do offer a boxed release of NetBSD. However, their main business for the company is the embedded market and NetBSD is marketed as an embedded OS. Today, we talk to the Vice President of Wasabi Systems, Jay Michaelson.

Microsoft on Tuesday said that the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in April will certify Microsoft's programming language C# (pronounced C sharp) and the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI), which is underlying software "plumbing" that can run applications written in different programming languages.

The AROS team has updated their web site with new information about their operating system, plus a number of new screenshots. The team is also looking for active developers to help out the project.

Frank van der Linden has committed UFS2 code (based on FreeBSD's UFS2 by Marshall Kirk McKusick) to NetBSD. UFS2 is an extension to FFS. It adds 64 bit block pointers (breaking the 1T barrier) and support for extended file storage. On other BSD news, OpenBSD got a port of XFree86 4.3.0, while Kerneltrap features an article about the new 1:1 threading implementation that has been merged into FreeBSD -current.

This is by no means a technical review - it is just a summary of my experience as I was going along, installing and configuring a Red Hat Linux 9 machine. I installed the standard "workstation" installation on my 2 year old desktop machine. I like Gnome at home, KDE at work, but this review only covers my experience with the default Gnome installation.

The Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) version 3.0 for Windows 2000-SP3/XP/Server-2003 contains the tools and documentation you need to design, deploy, and support applications on these platforms.

John Siracusa from ArsTechnica, author of the famous 'Metadata, The Mac, and You' article, now comes back with an article that describes how a better Finder for Mac OS X should look like and behave.

"But now we have absolute confirmation that there is an X86-64 version of Windows for the Hammer platform and rather suitably Microsoft has codenamed it Anvil," TheInquirer claims. The existence of Opteron and Athlon64 processors with support from Microsoft, and even apparently its thorough endorsement, will put some serious pressure on Intel to re-examine its desktop 64-bit strategy" says another Inquirer article.

'To cross the chasm, an OS needs a big marketing machine behind it. Linux doesn't have one. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" stuff only goes so far.' Read the editorial by V. Ryan at OSOpinion.

Download the developer release of HelloWorld, a new chatting/community environment (with a backend connected to Gnutella for file sharing) that some people say that it could revolutionize the way we see the world via IM. The application currently works under Windows (the company might do an OSX port if there is enough demand for it) and the file weighs 24 MB.