Following features are supported in the upcoming SkyOS 4 version: Multiple UHCI controllers, common HCD driver, USB Driver and interface, USB HUB Class driver and Mass storage class driver. So you can use you USB harddisks/floppy/cdrom/card-readers or digital cameras already. The USB/UHCI driver supports all transfer types (Interrupt, Control, Bulk, ISO). Additionally, the USB system is intergrated into SkyOS. Just plug your device into your USB Hub's, it will be detected and initialized automatically.

"Apple has filed for a patent that suggests the company is working on a new mobile device capable of supporting multiple users. Either that or it's cunningly trying to outflank Microsoft's lead on fast multi-user switching by retrospectively patenting the technique as its own. The application, number 0030107606, is entitled 'Multiple personas for a mobile device'. It describes how a computer system's settings can be immediately changed to reflect a new "persona" when the user chooses from a list of available personae using a graphical user interface displayed on the computer's screen." Read it at The Register. Elsewhere, Think Secret published the fourth installment of its "Inside Panther" series.

From the DOT: The KDE on Cygwin project, which produces ports of Qt and KDE to Windows using Cygwin and Cygwin/XFree86, announced that the native Win32 port of the Qt3 GPL library has been started, mainly driven by Richard Lärkäng at the moment. The plan is to provide a base for a future native KDE port. Several screenshots of the ongoing port are available. Richard is seeking developers, who don't have access to the original Qt Windows sources, to help him.

A recent article by Tony Smith from The Register titled "Mac OS X 10.3 Panther will not be a 64-bit OS" caused a good deal of confusion with many people, including me. It is also caused a heated argument here on OSNews. The basic point of the article is that Mac OS 10.2.7 and 10.3 are not "true" 64-bit OSes, but the article does not clearly explain what a "true" 64-bit OS is. This had led to a lot of claims that the article is false or misinformed, rather than just unclear, which is certainly is.

The GNOME Project announced the availability of the GNOME 2.2.2 Desktop and Developer Platform. The 2.2.x series is devoted to bugfixes, translations, and general polish of our major 2.2 stable release. The project strongly recommends upgrading to 2.2.2, as it contains large amounts of improvements.

A previously secret licensee of SCO Group's Unix intellectual property has revealed its identity: UNIX leader Sun Microsystems. Sun, the No. 1 seller of UNIX servers, licenses broader rights to Unix and gets the option to buy a stake in the company that owns those rights.

TheAge reports: The Top five of the top 10 hosting providers for the month of June, measured in terms of those whose sites experienced the fewest failed requests and provided the fastest connection times, are all running the FreeBSD operating system, data from Netcraft shows.

Microsoft released a test version of its new speech-recognition server software, hoping to stake a claim in the market for companies wanting to automate customer service and other functions. Elsewhere, Wading into a debate triggered by a recent Harvard Business Review article, Microsoft's Paul Flessner says the proffered policy prescription won't cure what's really ailing the computer industry.

Lindows.com, which tries to make the Linux operating system more consumer-friendly, has introduced a version of the OS that runs directly from a CD-ROM, for $30 USD.

This article explores the new Python 2.3 itertools module, and gives you a sense of the new expressive power available with combinatorial iterators and how iterators -- conceived as lazy sequences -- are a powerful concept that opens new styles of Python programming.

This article started life when I was asked to write a comparison of x86 and PowerPC CPUs for work. We produce PowerPC based systems and are often asked why we use PowerPC CPUs instead of x86 so a comparison is rather useful. While I have had an interest in CPUs for quite some time but I have never explored this issue in any detail so writing the document proved an interesting exercise. I thought my conclusions would be of interest to OSNews readers so I've done more research and written this new, rather more detailed article. This article is concerned with the technical differences between the families not the market differences.

Until Red Hat's improvements make it into the Linux kernel, sysadmins are going to have to decide whether hyperthreading benefits their user setups. That may be a hassle, but it beats taking a performance hit from a feature that is supposed to do just the opposite. Read the article at NewsFactor.

SuSE Linux plans to start shipping its Linux-based Standard Server 8 software worldwide in September. Beta version will be available next week.

Magnetic Systems put together seven MorphOS-related mpeg videos, included two MorphOS-specific ones and a Mac-On-Linux one.