The GEOS operating system for the Apple II computer, once very much ahead of its time, has been officially re-released by its current owner, Breadbox Computer, LLC. You can now download it for free. I know it could already be downloaded from several dark corners of the Internet but I thought it might still be worth a note.

SciTech SNAP Graphics for Linux is a simple to use, easy to configure alternative to XFree86 Graphics Drivers. This latest release supports 125 graphics cards on multiple Linux distributions with full 2D acceleration and adds support for the latest hardware from ATI.

According to MacNN, sources are reporting that the latest developer release of Mac OS X "Panther" has changed its default shell from tcsh to bash. From ISPs using both OSX and Linux, it's kind of good news. It seem that Linux's popularity gives some kind of "prefered shell" status to bash.

PHP developers have just released PHP 4.3.3. This release fixes a large number of bugs and all users of PHP are urged to upgrade. Full list of fixes can be found in the news file . Read the release announcement here

Interview by David Ford with Jonathan Walther, on fantasy, literature, life and primarily Xouvert the branch of Xfree86, which he is leading.

Rumors have been flying about new 15" Powerbooks, and now we learn that Steve Jobs will be giving a keynote speech at Apple Expo 2003 in Paris on September 16. Though I'm sure it's being saved for one of Steve's "and one more thing" zingers at the end of the speech, it's pretty likely that new 15" Powerbooks (still with a G4, but with illuminated keyboard) will be released.

Hours ago Marcello Tosatti released Linux 2.4.22. This release marks the next version in the 2.4.x stable series of the kernel. A host of changes have been made to wireless networking, adaptec drivers and the ia64 port in addition to many other bugfixes. You can get this new release as a patch from here or as a complete package from here. Changelog here.

No more hours of compiling! Binary distributions of Java on FreeBSD are finally here. The FreeBSD Foundation today announced the availability of a binary distribution of the Java JDK version 1.3.1 for the widely used FreeBSD operating system.Wes Peters of the FreeBSD Core Team commented "This announcement hallmarks a new era of Java support for FreeBSD. Having easy to install binary Java packages will ensure that all users can enjoy the benefits of Java technology on the FreeBSD platform."

After months of speculation, Microsoft plans to give developers their first hard look at the next version of Windows in October.The Redmond, Wash., company expects to release a "developers preview" of the new operating system, code-named Longhorn, at its professional developers conference in Los Angeles. Although it won't be a full beta, or test, version, Microsoft executives have promised it will be more than just "slideware," software that companies haven't been using and don't know when it will be coming.

SGI will be bundling SuSE Enterprise Linux on its Altix 3000 64 processor servers and superclusters, beginning in October. SuSE will also provide 3rd-level support to SGI customers.

Arno Klenke has recently checked in the media framework to Syllable CVS. Functionality of this initial checkin is impressive, with video and audio playback in many common formats via the FFMpeg codec plugin, the ability to play multiple audio streams with stream mixing and video playback with video overlays or playback with a bitmap display on systems which do not support overlays. You can check out some screenshots of the Media Player and ColdFish in action.

"Miffy" has reviewed Eyetech's AmigaONE Power System which is based on the A1G4-XE motherboard at the AmigaWorld.net community portal. Also NeRP recently wrote an AmigaOne article illustrated with pictures of the motherboard.

The official project for the replacement of the SkyOS GUI, the SkyOS GUI Design Contest, is now underway. You may view the current submissions at the website here. If you would like to contribute a design, please read the instructions on the first page of the site. Submissions will be accepted until September 8th. At that point, the designs will judged in an open community vote. The top 3 designs will move on, and will be judged by the designers, the community, and Robert (creator of SkyOS). The new GUI will appear in SkyOS v5.0. Update: The site's earlier bandwidth problems have been solved.

OpenBSD's stateful packet filter, PF, has recently added passive OS fingerprinting capabilities. This new functionality allows one to design packet filtering policy based around the source operating system. It is based on Michal Zalewski's p0f. The functionality was also added to tcpdump.