On a major visit to the UK this week, taking in customers, media briefings and other events, even including a dawn-'til-dusk day of golf with Gary Player, Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy has been doing his witty best to talk up his company's long-term prospects. But, Tony Hallett asks, does his vision of vertically-integrated technology and simplified computing stack up?

Libranet is a bit different than the other GNU/Linux distributions we are considering this time around. In an era when distributions are often judged by the glitz that their installer and customized desktop provides, Libranet has neither glitz nor much of a customized desktop. Read more at OfB.biz.

MenuetOS 0.74 is released and includes a Tiny email server, improved Http/Mp3 servers, Fasm 1.48, improved protection, skinning and font additions, Minesweeper and more. The OS is written in 100% assembly and is running off a floppy disk. However, developers are now adding support for a C library and they are looking for more developers to help with fixing the bugs and adding new features.

Here is a small benchmark test, testing various filesystems. Elsewhere, 10.3 Panther is tested on an iMac G3 600 Mhz and --except the reduced OpenGL performance (possibly because of changes in the QuartzExtreme that this iMac does not support with its ATi Rage Pro card)-- it is showing to be overall faster than 10.2 according to the XBench test suite. Update: More benchmarks. HP released new server speed-test results Wednesday that for the first time compare its version of Unix with Windows on the company's top-end Itanium server--and Unix came out ahead.

LinuxWorld preview: IBM on Wednesday will announce a new server; a DB2 Linux integrated clustering environment; extended Linux support for the Lotus client and server; as well as three key Tivoli offerings.

As new species of XML docs are emerging, vendors are unveiling increased RDBMS support for XML.

I am a happy G4 450MHz Cube user and I use it even more these days since I got the freebie iSight camera at WWDC last month. Now, picture this: The sound coming out of my speakers is often heard to the other chatter's speakers! I obviously needed a way to cancel the sound of my speakers, and the best way to do this would be to use headphones or use a special headset with a mic that cancels the general noise. Gotcha! The Cube doesn't have audio jacks at all. Enter Griffin Technology's iMic.

miray Software released the latest version of its embedded and PC operating system µnOS. Besides a number of runtime enhancements of the system core the new version 0.98 contains a vastly improved window server, an all-new intelligent console interface and new system utilities. A dedicated internet platform for developers and interested users will be launched by miray in the near future.

Fueled by lean IT budgets that demand results and a successful round of VC funding, Astaro is experiencing demand from small and large businesses that want an integrated solution for security with no vendor lock-in. DesktopLinux.com recently caught up with Astaro CEO Jan Hichert to discover that the company is not only developing Linux-only solutions, but has embraced open source practices, philosophy, and is even considering offering an OS-development fund.

YellowTAB announced today that their forthcoming Zeta OS will have full support for all three kinds of USB (on both USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 speeds): OHCI, EHCI and UHCI. BeOS 5 and Dano OSes from Be, Inc. only had limited USB 1.1 support, mostly working best with Intel chipsets. Additionally, the company announced that they internally moved to Perforce from CVS.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced the Solaris 9 8/03 Operating System for the SPARC and x86 platforms. The fourth update to the Solaris 9 Operating System, Solaris 9 8/03 features the integration of GNOME 2.0. Update: Sun releases Solaris 10 preview.

NeTraverse, today, announced the immediate availability of Win4Lin Terminal Server 2.5, based on the award-winning Win4Lin technology. Win4Lin Terminal Server allows an organization to dramatically lower costs by hosting and managing their Windows desktop sessions on low-cost, reliable and secure Linux servers. Read more for the rest of the press release.

Microsoft on Tuesday announced plans for new development tools, as the company continues to lay the groundwork for its next major database and operating system software releases.

Although Sun Microsystems Inc. discontinued sales several months ago of its customized Linux distribution, the company hasn't entirely abandoned its do-it-yourself Linux strategy: In its forthcoming bundle of desktop software, code-named Mad Hatter, the included Linux OS will be Sun's own.