MandrakeSoft today announced the release of Mandrake Linux 9.0 for Opteron processors based on AMD 64-bit technology. This version of Mandrake Linux 9.0 for Opteron processors has been made available to MandrakeSoft's partners and is also available on several public FTP mirrors. This development will lead to a planned release in April 2003 of the 'Mandrake Linux Corporate Server 2.1' for AMD Opteron, a product dedicated to server deployment in medium to large accounts. Later in June 2003, MandrakeSoft will release 'MandrakeClustering' for Opteron, an easy-to-use clustering solution.

A thought-provoking ZDNet editorial talks about Intel's plans to bring the BIOS into the 21st century by making it more sophisticated and operating system-like. That will bring some welcome benefits to the PC world, but there are lurking dangers. The real birth of the PC platform was not IBM's invention of the PC or the release of the IBM PC Technical Reference Manual, but what rather Compaq's clean room rewrite of the PC BIOS. While IBM maintained proprietary control over the BIOS, it still had a stranglehold over the platform. Now, Intel wants to push through a new BIOS, and it's unlilkey that anyone will be able to pull off the clean room stunt again. Intel will own the PC platform going forward, even more than it already does.

Processors with Hyper-Threading technology can improve the performance of applications by permitting a single processor to process data as if it were two processors by executing instructions from different threads in parallel rather than serially. However, the potential performance improvement can be only obtained if an application is multithreaded by parallelization techniques. This article presents the multithreaded code generation and optimization techniques developed for the Intel C++/Fortran compiler. We conduct the performance study of two multimedia applications parallelized with OpenMP pragmas and compiled with the Intel compiler on the Hyper-Threading (HT) technology enabled Intel single-processor and multi-processor systems.

As it had promised, Microsoft said it will add support in Windows for the recently approved iSCSI storage standard, which allows storage networks to be built using existing Ethernet networks.

SCO's lawsuit filed in Utah last week claims that IBM integrated computer code belonging to another company into the Linux operating system, touching off speculation that the lawsuit could hurt other Linux companies, including Red Hat, the country's largest distributor of the software. Red Hat isn't involved in the dispute, but some analysts say that the Raleigh-based company won't be able to escape the fallout. "It's kind of irrelevant who wins the lawsuit," said Victor Raisys, analyst with Soundview Technology Group in San Francisco. "You can't take back the fact that someone has tried to claim intellectual property on Linux. The genie is out of the bottle."

To play a bigger role in the development of computers — as well as software — Microsoft has formed a major new division to produce specialized versions of Windows and build prototypes of computers of the future. Called the Extended Platforms Division, the group has 900 employees assembled from the Windows, research and business-productivity divisions. It also includes industrial designers and evangelists who will pitch the concept computers to manufacturers.

Top Linux seller Red Hat will unveil today a new phase in its plan to profit from a premium product, introducing a new lower-priced version of its Advanced Server software, along with a new brand name.

From Ars Technica: "The present article outlines what AMD hopes is the next step in x86's evolution: x86-64. As we'll see, x86-64 is more than just a 64-bit extension to the 32-bit x86 ISA; it adds some new features, as well, while getting rid of some obsolete ones."

SuSE Linux today unveiled the latest version of its Linux package - introducing an easy to use, application rich desktop for home users. Available April 14, SuSE Linux 8.2, sets a new milestone for ease of use - incorporating the latest versions of KDE 3.1 and Gnome 2.2.

The industry gorilla seeks to replace widespread opinion that it is arrogant, unaccountable and monopolistic with a new perception as a softer, gentler giant following a subtle shift in the way it deals with clients and competitors. Additionally, the software giant has renamed its division responsible for software used to manage Windows servers, as the company prepares to update management tools at a conference next week.

This article is a followup to an article I wrote on 2-20-2003 about my experiences choosing a Linux distribution that would suit my needs and wants. My principal requirements for an OS are that it be powerful and up to date, easy to use and set up--I don't mind using the command line and I don't mind editing a file here and there, but I like doing this type of editing for fun, not because I have to. I also want an OS that is fast and looks nice on my PII 450 with about 350 MB of RAM.

"In eWeek Labs' tests of the second beta of Microsoft's Office 2003, we indeed found it more polished than Office XP in all the expected places, but what will really set Office 2003 apart when it ships this summer is its suitewide integration of XML. This should enable users and enterprises to work with their information in new, more efficient and creative ways." Read the review at eWeek.

Most of the savings from Linux desktops come from reduced administration costs--like rolling a custom RPM-based load that installs itself. Read the article online at LinuxJournal. On the printed version of the new issue of the LinuxJournal magazine, you will find "The Grand Unified Desktop" by Marco Fioretti: "Applications written for a variety of toolkits are coming together in a free best-of-breed desktop. To work together seamlessly, though, they need to follow important new standards."

MorphOS-news.de reports: "Emeric SH has pubished a review about his Pegasos with MorphOS. Although it's written completely in Hungarian it looks really nice. Also included are some screenshots of BirdieShoot and Knights&Merchants." If the article is translated to english, we will post a link to this story, as an update. Update: English translation here.