The new FreeBSD 4.8 Release schedule has been announced. Hidetoshi Shimokawa has added new functionality to Firewire on this scheduled FreeBSD 4.8 release. New features include built-in DV support, improved recovery process & timeout stability and Write/ioctl support for /dev/fwmem0. He has not tested this on PAL and is looking for volunteers.

Espen Sand announces the availability of first preview of Opera 7 for Linux. The Linux specific features from 6.1 no longer exist, the new preview release comes with an email and news client. You can pick from a static or shared (dynamically linked) packages. Read the email and get the download links from BSDForums. Additionally, Opera released yesterday a funny version of Opera 7 for Windows, as an answer to the MSN problems. In other browser news, Apple released a third Safari beta (v60) recently.

Red Hat and Intel have settled a licensing hiccup that threatened to prevent the Linux company from contributing to Intel's open-source project--a reminder of the frictions that can arise between the commercial tech world and the open-source community.

Red Hat and Mandrake are cutting support for older versions of their Linux distributions... The results will be a security nightmare for the Internet, says Jon Lasser.

At January's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, PC Magazine editor-in-chief Michael Miller talked with Microsoft chairman and chief software architect Bill Gates. The conversation ranged from Tablet PCs and Microsoft's effort—dubbed SPOT—to infuse watches and other everyday objects with online intelligence, Longhorn, to a slated Xbox Live showdown between Gates and NBA star Shaquille O'Neal. "I'm a little worried," Gates conceded, regarding the face-off with Shaq.

"Andrew Zamler-Carhart of KavaSoft, maker of iConquer, was kind enough to answer our questions this week, and here on a Friday morning, we're posting them for our inquisitive readers. He talks about the upcoming version 2 of iConquer, Rendezvous technology in MacOS X and the perils of being a game programmer." Read the full interview at MacSlash.

Plexuscom, a designer and manufactures of broadband Internet access solutions and appliances, has reached an agreement with Genesi Sarl to produce and deliver limited quantities of the PegasosPPC computer for release at CeBIT 2003. Genesi and Plexuscom will share a Booth at CeBIT, 12-19 March in Hannover, Germany. Read the specs and see the pictures at the morphos-news.de site.

"When Sun Microsystems got started in 1982, companies such as Wang and Data General dominated the hardware business. In less than a decade, this upstart Unix outfit was a billion-dollar-plus phenom while the once-mighty minicomputer makers had been consigned to irrelevance." Read the commentary on ZDNews and a comment a few days ago, explaining Sun's Linux strategy, which is different of what IBM, DELL or HP does with Linux. Also, another Sun article says that Java servers feel the open source heat.

FreeBSD team's Scott Long lays out a roadmap for FreeBSD-5 stable in this informative email. He says that although the latest release of FreeBSD 5 marks a major milestone in FreeBSD's history, there are significant improvements necessary in the areas of SMP, kernel lockdown, performance, network driver stability, ACPI and much more. He also presents a tentative schedule for the rest of the year for FreeBSD 5.1 and 5.2 releases.

Lindows has aimed to become the GNU/Linux distribution for anyone coming from Windows to Linux (hence the name). They have, without a doubt, pushed the envelope for marketing and pushed the Linux operating system into the mainstream media and retailers. Still, does LindowsOS have what it takes to be the victor of the Penguin Shootout? Find out at OfB.biz.

"Sun Microsystems' Java software and Solaris operating system haven't always gotten along, an internal memo indicates, but Sun says it has fixed the problems in the two years since the memo was written. The version of Java for Solaris is a poor choice for many types of programs, is slow to load, isn't well-supported within Sun and requires too much memory to run, several Sun engineers said in the memo." Read the rest at ZDNet.

Build 68 is now available from FTP's and via the Update Wizard (fixed SVIdir in keytable init script, kdeconfig: LANG support in startkde, changed KDEDIR to /opt/kde2, ktip now shows Desktop/LX Welcome, uses viewlets profile and 48 pixel image, defattr(-, root, root), updated FAQ for helpcenter, added khtml security patch).

The MacOSX 10.2.4 Update delivers enhanced functionality and improved reliability for the following applications, services and technologies: Address Book, Classic compatibility, Finder, FireWire, Graphics, OpenGL, and Sherlock. It includes AFP and Windows file service improvements, as well as audio, disc recording, graphics, and printing improvements.

LIUtilities's WinBackup is a backup program for Windows 98/NT/ME/2000 and XP. Despite it's low cost ($50 boxed, $30 for a downloadable version) and small size (under 2 Mb) WinBackup has a ton of features including built in CD/DVD burning support and 256-bit encryption.