OSNews had the privilege to play with the upcoming B.E.O.S. bootable CD recently. The test/demo CD is based on Knoppix but it runs a BeOS-like app_server and toolkit on top of XFree86 and it is carefully optimized for extra speed.

Several days ago I wrote a rather scathing article about my utter dismay and disappoint with Mandrake 9.1 and by association, Linux as a whole. Since then I have had many many flames and equally as many agreeing emails (is there a simple opposite word for flame?) Since then I have been trying, really really trying to get my system working fully. But time and again I'm coming up against the same brick wall of (un)usability, computer esotericism and down right idiocy.

HP will not make further investments in Gnome and they will stick with CDE for their HP-UX operating system. This is a bummer for Gnome, but not all is bad today, as the Bitstream Vera TTF fonts for X11 are out of beta and available to download (read the release notes and get a newer freetype/fontconfig though, as it fixes some problems when using these fonts).

Put yourself in his/her shoes. You're a budding young technical writer and the one word you hear popping up in almost every tech-related conversation is, you guessed it, Linux. Now look in the mirror and try to tell yourself you're more than a writer. After all, you write about technology because it not only interests you, but you're accurate and fair enough to tell it like it is. Maybe not.

Open-source software is indeed vulnerable to claims of patent infringement. But lawyer Steven Frank says that doesn't mean the legal floodgates are about to open.

Novell will take the "immature" Linux operating system and turn it into a" robust, reliable and scaleable" enterprise-class operating system. Read the interview with Novell CEO, here. Update: Two more Novell-Linux articles here and here.

This is an editorial by Brad Chamberlin on how he sees Mandrake Linux's 9.1 usability. Before starting bashing the author , take note that he is a Mandrake user for many years, but he is sensitive on UI and usability issues. This user likes a clean, logical and well-thoughout experience and he simply outlines the unpolishness and incosistency that a user finds on any Linux distribution today, not just on Mandrake.

An interesting Palladium editorial is at Linux-mag, going through the pros and cons of the technology.

A few days ago we featured an interview with one of Fink's project leaders regarding their package management solution which breeds more Unix software to MacOSX. Today, we host an interview with Jordan Hubbard regarding the DarwinPorts, speaking for the DarwinPorts Team which a similar effort to bring more Unix software on Mac OS X. Jordan is currently working at Apple and OpenDarwin (while many will know Jordan as the FreeBSD co-founder).

SuSE released the "live" bootable CD of SuSE Linux 8.2 for everyone to try out this new version of the OS. More details here.

Novell plans to launch at BrainShare 2003 this week the open beta of NetWare 6.5 and update attendees about its Liberty Identity Provider for eDirectory and exteNd 5 Web services platform. The company is expected to announce not only the open-beta availability of NetWare 6.5, code-named Nakoma, but its slated release date of June, sources said. Also, Novell adopts Linux as NetWare migration path.

Apple is on the verge of announcing a trio of speed-bumped eMacs, sources confirmed to Think Secret. 'Highly reliable' sources said that Apple's consumer eMac lineup will be expanded to three models at 800MHz and 1GHz, and with larger hard drives. But other changes are also in store.

The paper considers a mathematical model of the behavior of an assembly of N stars. The 'Kepler' Microsoft Windows demo application based of this model enables to perform real-time simulation of star clusters dynamics for N~=2500. Such performance rate is possible through the use of the Intel Integrated Performance Primitives (IPP) library. The paper also estimates the efficiency of the IPP application and provides an example of C-code with the IPP functions calls. Computer-simulated images of the spiral galaxy forming process, as well as the real galaxies photos, are presented.

The new issue of the LinuxJournal magazine features two articles, a preview of the 2.6 kernel and an article regarding memory allocation: Keeping memory requirements low can save your time and money. Here's how to bend malloc() to your will.