The underlying operating system in Mac OS X (Jaguar) actually has a long history stretching back to BSD UNIX and CMU Mach. Bud Tribble will cover in this video its interesting evolution and its place in the current line-up of mass market operating systems. Topics include: the miracle (and challenges) of actually providing ease of use on top of BSD, the interaction of Mac OS X with the open-source software community (Darwin) and recent developments in Mac OS X (Rendezvous networking, Safari browser, X Window Server support, OpenGL, Java tools).

DistroWatch reports that a new development release of Lycoris Desktop/LX is out, Build 75. Several package updates have been noted; the more prominent among them are gftp 2.0.14, licq 1.2.6 samba 2.2.8a, wget 1.8.2 and xawtv 3.85.

I keep reading all these tales of woe of people having bad experiences with Linux. Sure, I've had my own bad experiences, across many an OS, but just lately I've been running a Red Hat Linux 9 desktop full-time at home and have yet to run into any major issue. What follows is an overview of my personal experiences with Linux. But first, a bit about me.

TomsHardware has an extensive benchmark of the AMD Opteron system, Extremetech has a long analysis of the CPU itself, while NewsForge reviews SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8.0 on AMD Opteron hardware. Read more for the Mandrake press release about their 64-bit version of Linux for the Opteron.

CodeWeavers has released CrossOver Office 2.0.0. This new version adds support for Photoshop 7.0 (other versions of Photoshop work as well), Word XP, Excel XP, and PowerPoint XP. Photoshop even has support for tablets under Linux. There is now a trial version of CrossOver Office available for download. DesktopLinux.com previews the upcoming CrossOver Office 2.0 release from CodeWeavers that introduces support for Adobe Photoshop, among other featured enhancements. Embedded Linux support engineer, and former Adobe test engineer, Cal Erickson gives the new release extensive testing.

Apple is readying to launch an online service that will cut straight to the core of digital music distribution, winning the praise of some record executives who see it is as a weapon against online piracy. Apple's new service will feature songs from all five major record labels, link with its iTunes music software and allow for easy downloading to the iPod, Apples popular digital music player, people familiar with the matter said.

The Microsoft Corporation is in the process of developing the next major version of the C# language. This article contains information regarding four key new features, including generics, iterators, anonymous methods, and partial types.

Apple Computer Inc. is planning to put the user at the center of its next major release of Mac OS X. According to sources, that's the umbrella term the Cupertino, Calif., Mac maker is applying to an arsenal of innovative new features in store for Mac OS X 10.3, a k a "Panther," reportedly due to ship in September. They said User at the Center features will make it simpler for individual users to personalize their computing experience and to move seamlessly among Macs and other devices.

In the past year, Microsoft appears to have done just what it asked a court not to make it do: fragment Windows. Our Take: I believe that this article doesn't have all its facts right and it is just an overreaction. Windows currently has three big families (XP, Server and embedded -- code-wise makes sense to be different as they serve different purposes), but the sub-versions for these families are not all that different, hence there is no real fragmentation, but merely, customization (with compatibility tightly kept firm) in order to have different price ranges and attract more customers.

Over at NewMobileComputing, we've got a new article that explores the various methods that wireless telecom firms are offering for high speed packet-based data services. There's been some controversy over whether the CDMA2000 1x networks are really "3G" or are "2.5G" like GPRS. This article explores the controversy, and tries to get to the bottom of what constitutes a true 3G network.

The K42 group is developing a new high performance, open source, general-purpose operating system kernel for cache-coherent multiprocessors. They are targeting next generation servers ranging from small-scale multiprocessors that we expect will become ubiquitous, to very large-scale non-symmetric multiprocessors that are becoming increasingly important in both commercial and technical environments.

PostgreSQL is a robust, next-generation, Object-Relational DBMS (ORDBMS), derived from the Berkeley Postgres database management system. "PostgreSQL is one of the best-managed open source projects out there" a friend-in-the-know told me about 2 years ago, so today we feature a mini-interview with five members of the PostgreSQL team about their plans on the popular DB.

Steven Garrity, graphics designer at ActsofVolition writes: "I've been conducting a user interface experiment with myself as the subject. A long-time Windows user and armchair graphical user interface critic, I have spent a week working in Mac OS X. What follows is my review of the experience."

"I was Running Opera on a nephew's system, specifically ver 7.03 US - the adware version. I didn't mind ignoring the ads too much, and even occasionally clicked on a few to feed the clikthru hungry bannerati. Lo and behold, without entering any voluntary location data, and always entering such info in a dodgy fashion when it was a "required field", the banner ads started getting personal, or at least - local, advertising businesses very close by. It seemed as if the browser might be feeding back URL lists, or perhaps, gasp, form field content, or XML. Naw... I thought - not Opera. I like those folks, and have recommended it to so many." Read the article at The Inquirer.