IBM announced on Monday a microchip for personal computers that will crunch data in chunks twice as big as the current standard and is expected (but not confirmed yet) by industry watchers to be used by Apple. Apple was not available to comment, and IBM declined to comment on which computer makers would use the chip, but its plans would mark a change for the industry, which has emphasized the importance of the speed of a chip rather than its ability to handle heavy workloads. Read the report. Update: Read another report at ZDNews.

BeOS developer (and frequent OSNews reader) Robert Renling wrote an article about the history of BeOS for BeFaqs.com. The link is dead at the moment because of the Slashdot effect, but there is a Google cached copy available.

Computer scientist and entrepreneur David Gelernter believes computers should imitate life. That means rethinking what it means to manage knowledge—and replacing the current PC and Mac desktop with a "narrative structure." Read the article at CIOInsight.

"Oldtimer Linux gurus get rather cranky about graphical interfaces. Sissy, bloated, slow. If it is too easy it is suspect, unworthy of the true sysadmin. I think it's nice to have a rather more flexible perspective, and to rejoice in the wealth of choices." Read the article at EarthWeb.

There is more to OS life than just Mac, Unix and Windows. Robert Szeleney did some good work for the past few weeks, porting Quake I and II to SkyOS, GCC and binutiles and developing a text programmer's editor to help him further develop the OS on a self-hosted environment. In the meantime, Marcus Overhagen continues to develop for OpenBeOS a MediaKit clone off the original BeOS, while MenuetOS gets lots of advancements in networking lately, same as TriangleOS does (expect a new version and a kernel re-write too for this new OS). Additionally, Syllable gets a CVS freeze in preperation for version 0.4.2, while Daryl Dudey continues his truly remarkable work on Syllable's preference panels.

While we do not normally report on themes, this one is special. Remember a few months ago our article on a "random Gnome2-Limbo screenshot"? OSNews reader Jan Rosczak dived into coding and the result is the LightHouseBlue theme for GTK+ 1.x and 2.x, based on some of the suggestions found on that article. While there is still some work to be done (e.g. change some of my button/tab colors to not be so... loud :) the theme has already been accepted by users positively.

Signals are the difficult of part IRIX emulation. However, before examining the way they work on IRIX, let us study the signals implementation in NetBSD/mips. A user process enters the kernel by a trap. When a trap is caught, the hardware transfers control to the kernel. Assembly code in sys/arch/mips/mips/locore.S builds a trap frame (this is a struct frame, defined in sys/arch/mips/include/proc.h) on the kernel stack, in which CPU registers are saved. Then the trap() function from sys/arch/mips/mips/trap.c is called to handle the trap. Read the article at OnLamp.

Gartner analysts took out their crystal balls and came up with a list of ten predictions that will impact enterprise businesses. The predictions cross over technology, economics, and social boundaries over that will morph during the next eight years. Read the article at ZDNet.

Microsoft and its allies have quietly expanded an effort to gain acceptance for C#, the software giant's competitor to Java and a foundation for its next-generation Internet services. Read the report at CNet.

"Hi there. I'm sure many of you know that in addition to writing Linux articles, I'm also very involved in a free software project called Gentoo Linux. In this article, I'll try to explain what Gentoo Linux is all about and also tantilize you with all the neat things we have in the works for Gentoo Linux 1.4, which we're currently developing and should be available from our Web site by the time you read this article. So, what is unique about Gentoo Linux? Here are the answers." Daniel Robbins introduces Gentoo Linux.

Robin writes: Just a bit of silliness to lighten up your day: "If your school, charity or government agency is suddenly graced with a visit by Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer offering to donate a free operating system or desktop office software, Linux.com will match that offer. Our software offer has no strings attached to it whatsoever. You don't need to start paying for upgrades after a few years or anything like that. Too good to be true? Bill and Steve might think so, but we don't!"

"Since FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE in June 2002, we have updated a number of software programs in the base system, such as GCC and sendmail. Several new drivers have been added for USB devices and disk controllers. We have also incorporated updates for XFree86 and our Linux compatibility libraries. FreeBSD 4.7 also incorporates all of the security and bug fixes from 4.6.2 (released in August 2002), including several ATA-related bugfixes, updates for OpenSSL and OpenSSH, and fixes to address several security advisories." Announcement for FreeBSD 4.7 and release notes.

"Most people know of the Microsoft Windows range for the home which includes Windows 95, 98, 98 Second Edition, Millennium Edition (also know as ME) and the two XP's - Home and Pro. There are though a couple out there that not so many have heard of. Probably the better known of the two is Windows CE which is used on the majority of the PDA's on the market at the moment. The other one is Windows XP Embedded." Read the article at ActiveWin.

DistroWatch reports that Lycoris has released a new beta version of Lycoris Desktop/LX - build 53. Besides usual bug fixes, the inclusion of ALSA sound packages seems to be the only major addition. Report bugs in the Build 53 Bugs forum. Also, a couple of new products have been recently announced by Lycoris - these links will take you on a tour of the ProductivityPak and the Desktop/LX InterConnect.