"AOL sucks. There are many better, lower-cost ISPs. And Lindows sucks. There are many better, lower-cost Linux distributions available. These are articles of faith among sophisticated Internet and Linux users. But the Internet as a whole owes a lot to AOL and Steve Case, and Lindows is doing as much for Linux as AOL has done for the Internet, whether you like it or not." Roblimo editorializes.

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.

MySQL still lacks many features big customers want, but the software maker and CEO Marten Mickos have dazzling opportunities ahead. Intersting article, but too bad the article doesn't also mention PostgreSQL, BerkeleyDB and Firebird.

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."

"MacGuardians (German) report from CeBit that IBM's PowerPC 970 will debut at up to 1.8GHz as originally expected. (IBM's Microprocessor Forum presentation in October 2002 indicated initial speeds for the PowerPC 970 ranging from 1.4GHz - 1.8GHz). The 2.5GHz models described in an IBM press release more recently are reportedly for the subsequent generation of 970's, but will apparently utilize the 0.13 Micron Process, contrary to ZDNet's report." The article is at MacRumors.

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.

Some users swear by Aqua interface of MacOS X, others proclaim the desktop-readiness of Linux, the polished presence of Windows XP, or expound upon the stately Solaris as the ultimate operating system. All of these users are wimps.

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.

"When considering emulation, should companies count on a product like CodeWeavers to serve a limited number of applications, or should they choose software that requires them to buy licenses for Windows but can run more applications?" Read Zonker's article at NewsFactor.

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.

eWeek reviews the Gnome 2.2 release and rates it as "good" overall.

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."

Mike Janger writes: "What is Open Croquet? Alan Kay (one of the inventors of Smalltalk, one of the fathers of object oriented programming, conceiver of the laptop computer, inventor of much of the modern windowing GUI, etc.) is working on it. But what IS it? Have you guys looked into it?" I downloaded its 90 MB late last night. It's an 'academic' project featuring a futuristic OS 3D environment running through the Squeak environment on Windows or Mac. It requires a supported 3D accelerator (however, it didn't work with my Voodoo5 in hardware mode so it was painfully slow).

BeOSJournal features a short article about the presentation of YellowTAB's Zeta (BeOS-based Dano/R6) operating system at CeBIT. Also, click to view three shots from their new window manager design.