After almost five years and with over 330,000 participants Distributed.net has finally solved the RC5-64 64-bit encrypted key Challenge. The best day was equivalent to the power of "32,504 800MHz Apple PowerBook G4 laptops or 45,998 2GHz AMD Athlon XP machines"! To solve this challenge huge teams were formed, the most powerful team was assembled by the Dutch Tweakers.net website, while my personal favorite, Team RC5 Amiga, earned a honorable 7th place.

What is BSD? If you ask a typical computer "expert," he or she is likely to reply (incorrectly!) that it is "an operating system." The correct answer, however, is more complex than that. BSD is -- among other things -- a culture, a philosophy, and a growing collection of software, most (though not all) of which is available for free and with source code.

It is hard to believe that Windows XP is only just coming up to its one year anniversary; it feels like it has been with us for a lot longer than that. Perhaps it is due to the long running beta that took place before its release or maybe I have just managed to settle down with Windows XP far quicker than I have done with any of the previous Windows operating systems. Read the rest of the editorial at ActiveWin.

Sun in August joined IBM, HP and Dell in offering Linux as a server operating system. A month later, IBM expanded its prepackaged Linux server offerings. Even Apple computers can be purchased with Linux preinstalled. Clearly, the Linux bandwagon is gathering speed -- Sun has said it anticipates a 30 percent annual growth rate -- but where is it going? For the first time in years, Microsoft’s unassailable lead in computer operating systems is being challenged by manufacturers offering Linux software. Even a puny challenge is better than none. Read more at Economist.

Unanswerable questions of our time, number one: If you're so smart, why ain't you rich? And number two: If your new PC's so much better than your old one, how come it don't work properly? Having a gigabyte of fast memory and a 2GHz processor is, for a computer, like having a Mensa-grade IQ is for us humans: looks great on paper but in practice it just means you get into more trouble faster. Read the editorial at ZDNet.

New tools will boost developers' ability to create cross-platform applications for sophisticated mobile devices. Enterprise tools are also on the way.

Countless things have been said from both camps about the changes Red Hat did to both Gnome and mostly KDE for their upcoming OS, Red Hat 8.0, codenamed "Psyche". Read more to vote if you favor the UI changes needed to make a desktop OS to look and feel unified troughout the whole spectrum of applications it comes with, or you are favoring the idea that... Red Hat just tries to hurt KDE, possibly on purpose, just for the kicks of it... Let the community of users decide!

From MandrakeLinux.com: Mandrake 9.0 is out and it's been certified LSB 1.2-compliant today (ProSuite Edition). It's called + Dolphin. It's a major evolution in the Linux-desktop field, and will also empower your servers like never before. Read the press-release, discover all the great and unique features, pre-order it at MandrakeStore.com. Download is available through the usual mirrors, and Club Members benefit from an extended range of download places.

From MacMinute: Apple today announced that it is "open-sourcing" the code for the company's Rendezvous networking technology. Rendezvous, based on open Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Standard Protocols, uses industry standard networking protocols and zero configuration technology to automatically discover and connect devices over any IP network.

The information that I could find on the web about Sprint’s new '3G' high-speed data service was a little short on solid information, so I spoke with Kevin Packingham, Senior Manager of Business Marketing for SprintPCS’ new Vision service. I sought him out because Ubiquitous, affordable high speed wireless data services are something of a holy grail for tech-savvy road warriors like myself, so I received each morsel of information about Sprint’s new service with great interest. Mr. Packingham spoke over the phone and he clarified many of the questions that I had about the new service.

Woody has received scant attention from Linux websites compared to other recent Linux distributions. Debian "Woody" 3.0r0 was released on July 19, 2002; but months later, there have been few reviews of Woody online (one, in French). Read more for the link to the full DebianPlanet.org editorial.

The Linux community has been buzzing about LindowsOS since its original announcement over a year ago. With Michael Robertson, founder of mp3.com, at the helm, it was heralded as a Linux that could seamlessly run all of your Windows applications. As details became available, the skepticism of the community grew and with the LindowsOS general release only months away, no one is quite sure what to make of Lindows.com and their product, LindowsOS. We tested Lindows 2.0 and we today present the most in-depth review ever written for this much-talked OS, accompanied by a number of shots.

Cosmoe version 0.5.7 was released on Monday, September 23rd. A snapshot of the progress on DirectFB-based Cosmoe 0.6 is also available for developers who wish to work on it. Check the mailing list for more information.

Opera Software has posted some preview versions for Opera 6.1, both for FreeBSD (natively) and Linux. In other browser news, Phoenix 0.1 was released, which is meant to be a lighter version of Mozilla. Update: Opera 6 for Mac is now also available.