Today is a solemn day of introspection and rememberance here in the United States, and we here at OSNews would like to send our condolances to those who lost loved ones in the attacks on the Pentagon and Twin Towers. Though most of the people of the world did not experience the attacks first hand, there are very few people in the world who were not affected by them in some way. I know it's a bit off-topic, but I'd like to open up a discussion thread today for people to air their feelings about the events of a year ago, and where they think things stand today. And if you read on, I'll get things started by talking a bit about what happened to me on that day and since.

Download the first release candidate of the new version of Gentoo Linux, 1.4. This version is built with GCC 3.2 and includes cutting edge versions of software. In the meantime, the founder and main architect of Gentoo Linux, Daniel Robbins, requests either financial support, sponsorship or even employment or contracting opportunities in order to continue to be able to work on Gentoo.

"The tall art deco building in Boston's Fenway neighborhood could easily be a courthouse, or some other seat of power. Signs in its windows proclaim "the awakening of the slumbering giant." If power can be described as the encapsulation of energy, power does reside there. And if the giant can be thought of as awakening for the first time, it's all perfectly consistent. For in this renovated relic of the first half of the 20th century resides Ximian, Inc." Read the report at LinuxAndMain.

Apple today announced that starting in January 2003, all new Mac models will only boot into MacOSX as the start-up operating system, though they will retain the ability to run most Mac OS 9 applications through Apple's bundled 'Classic' software. There are nearly 4,000 native applications now available for Mac OS X. In the meantime, Apple released iCal. iCal is an elegant personal calendar application that helps you manage your life and your time. iCal lets you keep track of your appointments and events with multiple calendars featuring at-a-glance views of upcoming activities by day, week or month.

Details of what Longhorn will actually be like are still unclear, as rumors spread on message boards and in chat rooms about how the operating system will function. Read the article at NewsFactor.

Chimera, the Gecko-based browser for OSX, reached version 0.5. Read its release notes.

The GNOME Desktop 2.0.2 Release Candidate 1, "The Considerable Duck", is now available. The GNOME 2.0.x Desktop releases are devoted to bugfixes, translations, user interface consistency, and general polish of our major 2.0 Desktop release. PCLinuxOnline also reports about Dropline GNOME, which is a version of the GNOME Desktop 2.x that has been tweaked for Slackware Linux systems. It is available in Slackware's standard .tgz package format, in addition to the usual source code.

Syllable developer Daryl Dudey is hard at work the last few months creating new preference panels for the Syllable operating system. Check out the screenshot. Additionally, Syllable is still looking for kernel & driver developers to join the enthousiastic team. Also, here's an updated installation guide for Syllable.

It is September, and that means brilliantly colored leaves, cooler weather, and a new Mandrake Linux release. As the big day for Mandrake Linux 9.0 approaches, Open for Business's Timothy R. Butler talked with Mandrake co-founder Gaël Duval about the company's past, present, and future.

Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 (SP1) is the most recent version of the Internet Explorer 6 core technologies in most Windows OSes.Total download size for a typical installation is approximately 25 MB. However, because setup downloads only those files that are necessary for your computer, this size can vary between 11 and 75 MB. In the beset case, users who have already applied the WindowsXP SP1, might only need to download a few KBs.

Sun Microsystems Inc.'s refusal to release Solaris 9 for non-Sun x86 hardware could backfire and drive developers and users to Linux or even Microsoft Corp. platforms, users said. Disgruntled x86 community developers and customers charge that Sun's refusal to reach a compromise is effectively making their investments in non-Sun x86 hardware obsolete. Supporters are so irked by Sun's intransigence that last week they placed an open letter in The Mercury News, of San Jose, Calif., accusing Sun Chairman, President and CEO Scott McNealy of taking the developer community for granted.

Too hot to handle: Intel aims to launch the P4 3.6 GHz in mid-2003. For this exclusive report, Tom's Hardware Guide tested CPUs of the future, bringing you benchmarks for P4s in the 3.6 GHz, 3.33 GHz and 3.06 GHz variations. The article also tests against the future AMD AthlonXP 3000+ and 3400+. Update: More information on Intel's plans and technogies for the future.

At my Rolla, Missouri, home, I have a desktop computer running Red Hat Linux and a laptop running Windows 2000. They are networked and I lived happily with that for a long time. This summer I had to stay in California for six weeks so I decided to take the laptop with me and send the desktop from Mailboxes Etc.

This is the brand new version of Simply GNUstep, a Linux distribution that only includes applications based on the GNUstep 1.4.0/GUI 0.8.0 APIs or WindowMaker's NeXT UI style. The ISO is 275 MB and this time can be installed on its own partition, however its new installer can cause problems on multi-boot PCs, so the author marked this release as a Developer Release 1. The distro was re-created from scratch (doesn't use Red Hat anymore) and it is built with GCC 3.1 for i586+. Screenshots available.