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.

OneStat.com, today reported that Microsoft's Windows operating system has a global usage share of 97.46 percent. Microsoft's Windows still dominates the global operating system market. The global usage share of for Apple's Macintosh operating system is 1.43 percent and is the second most popular operating system in the world. The three most popular operating systems according to OneStat are: 1. Windows 97.46%, 2. Macintosh 1.43%, 3. Linux 0.26%. All numbers are an average of the last 2 months. The other big statistics company, StatMarket, placed (in June 2002) Microsoft at around 95%, MacOS at 2.4% and Linux around 0.35%.

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.

Microsoft has posted a position available for an engineer who will be responsible for researching modification chips that can be used to circumvent security on the Xbox, according to a ZDNet article. It looks like Microsoft is interested in heading off the efforts of the Xbox Linux Project. Currently, it is possible to install Linux on an Xbox and use it like a PC, but you must install a mod chip to circumvent the Xbox's "feature" that prevents an outside OS from booting from a CD.

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.

HP has fired Bruce Perens - the leading Open Source evangelist and former Debian project lead - for Microsoft-baiting, he says. "It came after a long, long warning," Perens told the New York Times. "The thing that I did that was most hazardous for HP is the Microsoft-baiting I tend to do."

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.

The latest release of Mac-On-Linux now includes MacOS X support. Check out these screenshots of MacOSX 10.2, also known as Jaguar, running under Linux. Please note that Mac-On-Linux is not an emulator, but it's more like VMWare, therefore, it can only run on some PPC hardware.

Mac OS X users know when a product doesn't quite "feel right", and so do product reviewers. Despite the similarities that seem to exist between the Microsoft Windows 95/98/2000 and Windows XP user interfaces (UI) and the Aqua interface of Mac OS X, there are significant appearance and behavioral differences. A successful Windows to Mac OS X transition requires abandoning key elements of the Windows user experience in favor of the Mac OS X alternatives. This document outlines typical areas of concern when porting a Microsoft Windows application to Mac OS X, and provides guidance for transitioning to the Mac OS X UI.

Slow news day today, so here is a new poll. Vote for the architecture that Apple should switch to, if such a switch is necessary. Please note that we did not include options like MIPS, SPARC or Crusoe as they do not make much sense at this point as suitable candidates for different reasons each. But the most popular choices are listed and awaiting your vote!

" Still, Open Source software fails to lead in many areas. This could be from a historical disadvantage -- the means of connecting and organizing people for sizable Open Source projects only recently became available and are only starting to approach the tight-knit nature of companies. But I think it's for a whole different reason. Open Source software lacks leadership, unity and direction." Read the editorial at NewsForge.

OSNews reader Don Cox writes: "Dock system for the new AmigaOS is shown here. The author is Stefan Robl, who also has an interesting Coldfire-based hardware project. Would users of Mac OS X like to compare this Amiga dock with the Mac one?" Our Take: The Dock for AmigaOS4 sounds good, but it does not look good. While it is said to be customizable, the defaults matter. I hope the author lose the background image for the dock, and instead deliver something professional-looking, refined and clean for the final version of the OS. Some alpha around the icons wouldn't hurt either.

Read the five newly released AMD x86-64 architecture tech documents in PDF format.

Roman Zippel recently released version 0.4 of his new configuration system for the 2.5 Linux kernel, a replacement for the aging CML currently in use. He has attempted to make the transition to this new system much simpler than was the case with CML2 in a hope to have it merged into the 2.5 kernel.