Sun Microsystems made two strategic moves Monday to answer calls from its user base, by announcing the company's first general-purpose server to run Linux and bringing back a version of its Solaris operating system that runs on Intel chips. From September, Sun will offer Solaris x86 8.0, alongside Linux on its new 'Big Bear' Intel hardware that it will announce this morning in San Francisco. And from early next year, Solaris 9.0 for Intel will be an option, too. Read the news at InfoWorld and TheRegister. Our Take: It seems that the SecretSix team made it! x86 Solaris 9 is back!

The prospect that a vital element of Microsoft's .NET will debut in a Java IDE has come a step closer. A plug-in that connects Microsoft's Corp's C Sharp programming language with the Eclipse Framework has been built by Puteaux, France-based Improve SA. Eclipse is built in Java's Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT). Read the report at TheRegister.

"As the economic downturn has taken its toll on GNU/Linux companies, many surviving companies have decided to move away from the desktop market, and focus on the server instead. This escalated to an alarming pace after the death of Eazel, a startup that created the Nautilus file manager, and while the focus-on-server mania has calmed down lately, it is still very much alive. Yet, it seems to me, that focusing on the server will in the end cause these companies to loose not only the desktop, but the server as well." Find out why at OfB.biz.

If there are two individuals in the Linux game scene today that they brought a lot and very good Free games to all Linux users, these should be Michael Speck of LGames and Bill Kendrick of NewBreedSoftware. Their games have been played not only by Linux users, but by users on all major platforms via the portability of the SDL game library. Today, we interview Michael Speck, regarding his games, his opinions about the Linux game market, about Linux's performance as a multimedia platform, his future plans and much more.

Sams Publishing sent us in "UNIX Unleashed", Fourth Edition, by Robin Anderson and Andy Johnston. Read further, for our review of this very interesting 1150-page book.

The company announced this week it will post nearly 300 new APIs to the Microsoft Developer Network on Aug. 28 as part of a plan to adopt some of the remedies proposed by the long-running antitrust settlement. Also touted is the September release of a Service Pack for Windows XP that's designed to let system manufacturers and users select or remove middleware offerings such as Internet Explorer browser, Media Player, Outlook Express, Microsoft Messenger, and Microsoft Java Virtual Machine. Read the full report at InfoWorld.

This article at OnLamp details the IRIX binary compatibility implementation for the NetBSD operating system. This includes the creation of a new emulation subsystem inside the NetBSD kernel and a lot of reverse engineering to understand and reproduce how IRIX internals work.

Slashdot runs an (unconfirmed so far though) story regarding Dell and other PC sellers, literally taking orders from Microsoft, that effectively from Aug, 26, are not allowed to sell PCs without an OS pre-installed. The rule does not specifically speak about not installing alternative OSes, but about having an OS always installed in the sold hardware. We should not forget the related Be, Inc.'s suit against Microsoft for the destruction of Be's business resulting from the anticompetitive business practices of Microsoft. Our Take: IF true, Microsoft is gone too far and they should answer for it or recall this rule to the hardware vendors immediately. I like some of Microsoft's technology, but their business practices continue to be as smelly as ever. UPDATE: We contacted MicroTel's Rich Hindman regarding their "no OS" PCs sold through Wal-Mart, and here is what he replied for the OSNews readers:

The GNOME 2.0.1 Desktop Release Candidate 1, "Not Considered Harmful", 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. In this release candidate, you'll see the results of the project's user interface review, and continued performance and stability fixes: 706 total GNOME2 bugs marked fixed in past six weeks, 317 high or greater priority bugs marked fixed in past six weeks. Update: You can also download GNOME 2-Beta1 for Sun Solaris 8/9.

Terra Soft Solutions, Inc., the leading developer of integrated PowerPC Linux solutions announced today availability of Apple computers with Yellow Dog Linux pre-installed. Terra Soft, an Apple Authorized VAR, is able to provide custom configured stand-alone units or clusters while maintaining the full Apple warranty. While installation of Linux on PowerPC has greatly improved, pre-installed systems boot directly to Yellow Dog Linux, saving time with installation and configuration.

This interview took place just a few months ago, but for some reason we didn't got around in publishing it. (oops... :-) Some things have changed since the interview took place, but most of the information presented there is still valid. Read more for the interview with Xandros' VP, Mr. Michael A. Bego.

IBM is disclosing the technical details of a new 64-bit PowerPC microprocessor designed for desktops and entry-level servers. Based on the award winning Power4 design, this processor is an 8-way superscalar design that fully supports Symmetric MultiProcessing. The processor is further enhanced by a vector processing unit implementing over 160 specialized vector instructions and implements a system interface capable of up to 6.4GB/s. Read more here and here. The first article speculates that Apple might find a future in these new IBM CPUs. Update: News.com has an article too.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has said that building the company's .Net software architecture is more difficult than "getting to the moon or designing the 747. Read about it at News.com.

Lindows has extended the membership of all Insiders to a two year period starting at the general release. The price still remains at $99 dollars but now it is extended for two years. After the general release the price for the distribution and the subscription will be $129 dollars. The insider program will go up to $299 for a year. New ISO Build Updated to Xfree86 4.2 and added nVIDIA Detonator Driver 1.0-2960. Read the rest at PCLinuxOnline.