The Qwt library contains GUI Components and utility classes which are primarily useful for programs with a technical background. Beside a 2D plot widget it provides scales, sliders, thermometers, wheels and knobs to control or display values, arrays, or ranges of type double. In the meantime, Trolltech released Qtopia 1.6 beta, A complete mobile computing platform.

TinyOS is a component-based runtime environment designed to provide support for deeply embedded systems which require concurrency intensive operations while constrained by minimal hardware resources. For example, originally designed for the Smart Dust hardware platform, our scheduler fits in under 200 bytes of program memory.

LinuxWatch.org hosts two (rather short) reviews this week, for Lycoris B-53 and for Lindows 2.0.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer knows what it's like to be in the hot seat. The company he leads has been under fire for a controversial new licensing programme that raised prices considerably for some customers. A high-profile initiative to deliver web services is on the rocks. And the threat from the open-source Linux operating system is stronger than ever. Read the interview at Silicon.com.

IBM announced on Monday a microchip for personal computers that will crunch data in chunks twice as big as the current standard and is expected (but not confirmed yet) by industry watchers to be used by Apple. Apple was not available to comment, and IBM declined to comment on which computer makers would use the chip, but its plans would mark a change for the industry, which has emphasized the importance of the speed of a chip rather than its ability to handle heavy workloads. Read the report. Update: Read another report at ZDNews.

BeOS developer (and frequent OSNews reader) Robert Renling wrote an article about the history of BeOS for BeFaqs.com. The link is dead at the moment because of the Slashdot effect, but there is a Google cached copy available.

Computer scientist and entrepreneur David Gelernter believes computers should imitate life. That means rethinking what it means to manage knowledge—and replacing the current PC and Mac desktop with a "narrative structure." Read the article at CIOInsight.

"Oldtimer Linux gurus get rather cranky about graphical interfaces. Sissy, bloated, slow. If it is too easy it is suspect, unworthy of the true sysadmin. I think it's nice to have a rather more flexible perspective, and to rejoice in the wealth of choices." Read the article at EarthWeb.

There is more to OS life than just Mac, Unix and Windows. Robert Szeleney did some good work for the past few weeks, porting Quake I and II to SkyOS, GCC and binutiles and developing a text programmer's editor to help him further develop the OS on a self-hosted environment. In the meantime, Marcus Overhagen continues to develop for OpenBeOS a MediaKit clone off the original BeOS, while MenuetOS gets lots of advancements in networking lately, same as TriangleOS does (expect a new version and a kernel re-write too for this new OS). Additionally, Syllable gets a CVS freeze in preperation for version 0.4.2, while Daryl Dudey continues his truly remarkable work on Syllable's preference panels.

While we do not normally report on themes, this one is special. Remember a few months ago our article on a "random Gnome2-Limbo screenshot"? OSNews reader Jan Rosczak dived into coding and the result is the LightHouseBlue theme for GTK+ 1.x and 2.x, based on some of the suggestions found on that article. While there is still some work to be done (e.g. change some of my button/tab colors to not be so... loud :) the theme has already been accepted by users positively.

Signals are the difficult of part IRIX emulation. However, before examining the way they work on IRIX, let us study the signals implementation in NetBSD/mips. A user process enters the kernel by a trap. When a trap is caught, the hardware transfers control to the kernel. Assembly code in sys/arch/mips/mips/locore.S builds a trap frame (this is a struct frame, defined in sys/arch/mips/include/proc.h) on the kernel stack, in which CPU registers are saved. Then the trap() function from sys/arch/mips/mips/trap.c is called to handle the trap. Read the article at OnLamp.

Gartner analysts took out their crystal balls and came up with a list of ten predictions that will impact enterprise businesses. The predictions cross over technology, economics, and social boundaries over that will morph during the next eight years. Read the article at ZDNet.

Microsoft and its allies have quietly expanded an effort to gain acceptance for C#, the software giant's competitor to Java and a foundation for its next-generation Internet services. Read the report at CNet.

"Hi there. I'm sure many of you know that in addition to writing Linux articles, I'm also very involved in a free software project called Gentoo Linux. In this article, I'll try to explain what Gentoo Linux is all about and also tantilize you with all the neat things we have in the works for Gentoo Linux 1.4, which we're currently developing and should be available from our Web site by the time you read this article. So, what is unique about Gentoo Linux? Here are the answers." Daniel Robbins introduces Gentoo Linux.