KernelTrap has posted an interview with Rik Van Riel. Rik is most recognized for his impressive rmap VM efforts. He's also the founder of kernelnewbies. Living in Brazil, he works for Conectiva Linux.

Macintosh has iCab, Windows has OffByOne, Linux has Dillo and BeOS has NetOptimist. These are home brewed, coded-from-scratch web browsers. NetOptimist was created to replace NetPositive (a Netscape 2+ compliant browser which is still the default BeOS web browser) and add more capabilities like Javascript and CSS. There is still lots of work to be done, so the main developer, Stephane Fritsch, asks for more developers to join him. Stephane has also made a preliminary port of the browser to Solaris/X11. Check out the screenshots at the SourceForge NetOptimist web site and download version Preview 14 from BeBits.

The new Xeons server-oriented CPUs, known by the code name Prestonia, will be offered at 2.2GHz for $615, 2GHz for $417 and 1.8GHz for $251. The Xeons, based on the Pentium 4 architecture, are also the first to incorporate a performance-enhancing technology called hyperthreading. The new feature essentially enables a single Xeon to act like virtual dual processors. When used in conjunction with software designed for multi-CPU systems, hyperthreading can provide up to a 40 percent boost in performance compared with a same-speed Xeon with hyperthreading disabled, Intel officials said. In other hardware news, Seagate demonstrated a Serial ATA-enabled hard drive at the Intel Developer Forum today in San Francisco.

David Faure is a well known developer in the KDE & Linux community. His work can be found in KFM, Konqueror source code and he recently also picked up KOffice's KWord development. David is also one of the people who have commited in bug squashing under KDE, especially after he got hired by Mandrake Software. Read more for our interview with David regarding Konqueror, KDE object prelinking, Gnome and much more.

Intel's Hyper-Threading Technology allows a single physical processor to execute multiple threads (instruction streams) simultaneously, potentially providing greater throughput and improved performance. Intel will introduce Hyper-Threading Technology in their Intel Xeon processor family for servers in the first quarter of 2002. This article provides an overview of how the Windows Server operating system works with Intel Hyper-Threading technology. It explains the implications for performance, compatibility, and licensing.

According to a heise article, free versions of Star Office will now only be available to Solaris users. Free versions for Linux and Windows users will no longer be offered. However, Mark McLoughlin of Sun mailed the gnome-hackers mailing-list announcing the deal between Sun, Ximian and Wipro. The deal means that Wipro will assign up to 50 people to work on GNOME including hackers, QA people, documenters and more.

When NeXT, Inc. sold its business to Apple, the NeXT/OpenSTEP operating systems went unsupported. New hardware emerged in the x86 market, and NeXT was not able to boot successfully anymore (among others, problems with the CD-rom drivers, while the last CPU it supported was the Pentium Pro). However, a few NeXT "die hards" have managed to boot OpenSTEP under VMWare, the x86 runtime application. You can find instructions here and here on how to run OpenSTEP under Linux and Windows' VMWare respectively (screenshots included). Moreover, Atomic Object, Inc. released a SVGA OpenSTEP display driver for VMWare (although the graphics VMWare specs are not publicly available), so now the OS is almost fully supported by VMWare, even so unofficially. On a related note, the GnuSTEP project moves in a faster pace lately, trying to implement the OpenSTEP and MacOSX's Cocoa APIs.

"Adobe Systems Inc. today will unveil one of the most important applications for Apple's MacOSX. The business world was able to hop on board the OSX bandwagon last November when Microsoft released Office v.X, but now the creative community can soon join the converts with the announcement of Photoshop 7.0. Photoshop 7.0 adds new features (the "Healing Brush" is one of them) and, of course, a new Aqua interface, but it's still the same familiar application that the creative professionals know and rely on to make a living." Despite the problems of the port, Photoshop 7 for OSX is here. Read the exclusive report and screenshots at MacCentral.

Amiga Inc has announced that it is working with Nokia to integrate AmigaDE technology into Nokia`s new Mediaterminal. The AmigaDE will offer users the ability to download and use AmigaDE applications, MP3, MPEG4, Universal Chat and streaming video, turning the family TV into a multifunctional infotainment center. AmigaDE technology will also be used in a whole scala of upcoming handheld devices and will become fully integrated in a future releases of the Amiga operating system. To get an idea of what future cellphones will look like, take a look these concept pictures of future Nokia phones. Also should be noted that PDA/cellphone targetted AmigaDE 3D games are under development. For instance an AmigaDE version of Hyperion Entertainment`s Warp3D technology was recently demonstrated to me at the Amiga 2001 fair in Cologne. Here`s a Status Report with screenshots of Payback for the AmigaDE, a GTA-clone and this year`s most popular classic 68k AmigaOS game title. If you want to speak to AmigaDE or AmigaOS designers and developers for yourself then be sure to attend the upcoming AmigaExpo show to be held in the US.

Totalitarianism. Urban pathology. The death of creativity. These are the fears that keep John Perry Barlow awake at night. The co-founder of the 12-year-old Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) tries not to be bleak. But he sincerely worries that Microsoft will usurp e-commerce and AOL Time Warner will seize media, and the two forces will extinguish dissenting voices in a "diabolical" plot to own the economy and the human mind. "I worry that the Net is closing. I would say that (Microsoft e-commerce initiatives) .Net and HailStorm are huge threats and really diabolical. The problem is that hardly anybody recognizes it because they don't know what .Net is or how it works. They don't know that Microsoft is trying to own all of your transactions, literally."

"PC makers and several states allege that new Microsoft licensing agreements, arrived at under the proposed antitrust settlement between the software maker and the U.S. Justice Department, impose harsher terms on some manufacturers than agreements currently in place." The details make it sound more like this is a pricing structure change that lowers costs for low-volume OEMs, and raises them for high-volume OEMs. CNET has the story.

This is the third and final article (part one and part two articles) on current 64-bit architectures at ExtremeTech: While IA-64 and Hammer battle for mindshare, existing 64-bit designs are working hard. And not standing still. Here's what AMD and Intel are up against. "Alpha: Not Dead Yet" The upcoming 21364 freshens multiprocessor machines; and some of it lives on in Hammer. "UltraSPARC-III is Still the Classic RISC Chip:" In Sun's tightly coupled world, software can make up for some hardware deficiencies. "Power 4: 680 Million Transistors Can't be Wrong:" IBM's monster looks more like a floor tile than a CPU chip. And it's 500 watts. In the meantime, Compaq benchmarks a four-way 1GHz Alpha server with Tru64 UNIX. It ran Oracle9i Enterprise Edition for Tru64 UNIX and hit 50,117tpmC (transactions per minute), TheRegister reports.

"OpenGL and DirectX represent a schism in the graphics world, one that has hampered development at times, and fostered it at others. There are new developments coming, and the schism appears to be closing somewhat." Read the rest of the report at Tom's Hardware.

"Full-fledged 64-bit versions of Linux will replace lesser software in the most-powerful IBM servers. The change is expected to take place next month." The news story is at ZDNews.