Linux and Microsoft's .NET will dislodge Unix as the dominant OS within the next 10 years, according to a study. Senior research analyst and report author Mike Davis, from UK-based Butler Group, said the shift had started with smaller businesses moving to install Linux for file and print services, replacing Windows NT and lower-end Unix.

As announced at The Dot, KDE 3.1 RC2 is now "Ready For A Hammering." Well, okay, so I decided to hammer away and here is my preview.

In spite of the major advances in Web technology and the explosion of communication methods on the Internet, the simple act of Web browsing has remained fundamentally single-user in its implementation. Why is Web browsing still a solitary activity? Researchers at Microsoft and Harvard were excited about their proposal for a multi-user Web six years ago, and yet here we are and nothing much has changed. Jared White of The Idea Basket gives us his take on the matter, and offers a new proposal for a multi-user Web experience.

A new supercomputer from SGI packs far more computing power per square inch than do competing machines, a breakthrough the company hopes will help it flourish in what it sees as a renaissance in supercomputing.

Version 2.0.8 of the GTK+ widget toolkit is now available. Fixes gif/gdk-pixbuf and libtool-related bugs.

"Shortly after one of Microsoft's key partners unceremoniously dumped its software for one made by Nokia, the company said it remains a player in the combination cell-phone and PDA smartphone market. In a move industry analysts called a "blow" and "stumble" into the marketplace by Microsoft, cell-phone maker Sendo scrapped plans to release a Microsoft-powered smartphone just days before it was due to launch." Read the rest of the article at Wired.

Here's the latest about what the OpenOffice Project is up to for language support, new platforms and development partnerships.

"Recent advances in Linux's threading implementation are expected to continue to ease migration from other Unix-like operating systems. These advancements have arrived with intense activity on two fronts. First, thread-handling improvements have greatly enhanced the kernel's scalability even to thousands of threads. Second, there are now two fresh, competing implementations of the POSIX pthreads standard (NGPT and NPTL) set to replace the aging LinuxThreads library." Read the article at OnLamp.

"In Vernor Vinge’s sci-fi novel A fire upon the deep, he presents the idea of “software archeology”. Vinge’s future has software engineers spending large amounts of time digging through layers of decades-old code in a computer system — like layers of dirt and rubbish in real-world archeology — to find out how, or why, something works." Good stuff over there from UI designer Matthew "mpt" Thomas.

BlueEyedOS has made some progress in the past few months, and here are two brand new screenshots showing the progress. In the meantime, the DirectFB-based Cosmoe 0.6 is expected to be released around Christmas, but Bill Hayden has already released a developer release. Update: More BeOS-related news today: Unconfirmed rumors want OpenBeOS to have been renamed to "Walter Operating System", while OpenBFS 1.0 Beta3 is posted for testing.

PowerToys are additional programs that developers work on after a product has been released to manufacturing. They'll add fun and functionality to your Tablet PC experience. Microsoft also released the Office XP Pack for Tablet PC. In the meantime, ZDNet published a 3-page article regarding Tablet PC: "What will it do for you"?

"Microsoft has decided to skip a Windows server release to coincide with the Longhorn client and instead jump directly to Blackcomb, company officials confirmed Friday. Until recently, Microsoft has been talking up plans to synchronize its Windows server and client releases, starting with the next major version of Windows, code-named Longhorn." Read the report at eWeek.

"What a mess. Less than a week after a court-approved deal ends the antitrust case, Microsoft's back in the spotlight. The latest Halloween memo portrays your company as utterly obsessed with the open-source software movement but utterly confused about how best to proceed. I can only imagine the state of confusion. Microsoft has tried to persuade developers and users for the last four years that there's no there there--and to no avail." Read the editorial at ZDNet. In the meantime, Business 2.0 posted a story called "Fighting Microsoft the Open-Source Way": Apple, IBM, and Sun have opened up their software code to the public in their battle against Redmond. It just might work. And here is another, interesting, editorial about the DOJ settlement. Update: Another one at PCWorld.com.

This is an initial FreeBSD beta driver for 2D and OpenGL for FreeBSD. It requires FreeBSD -STABLE, version 4.7 or later. It can run single threaded aplications even in linux compatability mode.