"The four distributors Caldera, Conectiva, Suse Linux, and Turbolinux are planning to introduce UnitedLinux, a joint server operating system for enterprise deployment, in November of this year, the companies said late Friday. The technical specifications of the OS have already been finalized." Read the interesting report on what will be included on the UnitedLinux distribution over at ExtremeTech.

In light of all the controversy surrounding the price of Apple's new OSX 10.2 Jaguar upgrade scheme, it is interesting that is today obtainable from Amazon.com for $79 USD ($129 - $50 rebate). On a related note, Macintouch is reporting that Apple is extending the MacOSX Up-to-Date and MacOSX Server Up-to-Date programs to include Jaguar Server upgrades for just $19.95 in response to intense criticism. Apple also added that people who bought MacOSX 10.1 retail in its own box, can get an upgrade if purchased July 17 or later.

Red Hat released the second beta for their upcoming Red Hat Linux product, codenamed Limbo. Apparently, this will be called "Red Hat Linux 7.4" and not 8.0, as many people concluded earlier. The new beta includes many bug fixes, new versions for KDE and some additional fixes for Gnome 2.0 from the CVS, as well as GCC 3.2-pre. Mailing list archives for Limbo here.

Want to know why many developers have chosen Windows Embedded for their real-time computing solutions? Read technical articles, case studies, and independent viewpoints on real time, and learn which Windows Embedded operating system might be right for you.

This Cosmoe release's major features: Improved autoconf support for DirectFB, autoconf support for building Cosmoe to run in an X window (--enable-xwindows), mouse changed to /dev/mouse from /dev/psaux, better failure cases for the video driver loading, so if Cosmoe fails to load you're not stuck with a dead keyboard, incorporation of contributed bug fixes for Aedit and Aterm. Features coded but not included in this release: Sed scripts to convert Atheos programs to Cosmoe. Download here, read the mailing list here.

Norman Feske at the technical university of Dresden, Germany, is developing a new windowing system for the experimental Drops OS, called DOpE. DOpE runs under Linux as well and it can run X11 on a window. Read the proposal explaining the project (in german) and check out some screenshots.

"The Hurd currently runs only on the Mach microkernel, but there is work to port it to the newer L4 microkernel. This article has the details about the current status of the Hurd/L4 port. It is primarily written for people familiar with Hurd/Mach, but who do not know L4." KernelTrap has the details.

As seen over at PCLinuxOnline: "Lycoris is scheduled to announce the availability of Deskxop/LX Update 2 build 46 on Monday. In the meantime, you can freely download the 3 isos from various mirrors as they become available. sunet.se seems to have it available as of this morning."

aJile Systems has announced a new 100% J2ME PDA that runs Java bytecode natively in hardware. It also has wireless connectivity, mp3 support, a thumb board, and other fun stuff. Read the story and more technical details at InfoSync and check also a hi-res picture of the prototype device.

The Syllable team makes strides these days on their AtheOS fork, and most of the AtheOS developers have joined Vanders and Rick to their quest of a better operating system. OSNews reader Daryl Dudey joined the Syllable team recently, and he already wrote a nice networking preference panel for Syllable. The team is still looking for a kernel developer though, or C++ developers who like writting low level system software. On a related hobby-OS note, SkyOS made its first steps into the SMP world.

Ailing software companies have the highest hurdles to clear to get back in business--a McKinsey study found that only 13 percent of the 492 firms examined were successful. Why is it so difficult? The study can be found at News.com.

"Windows .NET Server is a surprisingly full-featured release, but because it builds on the strong base of Windows 2000 Server, it will be a simplein-place upgrade for those customers. Thanks to its new upgrade features, it should also prove to be a simpler upgrade for the large crowd of NT 4.0 Server holdouts, though we'll have to test that functionality before passing final judgement." Read the preview at WinSuperSite. On a related note, Microsoft has posted the long-awaited RC 1 version (Build 3663) of Windows .NET Server on MSDN Subscriber Downloads. Here is the good stuff available:

"We've come a very long way since the days of Doom. But that groundbreaking title wasn't just a great game, it also brought forth and popularized a new game-programming model: the game "engine." This modular, extensible and oh-so-tweakable design concept allowed gamers and programmers alike to hack into the game's core to create new games with new models, scenery, and sounds, or put a different twist on the existing game material." The last part of this great series of articles over at ExtremeTech was published. If you read the entire article, you will learn what all the 3D game and graphics engine-related buzzwords are all about. The article is an easy read and not too technical.

Apple Computer and Sun Microsystems are cooperating on a version of Sun's StarOffice productivity software for Mac OS X, the companies said. Apple gains a friend to help counter its increasingly contentious relationship with Microsoft, which has been struggling with sales of its Office v. X suite for Macintosh. Currently, OpenOffice only runs with the aid of X11, but a native OSX version based on Java is under way, with Apple, Inc. developers giving a hand for the port. Update: Corey O'Connor emailed us regarding the Java and C/C++ parts of Star Office on OSX: