The OSNews team needs to rid itself of a snazzy Sony Superslim Vaio Z505HS. It's happily running Red Hat Linux 7.2, and to sell it on eBay would mean going to the trouble of installing Windows on it again. (perhaps only to have someone buy it and want to install Linux). Instead, we've decided to see if any OSNews reader wants it. Best offer over $700 gets it. Read more for specs.

CRUX is a lightweight, i686-optimized Linux distribution targeted at experienced Linux users. The highlight in this release is the transition to GCC 3.2. Further this release includes Linux 2.4.19, XFree86 4.2.1, OpenSSH 3.4, Sendmail 8.12.6, Perl 5.8, pkgutils 5.0, WindowMaker (no Gnome or KDE) etc. See the change log and go to CRUX's download section to download the ISO image (180 MB).

"'Yukon,' the code-name for a major overhaul of SQL Server, will be ready for general availability sometime during the 2004 fiscal year, and "Longhorn," the code-name for the Windows operating system release after Windows .NET Server 2003, is coming in 2005, according to a senior Microsoft official. As part of Longhorn, Allchin said customers can expect to see new features for intelligent auto configuration, such as BIOSes and firmware that can be 'automatically updated in a seamless way.' Also, Allchin said Longhorn will include new functionality for server resiliency, such as self-healing characteristics, a more componentized architecture, and additional monitoring services with filters that can 'dynamically' flow out to servers." Read the report at ENTnews.

"They are a very serious competitor. Their community is very, very good, and we're hard at work trying to follow that model. Obviously...the way (Linux) work is done--I think about it in a more componentized way. I believe in integration because I believe it makes peoples' lives simpler. On the other hand, I consider componentization to be a great attribute from an engineering perspective. Then there are things I don't want to learn from them. It's very hard to innovate when you're in a decentralized mode. Look at the Linux kernel. Do you think there's a lot of innovation there? It's not that they're not great developers--they are. I have great respect for them, but I think it's hard, because of the model, to do. They can do innovation--great innovation--in small pockets. There's quite a dichotomy there and there are some advantages. But in terms of some of the innovations for the future, I don't want to adopt that model." Read Jim Allchin's interesting interview at C|Net News.com.

SuSE 8.1 is expected to be released on September 25. The Personal and Professional versions (priced at 50 and 80 Euros respectively) are already available for pre-ordering. The new version includes kernel 2.4.19, KDE 3.0.3, GCC 3.2, OpenOffice.org 1.0.1, YaST and YaST's Online Updater, Wireless Lan, USB2 and Firewire support.

XFS is a GPL'd high-performance journaling file system developed by SGI since 1994 for the IRIX operating system. Version 1.0 was released for Linux on May 2001, with the current release being version 1.1. Christoph Hellwig has provided patches aimed towards getting XFS included into the 2.5 development kernel. Read more on KernelTrap.

One of the software giant's top executives says his company is frustrated by the slow adoption of consumer-oriented Web services, once heralded as the future of online commerce.

Here is an interesting Apache article worth taking the time to look at. It provides information and details on how to secure dynamic content on an Apache Web server. Topics covered include general security issues pertaining to dynamic content, securing Server Side Includes, configuring the Apache Common Gateway Interface, and wrappering dynamic content.

Lycoris Build 50 is a brand new beta release that has hit the mirrors. There is already a forum for bug reporting, created for this beta release.

"It has now been a few years (over 5) since NeXT took over Apple, and they’ve had time to implement their ideas. OS X is shipping in it’s 3rd version, and I think we can recap and try to learn from history. Let’s recap. In the mid 1990’s Apple had been working hard on Copland. This was a new kernel underneath the MacOS and new UI and features up above. It was bringing MacOS into the 90’s (and into the next millennium)." Read the interesting article at iGeek. Three more Apple-related articles today, an editorial about OSX 10.2 here, printing capabilities of OSX and more from Seybold here and why OSX on Intel would be bad for Apple is here.

Mozilla 1.0.1 is available for download now. This release is a bug fix and security follow-up to Mozilla 1.0. Mozilla 1.0 users that have not already upgraded to Mozilla 1.1 are strongly encouraged to upgrade to 1.0.1. Read the release notes for more details.

UnitedLinux said on Wednesday that it would release a preview version of its business-oriented Linux distribution to the public in the last week of September, the first chance most potential customers will have to evaluate the results of the combined effort. UnitedLinux is based on SuSE Linux's enterprise server, but the public beta will reveal how technology has been integrated from the group's other three partners: Turbolinux, Conectiva and The SCO Group (formerly Caldera). Version 1.0 of the distribution is expected in November.

Today is a solemn day of introspection and rememberance here in the United States, and we here at OSNews would like to send our condolances to those who lost loved ones in the attacks on the Pentagon and Twin Towers. Though most of the people of the world did not experience the attacks first hand, there are very few people in the world who were not affected by them in some way. I know it's a bit off-topic, but I'd like to open up a discussion thread today for people to air their feelings about the events of a year ago, and where they think things stand today. And if you read on, I'll get things started by talking a bit about what happened to me on that day and since.

Download the first release candidate of the new version of Gentoo Linux, 1.4. This version is built with GCC 3.2 and includes cutting edge versions of software. In the meantime, the founder and main architect of Gentoo Linux, Daniel Robbins, requests either financial support, sponsorship or even employment or contracting opportunities in order to continue to be able to work on Gentoo.