Daniel Switkin, a long time BeOS developer and former Be Inc. employee, has submitted an editorial on "Writing A BeOS Replacement". It aims to bring together the various efforts out there and define a plan which has the greatest chance of success. Click Read More to see the entire article from Daniel.

Linux Orbit reviews OEone's HomeBase DESKTOP: "Unlike Ximian GNOME, the HomeBase DESKTOP product doesn't take over the default GNOME installation included with Red Hat 7.x versions. It will create it's own session type in the graphical login (gdm) used with Red Hat 7.x systems. Why is this important? Well, from my experience, this makes HomeBase DESKTOP the most painless test drive of any Linux desktop product I've tried to date. If you don't like it, just go back to GNOME or KDE or whatever else you use, since nothing has really changed in those installed environments."

"Have you ever wondered what operating system you will be using in 2005? Australian tech writer Andrew Parsons investigates the future of Windows, code named Longhorn." Read it at ZDNet Australia.

".NET clearly bears a strong resemblance to Java. It offers many of the same features, while adding interesting additions of its own (code metadata, versioned assemblies, etc). Microsoft, however, is better positioned to create a cross-market software unification framework than Sun Microsystems ever was (or is). This will result in a rapid expansion in .NET's popularity which eats into Java's market share as it grows to take over the development world." Read the editorial at ZDNet.

A recent feature on kerneltrap.org: "Ulrich Drepper recently announced the first public release of the Red Hat sponsored 'Native POSIX Thread Library' (NPTL). He explained, 'Unless major flaws in the design are found this code is intended to become the standard POSIX thread library on Linux system and it will be included in the GNU C library distribution.'

"Like many admins, I use Solaris 7 and 8 extensively for my Web projects, due to their stability and scalability. As such, I was excited by the release of Solaris 9, which promised more of the same, along with many new features and deeper integration with other Sun products." Read the rest of the article.

The BeOS Journal and BeGroovy have posted a rather long inteview with BeUnited.org's Simon Gauvin.

OSNews reader David Chester writes: "I've posted a modified version of freetype with hardcoded hinting options. (There are new hinting options available in freetype CVS, but apparently they will remain unaccessable from outside the library, so it has to be hacked by hand for now.) Anyway, I think the main reason it's nice to have a hardcoded libfreetype like this, is that you can have OpenOffice link against it, which improves the readablity of it's screen fonts to my eyes, and makes OpenOffice finally usable. I have some explanation and comparison screenshots".

BeGroovy reports that David Reid, a very respected BeOS third party developer (ported Apache among others) and ex-OpenBeOS networking developer published a statement explaining his departure from the OpenBeOS project. David cited lack of direction, management in the project and even lack of engineering knowledge among the OpenBeOS developers. Update: Another important BeOS dev and friend of mine (as also in the case of David :), Frans van Nispen cited similar problems with the project. UPDATE 2: The OpenBeOS leader, Michael Phipps, sent us in his response to the issue.

Sun Microsystems Inc. is adding another Linux piece to its overall product line, but don't confuse that with a strong endorsement for the open-source operating system. "We don't offer Linux computers; we offer solutions," said Scott McNealy, Sun's chairman, president and CEO, in an interview following the announcement of Sun's desktop initiative, Project Mad Hatter, at the Sun Network conference here last week. Read the article at eWeek.

"Now that we are able to launch dynamic binaries, the goal is to get them linking. The dynamic linker has to do a lot of system calls before actually launching the program. Most of them are plain SVR4, and hence are taken from sys/compat/svr4. Here, we will deal with IRIX-specific system calls." Read the rest fo the article at ONLamp. Part 1 and Part 2 also available.

"Lindows 2.0 looks cool, I have to admit. The company has stopped aping KDE and gotten a desktop look that is more its own. Lindows has made scant concessions to the knowledgeable, allowing for a somewhat more advanced setup configuration. I'm still concerned for the newbies, though." Read the review at NewsForge.

"In a testament to the power and flexibility of the Portage system and Gentoo Linux, Bjoern Brauel (aka "bjb") has done the amazing job of creating a whole new port for Gentoo Linux in the span of 2 days. Currently, Bjoern has Xfree86, GNOME 2, Gimp and other things running on Gentoo Linux/Alpha, as you can see in this screenshot. The Gentoo Linux/Alpha port is currently being incorporated into our Portage tree; in the mean time, the adventurous may be interested in playing with the Alpha stage 1 tarball."

"I've been using Windows XP as my main desktop OS for about a year now. I'm really very happy with it, as are most XP users I know. It's probably the best job Microsoft has ever done on a desktop operating system. However, there are some things that could have been done better. One year later--especially now that Service Pack 1 has been released--it's worth looking at what Microsoft could have done better, though I don't think any of the flaws are crucial. " Read the article at TechUpdate.