"Solaris 9 for Intel could be poised to ship after all, Register spies at Sun suggest. The official line is currently that Sun is shipping Solaris 9 for Sparc, but that "Sun is deferring the productization and release of the Solaris 9 OE for Intel IA-32." In English this means that Sun has (probably) more or less finished it but is hesitating as to whether or not to ship it, while in ITspeak this sort of phrasing generally means that the product is headed for a lingering death in the netherworld." The story is at TheRegister.

Check out this new operating system, called JTMOS. Currently under heavy development, however, it already features a GUI.

"After a long break between releases, Microsoft on Tuesday issued the Windows 2000 SP3 Release Candidate, marked build 3.140. The long awaited update weighs in at 17MB and 30MB for Professional and Server versions of the operating system, respectively." Read the report at BetaNews.

"A number of Linux vendors will announce on Thursday that they have agreed to standardize on a single Linux distribution to try to take on Red Hat Inc.'s dominance in the industry. A media advisory issued on Tuesday said executives from Caldera, Conectiva, SuSE and Turbolinux on Thursday will make 'a major announcement that will change the shape of Linux worldwide.'" Read more at eWeek.

"The most tantalising net rumour burning up the wires this week is the one about the Apple iBrowser. Heard it? It goes like this. Apple co-opts the Mozilla code base for a skunkworks native OS X browser that's both super fast and grannie-friendly. A Galeon for OS X. "iBrowser" thus completes the set of consumer software apps gradually introduced with iTunes, iPhoto and iMovie, which are being advertised under the slogan 'everything's easier on a Mac'." Read the article at TheRegister. In other browser news, Opera 6.03 for Windows and Opera 6.01 for Linux were released today.

"Support for Bluetooth has been added to the Linux development kernel, a step toward native Bluetooth support in upcoming releases of the Linux operating system." Read the report at ZDNews.

I keep reading review after review after review of the current crop of linux distributions. And everytime I'm annoyed at the end. I'm not annoyed by the style, or the comments, but more at the way they always end far too soon? One of the latest reviews of Lycoris is a prime example. What is this a review of? It's a review of the installation, and a quick insight into some of the packages found. To compare, it's like reviewing the opening cinematic sequence of game. You need to review the way the game plays as well! And people need to start reviewing how the distributions function over a period of time greater than a day or two. So here's my Mandrake 8.x experience.

There's a new personal e-zine, The Idea Basket, that's debuting today with an editorial on the commercial feasibility of a next-generation user interface. The editorial talks about the state of current user interfaces, software such as Apple's iPhoto that is pushing the envelope of interface design, reasons why there has recently been such a lack of innovation and research in the field of interface design, and some ideas that both consumers and developers can employ to help bring computer software to the next level of usability.

"The first release candidate for Slackware 8.1 is now available on ftp.slackware.com (and hopefully some mirrors by now). Recent additions to -current include Mozilla-1.0rc3, KDE-3.0.1, and gcc-3.1. This is all leading up to what we're hoping will be the best Slackware release ever!" Changelog, mirrors.

Jason Lam has submitted a step by step guide (PDF format) to securing MySQL on FreeBSD, which he recently wrote for FreeBSD 4.5, to fulfill his SANS GCUX certification. The original submission can be found at BSDForums.org.

"I'm one of those people who is sacrificing a small portion of their mental health to the greater good, by testing FreeBSD-current. Now that we're approaching FreeBSD 5.0, the FreeBSD Project needs people to test -current in a wide variety of installations and environments." Read the tutorial at OReilly.

"Recent word from sources close to Motorola confirm that a significant speed bump will be timed for MacWorld Expo in July, raising current bus speeds, and seeing new 7470-based G4s raise frequencies to as high as 1.5Ghz. What of the G5? That's still on course for volume production early next year, in the form of what's codenamed the 7500. Public Motorola roadmaps describe this as a processor that conforms to the e500 Book E G5 spec, and it's been rated stable at 2.4GHz internally at Motorola. But to get a handle on this it's worth paying attention to the internals, as this indicates an important rethink in the Megahertz wars." Read the report at TheRegister.

"Sometimes it seems that Linux fanatics are the open source movement's own worst enemy. Perhaps it is time that the "revolution" started to employ a few marketing people." Read the editorial at ITWeb. Our Take: I agree with the author. There were many times that I asked articles, interviews, screenshots and other "marketing" material from maintainers of open source projects and they either never replied, or they replied... months later, or their reply was rushed and half-baked. Real companies or people who understood the importance of marketing, were truly responsive. Marketing is important, and each major open source project needs at least one good marketing/PR person.

"Microsoft is finalizing a major makeover for Windows XP that makes it easier for consumers to choose third-party software over Microsoft's own products. The software giant plans to begin testing within a few weeks Service Pack 1 for Windows XP, the first major update to the operating system, which was launched in October. Some of the more significant changes to the operating system, such as those allowing consumers and PC makers to override Microsoft's default products, are a direct response to the continuing antitrust case against the Redmond company." Read the the story at News.com.