As seen on BSDForums: "The FreeBSD-STABLE branch of the source tree has now been frozen in preparation for the release of FreeBSD 4.6. This means that any new commits to the -stable source tree must be approved by the release engineering team first. The expected ship date for 4.6 is June 1 2002."

"Solaris 8 is getting a little long in the tooth. It has been out and stable for more than a year. Most applications are certified and supported on it by the vendors. And yet many sites are still running Solaris 2.5.1, 2.6, and 2.7. There are many reasons to move, and many reasons not to upgrade. A major hurdle to performing the upgrade is the sheer complexity (and risk) of system upgrades. This month, the Solaris Companion explores the reasons to stay put and the reasons to upgrade, and provides detailed how-to-upgrade instructions." Read the article at UnixReview, while OnLamp features another Solaris-related article, titled "Optimizing Disk Subsystems for Random I/O".

"Although many people frequently belittle Palm OS 4 as being nothing new, it has introduced true disk-like expansion to the Palm platform en masse. Although not the first instance of expansion options for Palm OS, OS 4-based devices are now appearing in droves, ushering in a new wave of applications and possibilities. Of course, as with any major step forward, with all of these new options come new problems, incompatibilities, and confusion." Part I, Part II and Part III of the article at InfoSync.

Porting Windows applications to Linux doesn't have to involve a retraining nightmare. Markus Neifer shows how to port MFC using wxWindows, giving a user's guide to this open source GUI toolkit and providing a complete, step-by-step porting example.

On May 14, 2001, H. Peter Anvin announced to the linux-kernel mailing list: 'Linus Torvalds has requested a moratorium on new device number assignments. His hope is that a new and better method for device space handling will emerge as a result.' Greg Kroah-Hartman describes how the PCI Hot Plug core implements a RAM-based filesystem and how you can do the same for your drivers. The article is hosted at LinuxJournal.

This article at LinuxGazette is a hands-on tutorial for building a small boot sector. The first section provides the theory behind what happens at the time the computer is switched on. It also explains our plan. The second section tells all the things you should have on hand before proceeding further, and the third section deals with the programs. The little startup program won't actually boot Linux, but it will display something on the screen.

"Xlib is a library that allows you to draw graphics on the screen of any X server, local or remote, using the C language. All you need to do is include , link your program using the -lX11 switch, and you are ready to use any of the functions in the library." Learn to program X with the tutorial at LinuxGazette.

"Microsoft wants us to believe that Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player are tied so deeply in the OS that they cannot be removed. As middleware they are good things, but so is DirectX, and Microsoft doesn't say that can't be removed from the operating system. Windows is far more modular than Microsoft wants to admit to the court. Microsoft has grown to the point that they no longer need to compete, and the only way for them to survive as a company is to stop competing and start sharing. If something doesn't happen to change Microsoft's behavior, the backlash against them and other corporate giants will send proprietary software and countless tech jobs into obsolescence." Read the editorial at Kuro5hin.

OSNews reader David S. MacLachlan wrote in to tell us about an editorial at OSOpinion: "Seems that there's a bit more to the End User License Agreement that Microsoft has in force... if you purchase a computer that has Windows pre-installed, you're legally required to not install any other OS on it... even if the computer has been donated to you or sold to you as used." Update: As many readers have already stated, the claims do not seem to hold. There is a clause in the XP OEM license saying that the software is "attached" to the specific hardware, can only be used with that specific hardware, and must be transfered with that specific hardware, but that's a normal OEM clause.

Want to integrate your Microsoft client machines with a Linux or Unix server? Open-source Samba turns a Unix or Linux system into a file and print server for Microsoft Windows network clients. Roll up your sleeves, take this tutorial, and learn how, to configure Samba as a primary domain controller.

Got the link at the original article from BSDForums.org: "With Sun getting ready to launch Solaris 9, the next generation of its Unix operating system, sometime between now and the end of June, everyone is scrambling to try to figure out what will make Solaris 9 different from the existing Solaris 8, Timothy Prickett Morgan writes. One of the big differences, it turns out, will be substantially enhanced security mechanisms for both the operating system and its applications."

In a Suite101 editorial John Chandler writes about Eyetech's upcoming AmigaOne PPC motherboard and that these will be open to alternative operating systems other than AmigaOS4 as well. The hardware design and availability should be as open and non-exclusive as possible. Hopefully many alternative OS developers/supporters will view the PowerPC Amiga platform as a safe heaven out of reach of current OS monopolies.

In this paper, the IBM authors discuss various migration scenarios and focus on the instances that require changes to the application source or to the way the application is built for an easy move from Sun Solaris to IBM's AIX.

Can Linux be a practical alternative OS to Windows for gamers? Paul Sullivan investigates the issue by talking about the C-based Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL), the Linux equivalent to DirectX. The article also got a lengthy interview with Sam Lantinga, the man responsible for the SDL initiative.