"The open-source effort to create a freely available version of Microsoft's .Net development environment is set to take a leap forward Wednesday, when developers from the effort known as the Mono Project detail its latest accomplishments at a conference dedicated to open-source software." Read the report About the O'Reilly open source conference at InfoWorld.

IBM has released DB2 v8.1 for Linux, HP, AIX, Solaris, os390 and Windows today. New features include multi-dimensional clustering (queries and analytics nearly 100% faster), self-configuring, self-healing, self-optimizing, self-protecting, and the ability to consolidate Web Services queries through a single SQL statement.

"While I normally turn a cold shoulder to all those increasingly arcane ways of dividing people into two groups we keep inventing, there's one that I think holds the key to Linux's prospects for success on the mainstream desktop." Read the article at LinuxAndMain.

Borland Software Corp is set to build on an early lead among Linux developers, with today's expected launch of a C++ rapid application development (RAD) environment. Scotts Valley, California-based Borland will announce version 3.0 of its Kylix RAD environment for C++. Previous versions of Kylix targeted Delphi programmers on Windows and Linux. Read the rest of the report at TheRegister.

The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce that Release 1.5.3 of the NetBSD operating system is now available. NetBSD 1.5.3 is a maintenance release for users of NetBSD 1.5.2, 1.5.1, 1.5 and earlier releases, which provides the following updates relative to 1.5.2: A number of security problems have been fixed, some performance fixes have been incorporated, improved device support in some existing drivers, some new device drivers have been added.

In light of the recent release of YDL 2.3, we are happy today to host an exclusive interview with Dan Burcaw, co-founder, CTO, and lead developer of YellowDog Linux, the Red Hat-based, PPC-only Linux distribution for the Mac platform.

From DistroWatch: "The first beta of the brand new Mandrake 9.0 release has hit the mirrors. Get the three CD images here: MandrakeLinux-9.0beta1-CD1.i586.iso (700MB), MandrakeLinux-9.0beta1-CD2.i586.iso (700MB) and MandrakeLinux-9.0beta1-CD3.i586.iso (498MB) (if these URLs don't work, try here). The version increase from 8 to 9 has been justified by a jump to KDE 3.x, Gnome 2 and GCC 3." Update: It seems that Mandrake Software does well these days. Thanks goes to Michael Matthews for the pointer.

The technical effects studio has switched from using RISC-Unix workstations from SGI to using Intel-based Dell systems running Linux for the bulk of its animation and special effects work, said Cliff Plumer, ILM's chief technology officer. As part of the conversion, ILM recently deployed 600 Pentium 4 workstations. "The Intel workstations that were deployed were probably 20 percent of the price of SGI workstations we bought a few years ago," Plumer said. "Performance-wise, they are about three times as fast." Read the report at News.com.

"The dual Athlon is still the fastest PC we've tested, but the single Intel P4 2.53 GHz machine runs a close second, and even beats the dual Athlon on some of the tests. And, as expected, the Mac dual 1GHz G4 could not even come close to keeping up with these two PCs. Even though the P4 machine has only a single processor, it was easy for it to leave the dual-processor Mac far behind." Read the benchmarks at DigitalVideoEditing.

"Microsoft is planning what could end up being quite a shock for the Windows XP warez world, and what currently looks to be one of the most amazing moves made by Microsoft since Windows Product Activation was introduced. Currently, Microsoft is in the works of completely rewriting the algorithm for the way Windows XP Corporate keys are generated, and is rewriting the code for Windows XP to recognize this new algorithm. This new code will be an added ‘feature’ of Service Pack 1 due out later this year." Read the report at BetaONE.

Object Desktop 2002 is a desktop enhancement suite designs to allow Windows users to completely transform Windows into anything they want. It includes WindowBlinds, DesktopX, ObjectBar, IconPackager, WinStyles, and more. It also includes a 1 year subscription to ObjectDesktop.NET where users can download all the components of Object Desktop, updates, and new features. Our Take: I was lucky to have a "live" demo of the product from Stardock's CEO, Brad Wardell , a few months back. This set of applications truly transform the Windows GUI to something completely different, which is certainly not just skining, but a complete change of how the UI behaves and interacts with the user.

"Mainframe Linux's near-term attraction is it relative ease of operation, not price per se. We project mainframe Linux will remain a shrinking niche, whose term will be defined by the dual mainframe/Wintel gaps of cost (widening) and management functionality (closing)." Read the analysis at ZDTechUpdate.

The campaign to free Blender's sources has officially started. 100,000 Euro are needed in order Blender to become open source and be the first truly powerful 3D rendering package for the OSS community. If you can spare some money this weekend, help this great application get freed.

The Syllable folks have released some screenshots of their AtheOS-based operating system, and also a binary of ABrowse, the Konqueror-based browser for AtheOS/Syllable. The team is looking for a kernel hacker, and more developers in general, to join the project.