This week OSNews spoke to Addison Snell, a Product Marketing Manager at SGI. The legendary computer maker has been through some tumultuous times in the last few years but seems ready to make a healthy resurgence. Two weeks ago they hosted their Global Developer Conference in San Francisco. This is the first of a number of conversations OSNews will be hosting about SGI.

"This is Part 1 in a two-part series on system panics. In this column, Michael Lucas talks about how to prepare a FreeBSD system in case of a panic. In the next column, he'll talk about what to do when the worst happens." Read the article at ONLamp.com.

From the announcement: "Yes, it's gotten to this. The developers are working in their sleep. It's time for SKIPJACK, the new Red Hat Linux beta. Packed with the very latest technology, SKIPJACK includes: the 2.4.18 kernel, XFree86 4.2.0, KDE 3.0pre, GNOME 1.4, including Evolution, Mozilla 0.9.9 and more..." The beta comes in five CDs (no less than 2.8 GB of download) but as usual, only the first disk is needed to have a working installation.

On March 13, a special report published on News.com site described the revival of an old Microsoft initiative. That News.com report said: "Microsoft is replacing the plumbing of its Windows operating system with technology borrowed from its SQL Server database software. Currently, documents, Web pages, e-mail files, spreadsheets and other information are stored in separate, mostly incompatible software. The new technology will unify storage in a single database built into Windows that's more easily searchable, more reliable, and accessible across corporate networks and the Internet."

A former Gateway executive recently testified (NY Times login required) that Microsoft punishes PC clone manufacturers like Gateway for developing rival products. This was i.e. done by reducing discounts Gateway received for the Windows operating system. Gateway at a time was developing a new Amiga computer, but all of the sudden this ambitious project was cancelled, reliable sources (read the comments section of this article I recently wrote for OSNews) have stated Microsoft to be the reason behind this sudden move. My opinion: A good example of how Microsoft stifled technological progress within the computer industry these last 10 years. Hopefully people will start to understand why it has taken the Amiga community this long to get a new Amiga computer onto the market and why PC manufacturers left Amiga technology in the cold when the classic still was clearly superior technology compared to Microsoft's offerings.

Just two days ago the last "Release Candidate" for KDE3 was released with major bug fixes. There are source and RPM packages for Slackware 8, SuSE, Connectiva, Tru64, RedHat and Mandrake. One of the interesting new features that KDE developer Nikolas "WildFox" Zimmermann was working the last few months, was to add SVG support to KDE (screenshot 1 and 2 - the icons shown are just test icons borrowed from Nautilus). SVG is a vector graphics format, similar to Flash, but more standardised as it is recommended by the W3C Consortium. While the code is completed, Nikolas will not see his work integrated to KDE, at least not before KDE 3.1, simply because no one has created some original artwork, SVG graphics for KDE (this iconset in SVG format should look good). If you own tools that can export to SVG (free tools like Kontour and Sketch should do the trick too, in addition to Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Freehand, etc), and you are a graphics artist, you may want to join the KDE team and contribute your icons to be used by millions of users worldwide.

"Microsoft has reshuffled its roadmaps once again, and begun briefing partners and customers to expect an interim upgrade to Windows XP, dubbed XP "SE", in the first quarter of next year. This buys more time for the Longhorn team to complete the complex task of implementing a native database file store, which Jon Honeyball first revealed to the world at The Register here, last August. In January we exclusively confirmed that the native, SQL Server-derived database would go in Longhorn, with the Blackcomb release - originally earmarked for the transition - pushed out to 2004." Read the exclusive report at TheRegister.

"Whenever I visit Microsoft, I'm always reminded that the Microsoft of reality--at least the Microsoft I see when I talk to the people who actually design, build, and market the company's technologies and products--is very different from the Microsoft of myth. Before I calculate my Microsoft Report Card, based on my trip to Redmond earlier this week, I'd like to address some of those myths and explain how they vary from the reality I've seen firsthand." Read the rest of the article at ZDNews AnchorDesk.

"In this whitepaper on Linux Scheduler Latency, Clark Williams of Red Hat Inc. compares the performance of two popular ways to improve kernel Linux preemption latency -- the preemption patch pioneered by MontaVista and the low-latency patch pioneered by Ingo Molnar -- and discovers that the best approach might be a combination of both." Read the long article with some benchmarking information at LinuxDevices.

"Changes are afoot within Sun's software organization as the server maker looks to replace a veteran Java executive and is revamping its StarOffice and Solaris products. Gina Centoni, who has worked with Sun's Java initiative for five and a half years, has left the company to work for phone software maker Openwave Systems, Sun spokeswoman Mah Goh said. Most recently, Centoni was senior director of product marketing for the Sun One initiative, the company's highest-priority software project as it strives to catch up to Microsoft in Web services." Read the rest of the article at ZDNews.

Wil Wheaton is not like most of the rest of the actors. He admits that he is a true geek, running Linux, enjoying programming, playing lots of computer games. Many of you will remember Wil portraying "Wesley Crusher" in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" TV series some years ago. Wil will reprise his role as Wesley in the "Star Trek X: Nemesis" movie, the tenth installment of the Star Trek movies, which is set to be released two days after the second "Lord of the Rings" movie, at the end of this year. In the interview following, Wil talks about his favorite computer games, the computers used on TNG, the future of computing in AI, his favorite Linux distros, PHP and more.

"Open source operating systems such as Linux and Apache, which can generally be downloaded from the internet and adapted or modified for use with other programs, have become a mainstream business tool. More than half the world's websites now run on the Apache web server and 57 per cent of companies polled by IDC, the research company, used Linux to run a big application within their enterprise. The popular view is that there are few restrictions on how open software can be used. But, like proprietary software, it is distributed with a copyright licence. While this may simply require anyone redistributing the software to acknow-ledge the original author, the most commonly used licence, the GNU General Public Licence or GPL, is significantly restrictive." Read the rest of the article at Financial Times Online.

Where did he come from, and what are his plans for 2.4? Marcelo Tosatti opens up to Robert McMillan about the joy, the fear, the challenges, and the rewards of being the Linux kernel maintainer. He also talks about his favorite hack. Stepping into Alan Cox's shoes is no mean feat, even for the most accomplished of hackers, but that is just what a little-known, 18-year-old Brazilian hacker named Marcelo Tosatti did this fall when Linus Torvalds handed over maintenance of the Linux 2.4 kernel tree to Tosatti instead of Cox. According to all parties involved, Cox wanted more time to pursue other projects, and after having maintained the 2.0 and 2.2 trees, it was time for someone else to do the job. Since taking over the job, Tosatti has managed three kernel releases, starting with 2.4.16; has answered, according to one account, close to 700 press queries; and has given the tersest Slashdot interview in history. IBM developerWorks caught up with Tosatti to ask him about his first four months on the job.

"An alternative to Apache, this Swedish company's web server offers modularity, a built-in macro language (RXML) and Pike. The Roxen WebServer, from the Swedish company Roxen Internet Software, is a viable alternative for those who find Apache inappropriate for their needs. Although Apache dominates the internet web server market, it has some weak points: it lacks a built-in SQL database backend, flexible administration tools and easy SSL certificate management. All of these features can be found, however, in the Roxen WebServer. In fact, Roxen includes so many additional features that it seems more like an application server than an ordinary web server." Read the rest of the review at LinuxJournal.