BeGeistert is a biannual meeting of BeOS users and developers held in Germany. BeOS developer and frequent OSNews writer Nicholas Blachford, wrote a review of the meeting and also reveals some news having to do with a possible come back from YellowTab and some working code presented by OpenBeOS members. Nicholas also includes a small mpeg video and many pictures of the meeting.

"I’ve been having a discussion with someone from IBM about whether it’s ever possible for Free Software to have a nice human interface. In theory, I think it is possible. But in practice, the vast majority of open-source projects are also volunteer projects; and it seems that the use of volunteers to drive development inevitably leads the interface design to suck. The reasons are many and varied, and maybe one day I’ll turn this into a long and heavily-referenced essay. But in the meantime, here’s a summary." Matthew Thomas, a Mozilla contributor, explains why not many of the Free applications feature a good UI like most of their commercial counterparts do.

When the loss of about 1,000 computer servers in the World Trade Center attacks put Lehman Brothers in the market to buy millions of dollars of systems, it looked at Linux. American Banker tells the story.

The Open For Business web site features a review of the OEone Homebase 1.3 operating system. OEone is based on Red Hat, however its user interface is brand new, it has been written from scratch (in the Mozilla XUL API). The company behind OEone also sells machines with their software pre-installed, a software developed in such a way to resemble something between an Internet Appliance and a light iMac-like office workstation. OEone is something to definately check out, since they offer more than IAs do, however they are built in such a way to be simplistic, just like IAs. An older review of both the OEone machine and software can be found at NewsForge.

The first release candidate for Microsoft's Windows .Net Server software family will be released this quarter, with a final release of the product set for the end of the year. Microsoft released the third beta for the product in late October and has been receiving extensive feed back from testers since then. The release of this server family has been pushed back twice, with the last delay being attributed to Microsoft's "Trustworthy Computing" initiative, which resulted in development being halted and all code being reviewed.

The reporters of a French Amiga magazine called AmigaPower have been so kind to post some pictures of an AmigaOne computer running TurboLinux. Initial AmigaOne ATX motherboards come with a soldered 600 MHz G3 PowerPC CPU, built-in 10/100 ethernet, USB, AGP (2xSpeed), AC97 Soundchip, MC97 modem, UDMA100 IDE controller and costs 600 Euros (ex. VAT). A more expensive version is expected to be released later this year, having a socketed CPU and a 4xSpeed AGP bus, which will allow the installation of one or two G4 processors. Boards can be pre-ordered from Computer City, KDH Datentechnik and Vesalia.

One of the biggest complaints these days about Web services is the security issues within a Web service environment. IBM and Microsoft just released specifications describing Web Services Security (WS-Security). There is an developerWorks overview document and a whitepaper describing this model that supports, integrates and unifies several models, mechanisms, and technologies.

In his first article about Jython, Noel Rappin discussed the features of the Python scripting language and its Jython implementation that would be of greatest interest to Java programmers. Jython is a complete implementation of the Python programming language written in 100% pure Java, and allows easy access to Java libraries. This article contains 10 tips for using Java objects in Jython.

This is Part 2 in a two-part series on system panics. In his first column, Michael Lucas talked about how to prepare a FreeBSD system in case of a panic. In this column, he talks about what to do when the worst happens.

Mike Kestner announced today his C# bindings for the well-known GUI Toolkit, GTK+ 2.x. To compile the examples you will still need a Win32 machine with the (freely available on Microsoft.com) .NET Framework installed (137+20 MB for the SDK, 20 MB for the runtime), as the project is not yet self-hosted under Linux. What this means is that developers soon will be able to write C# applications for GNOME.

"Mozilla, the long-awaited open-source version of the Netscape browser, is to release its first beta-test version aimed at a broad audience in the next few days. The three-year-old project has begun to finalize a version of the Mozilla code for wider testing release, which could lead directly to the release of version 1.0 of the software. Previous beta, or test, versions have been aimed at the developer community." Read the report at ZDNews. In related news, Opera has just released Opera 6b1 for QNX.

"Microsoft has decided to support one of two competing formats for popular DVD recording technology , a decision that is intended to make the storage devices as easy to use as current CD burners and floppy drives. At its annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), Microsoft plans to demonstrate software and to provide technical documentation for incorporating the DVD+RW format into its Windows operating system, according to a Microsoft Web site detailing the schedule for the conference." Read the rest of the report at ZDNews.

"On April 9, Michael Robertson announced the release of LindowsOS sneak preview 2. "Lindows.com is not about selling an operating system," the Lindows CEO says in the press release. "It's not too different from needing a car. Nobody says, 'I need an engine,' they say, 'I need a car,' and most times, what they really mean is that they need transportation. It's the same with a computer." I think I know what he's getting at." Read the rest of the mini-review at NewsForge.

Princeton professor Andrew Appel testified that WindowsXP Embedded is living proof that middleware can be safely removed from Microsoft's Windows operating system. Read more in the ZDNet Focus.