"Microsoft Corp. watchers are dubbing 2002 "the year of .Net" as the software company prepares to release products that will build on its software-as-a-service vision. Releases slated for the new year include the Visual Studio .Net 2002 development suite, the Windows .Net Server family and the Tablet PC. The company's teams are also working on the next version of Office and the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, as well as Visual Studio .Net 2003." Read the rest of the article at ExtremeTech.

"Even for self-styled Mac pros, the introduction of the consumer-friendly iMac remains a watershed event in the history of Apple. Between its striking industrial design and appealing specs, the entry-level desktop system proved that master marketer Steve Jobs was truly back in Apple's saddle: The all-in-one system's distinctive aura of one-button consumer cool recalled the earliest Mac models, but its sub-$1,500 price point appealed to a far wider audience than those $3,000, mid-'80s trailblazers." Read the rest of the analysis at ExtremeTech.

ELX is a new Linux desktop distribution aimed to attract Windows users. (We previously mentioned it about three weeks ago.) ELX 1.0 Pre 1 is now available for download on two binary CD images via FTP or HTTP. There are also 20 screenshots to entice, mostly of configuration tools and apps under the default KDE desktop.

Kerneltrap interviewed Dave Jones who currently lives in London, employed by SuSE as a Linux kernel hacker. In the past six months since he graduated from the University of Glamorgan he has gotten involved in an impressive range of kernel related projects, including Powertweak, x86info, OProfile and the Kernel Janitors Project. Additionally, he maintains a -dj patch for the 2.5 development kernel, helping to sync it with the stable 2.4 kernel as well as offering increased stability.

Ximian and Hewlett-Packard have announced that Ximian GNOME is now available for HP-UX as a first step towards GNOME becoming the default desktop on HP-UX replacing CDE. HP-UX is the second 'heavy' Unix which abandons CDE for Gnome after Sun Solaris 9.

There were an amazing number of people (around 300,000) who visited OSNews recently to read Scot Hacker's article on MacOSX. As part of the camp of BeOS refugees, I have been searching for some time for a suitable replacement. Many come close - FreeBSD is fantastic, but still complicated, the new school of Linuxes are very close to ready for me, even Windows XP has come a long way. My x86 machine is pretty fun - it gets a new OS every two weeks or so. But what does that say - that I like variety or that I can't find what I want? I'd suggest most of us still feel that we're missing something - otherwise, why read osnews.com?

The FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center has urged users of Microsoft's WindowsXP operating system to disable a feature that could leave computers open to attacks from hackers. In a statement issued Saturday, the FBI's NIPC, which usually leaves computer security warnings to the private sector, said it held technical discussions with Microsoft and industry experts Friday to identify ways to minimize the risk from security holes in the XP software, which was launched in late October.

Just in time for Christmas, one of the well known AtheOS developers, Kristian Van Der Vliet ('Vanders'), released as a Christmas gift to the AtheOS community the first full scale native AtheOS application, the email client Mercury. We normally do not post on such application releases, but this app is indeed a major step for AtheOS. From Vanders and all of us here at OSNews, Merry Christmas to all !

At the time I was writing this article, the Linux kernel 2.4.17 was released only 3 days ago and these holly days you may find some more time to experiement with it. The following article includes step-by-step instructions on how to compile a Linux 2.4.X kernel, an article mostly targetting people who have never dared to compile their own kernel yet. Read on and we promise, it is not that hard to do so.

The founder of the Python programming language, Guido van Rossum, writes: "On December 21, just in time to be placed under the Christmas tree, we're issuing the final release of Python 2.2. We're proud of this release, and expect that you'll like it". Read what's new in the new version and other related information.

The Be website has been updated and now mostly contains stock info and other legalese. Also hints at a liquidation auction to be held on January 16th are to be found in the new pages. The http://free.be.com (BeOS) sub-domain does not work anymore, and all the developer info, BeBook, Developer's newsletters, sample code etc, are all gone from that server. However, you can still access the old web site from archives.org and their old ftp site from PlanetMirror. In the meantime, Palm's David Nagel (the person who leads the subsidiary that Be engineers are working under, and he also has control over Be's IP) has said that parts of the Be technology will be used in a new, 32-bit, PalmOS, but sources say that he has firmly declined any further desktop versions of BeOS, as the desktop is not Palm's focus.

This milestone version, features basic S/MIME support, 'favicon' support and the Document Inspector, a tool to inspect and edit the live DOM of any web document or XUL application. Download from mozilla.org.

"Ever want to try out a new operating system on your pc without trashing your existing Operating System? Got a legacy application that won't run on your current OS? Are you a developer who needs to test your code on a number of platforms? Would you like to test distributed applications on a network without requiring a server farm? Find out what companies like Symantec and Merrill Lynch know--you can do these tasks with a Virtual Machine (VM) on a single PC." Read the very interesting and in-depth article at ExtremeTech regarding how exactly Virtual Machines work.

Caldera announced it has made Suites VII and IX of the AIM Benchmark available under the GPL. The AIM Benchmark Suites - "AIM Multiuser Benchmark" and the "Independent Resource Benchmark" - are expected to be available shortly as a SourceForge project. They are currently available via FTP from Caldera's site. The AIM Benchmark technology has proved useful for more than a decade in measuring performance of hardware and versions of the UNIX operating system. The benchmarks have been licensed by nearly all of the vendors of UNIX system hardware. In all, more than 70 companies have used these benchmarks to compare and tune products. In addition, because of the stressful multi-dimensional nature of the AIM Benchmark workload, many OS and hardware vendors have used the benchmarks as part of their quality assurance process.