"If developers could port their Motif-based applications to Aqua as easily as Mac Classic developers can port to Carbon, those nice UNIX apps might reach the Mac faster. As a sysadmin, I see OS X as a fantastic replacement for a UNIX workstation. But there are a few things Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) should think about if it really wants to compete in the UNIX space. I'm not saying that if OS X doesn't have these things, UNIX people won't look at it as an alternative. However, I believe that the following alterations would make OS X much more appealing as a replacement for current UNIX workstations." Read the rest of the editorial at OSOpinion.

"Operating systems will become highly distributed and self-healing and will collaborate with applications. Imagine computers in a group providing disk storage for their users, transparently swapping files and optimizing their collective performance, all with no central administration. But the machines providing this pool of virtual storage dare not trust one another completely. Indeed, a hacker takes over one of them and ruthlessly begins attacking others in the group." Read the rest of the story at ComputerWorld.

From ActiveWin: "Microsoft has just released to its set of beta testers a new pre-RC1 build of Windows .NET. This new release, that can be downloaded by every Windows .NET approved beta tester carries the build number 3604. This is an interim build between Beta 3 and RC1 is not considered "Beta quality". This build is intended as a preview of our progress post Beta 3 and to allow you to regress bugs fixed since Beta 3."

After more than a week of coding, the updated OSNews design is pretty much done. While a lot of you (including myself) prefered the older, simpler & cleaner design, which was also much faster to load and even rendered nicely on... text-based browsers, this updated design was necessary. We had to expand PriceGrabber (part of the deal) so we can get some revenue to be able to pay for our (always on-the-increase) bandwidth needs, and the only way to do so was to add a vertical bar. Also, we needed to add more menu items (check out the massively updated "OS Resources" and "Advertise" pages), so we had to make the menu vertical (the 765-pixel wide horizontal menu was not a scalable option anymore). UPDATE: I just added better support for Lynx, Links & W3M text-based browsers. *You will have* to load www.osnews.com/home.php instead of the plain www.osnews.com though because the default index.php is actually static (generated on-the-fly every 1 minute) so it won't work with my PHP text browser detection code. UPDATE 2: Better AvantGo support added.

Great news for the Linux desktop users. Robert Love's patch which turns the Linux kernel to behave like a preemptive one, has been accepted to the development 2.5.x Linux source tree. Preemptiveness greatly improves UI responsiveness (for example mp3s won't skip when you do something CPU heavy at the same time and you won't experience as many UI "locks" during normal usage). Our Take: Let's hope that SGI's XFS will also make it to be included by default to the 2.5.x Linux kernel.

Virtual Dimension has finished translating this year's video coverage of the Amiga 2001 show. This annual show held in Cologne, is the highlight Amiga event among the dozens Amiga events being held annually all over the world. Highlights inlude an interview with Ben Hermans of Hyperion Entertainment about the development of AmigaOS4, an interview with Gerald Carda of bplan GmbH regarding their new PPC based PEGASOS motherboard and MorphOS; 'a lightweight PPC OS which is able to emulate 68k AmigaOS and software on PPC hardware in a similar way to how Amithlon works on x86 hardware' and finally it also includes a demonstration of AmigaOS XL powered systems. Amiga Inc and some AmigaDE partners were not present as they decided to attend a very small Canadian Amiga show, which was being held simultaniously to ensure some interest.

"Itanium--you've gotta start somewhere". ExtremeTech will take you from the genesis of IA-64 through the present day of Itanium, to the future: McKinley, Madison, and Deerfield. Then on to Hammer, PowerPC, SPARC, and more. "It's Nothing Like a Pentium": Ten years in development, 325 million transistors and counting. "The Good Stuff: the Instruction Set" 41-bit VLIW instructions are elegant... until they get weird. "But What About x86 Compatibility?" It's there, sorta. It probably won't be the most popular feature. Read the first article of a three-part series at ExtremeTech.

Sun's chief executive dressed up as Tux the penguin at an analysts meeting to prove his love for the GNU/Linux operating system. CEO Scott McNealy: "Sun will create its own version of Linux". Read the rest of the article at ZDNet UK.

Oliver Fourdan, a French developer who works his day job at embedded Linux company Anfora, explains how XFce got started: "Back in late 1996, I'd started working on HP workstations that used CDE and I really liked that interface. I was very disappointed with Microsoft Windows 95 and its 'Start Menu,' so I found the concept of the toolbar in CDE very much more convenient. I had been using Linux since 1994, so it sounded natural to me to try to reproduce a concept I liked, on Linux. And at that time, there were no other projects like this--well at least, none really usable." Read the review of the XFce desktop environment at NewsForge.

NTT DoCoMo, by far the most successful Japanese wireless internet technology provider for cellphones and PDAs is set to launch its i-Mode service for cellphones in Europe. DoCoMo is also planning to roll out an internet enabled version, of the soon to be released US and European version of the Zaurus PDA.

"AppleScript is a built-in Macintosh automation tool that gives users the ability to control the operating system and several of their favorite applications. While this powerful scripting system has always had a loyal following of Macintosh aficionados and publishing professionals, the release of Mac OS X 10.1.2 may mean AppleScript is ready to strut its stuff in front of a wider audience. Here are some of the exciting AppleScript developments on MacOSX..." Read the rest of the article at OReillyNet.

Among other new features, this recent release of the popular font engine which used in many projects "is a must have if you're using XFree86 with anti-aliased text, since it features enhanced glyph rendering and better (more consistent) letter spacing". Download FreeType 2.0.6. Update: As some of our readers have spotted out, FreeType 2.0.8 was released just yesterday.

From the press release: "Sun Microsystems has embraced the Linux operating system, rolling out a multipart program that will significantly broaden the offerings of Linux on low-end Sun servers and commit new resources to the ongoing development of the Open Source operating system." Our Take: I am very concerned as to what this may mean for Solaris. Was this the real reason behind the Sun decision to drop support for the x86 Solaris? Did Sun took marketing/strategy lessons from IBM regarding Linux and its accompanied hype? Because technically speaking, Solaris is a far more advanced server operating system (in its core) than Linux is.

After almost a full year of development since PostgreSQL v7.1 was released, the PostgreSQL Global Development Group announced the availability of the latest development milestone, PostgreSQL v7.2. In a related note, OSNews had a review of the "Practical PostgreSQL" book just a few days back.