Today, most Amiga users and developers own PCs next to their Amiga platform(s). The PC platform is currently the only "cheap" solution available to give access to modern day hardware. This is why many Amiga fans use it as a development platform or use PCs for applications which aren't available for the currently dated Amiga hardware platform . Of course, this is soon to change with advent of new PPC based AmigaOS 4.x compatible computers on the horizon, as well as a huge variety of AmigaDE enabled devices. But there is also another way: run AmigaOS on your PC. This article will review a new product, AmigaOS XL, which allows you to run the AmigaOS under any modern PC. Screen shots included.

Microsoft on Friday released USB 2.0 drivers for its Windows XP operating system. The drivers are designed to enable third-party USB 2.0 add-in cards to work with XP, which originally shipped without support for the connectivity standards. The drivers can be downloaded using the "Windows Update" feature. USB 2.0 transfers data at 480mbps, which is much speedier than USB 1.1's rate of 12mbps for exchanging information between PCs and peripherals such as external hard drives and CD-rewritable drives. USB 2.0 is also backwards compatible with USB 1.1.

Klint Finley writes: "I have a question for the OS news community: There's been a lot of talk about "BeOS refugees" and analysis of various alternatives but one that I haven't read much discussion of is Nemesis. There was some brief commentary when OSNews ran a story on it, but that's about it. Nemesis already has Java and GTK support , which means it should be capable of running a lot of programs. Seems like the GIMP and Kino should run on it. And it has an Amiga/BeOS-ish UI and a slim microkernal. So why isn't anyone developing this? It needs more hardware support and stuff, but it's already much further along than BlueOS and OpenBeOS."

This is an old article (Nov. 2000), but it is still a good read. Jordan Hubbard, the well known FreeBSD leader who later got a job at Apple's kernel team, had written this interesting MacOSX review for Salon.com. His article was from a different point of view than other review articles at the time: the open source hacker who tries to find and uncover the UNIX underneath OSX.

There is an interesting editorial in the Inquirer that paints a picture of what an Apple/AMD platform might mean for the ailing PC industry and what a MacOSX/Hammer combination could do to chip-away at the Microsoft/Intel "Wintel" hegemony. The article is pure speculation, the conclusions highly unlikely, but interesting nonetheless.

The major skin sites and several tech news sites (including OSNews) have gotten together with Stardock to create the first GUI Olympics. It is the ultimate user interface design contest in which users from around the world can submit their WindowBlinds skins and represent the website of their choice. Stardock is putting up $10,000 in cash and prizes that will be distributed to 75 different award categories (which means that just submitting a skin gives you a reasonable chance of winning something). Half of the cash award goes to the website a user represents. In this way, users can support the websites they enjoy using as well as win for themselves and have a lot of fun.

"Linux users' and developers' lives have just gotten a little easier. The Free Standards Group released two tools on Thursday intended to ensure that all Linux applications can run on any Linux Standard Base-compliant version of the open source operating system: LSB 1.1 and Li18nux 1.0. Some commercial application developers, including Microsoft, have slammed open source development, saying that it lacks the necessary controls to define the common programming standards that need to be used across different projects to ensure compatibility." Read the rest of the story at Wired.

"X Windows and GTK+ are not the bloated monsters you think they are. Here's how we modified GTK+/X for our device's GUI." Read the rest of the feature article at LinuxDevices.

"You've heard of killer apps? How about an app killer? This is what voice recognition has become over the years, because for the most part, it doesn't work. I see no evidence that it ever will, at least not in the sense that we can achieve true voice dictation capability. What annoys everyone most about voice recognition is that it almost works. This is the problem. When something almost works, developers continue with the same thinking that got them to "almost," rather than starting over with new ideas. We are now stuck in a blind alley." Who else? Dvorak is hitting the nail in the head again.

"A powerful feature of Visual Studio .NET is its ability to debug across languages that target the common language runtime, and across execution environments. For example, if you write a Visual Basic .NET component that is called by a C# component that is in turn called by COBOL code (that targets the runtime), you can seamlessly step between languages when debugging. You can also see a single callstack that shows the different functions called in the languages you just stepped through." Read the rest of the article at MSDN. "A good understanding of the Portable Executable (PE) file format leads to a good understanding of the operating system. If you know what's in your DLLs and EXEs, you'll be a more knowledgeable programmer. This article, the first of a two-part series, looks at the changes to the PE format that have occurred over the last few years, along with an overview of the format itself. After this update, the author discusses how the PE format fits into applications written for .NET, PE file sections, RVAs, the DataDirectory, and the importing of functions. An appendix includes lists of the relevant image header structures and their descriptions." Read the rest of the article at MSDN.

By now, anyone who is even remotely related to an IT-type position has heard about Linux, and has most likely used it, if only to see what all the hype is about. However, GNU/Linux is not the only "free" Unix type OS available. FreeBSD and its cousins, NetBSD and OpenBSD are all offshoots of BSD UNIX, a commercial UNIX also known as Berkeley Software Distribution. This article will help you learn more about FreeBSD, its differences from Linux, and it will ease a potential migration process.

"Wireless software pioneer Geoworks Corp has thrown in the towel, giving up hope of developing its AirBoss application platform technology and has put it up for sale along with the source code for its GEOS and GEOS-SC operating systems. The Alameda, California-based company said the wireless infrastructure market is "very weak" and, while it will eventually be significant as enterprises adopt mobile data applications, Geoworks simply does not have the financial resources to support development of the AirBoss platform and wait for the market to emerge." Read the rest of the story at TheRegister.

Caldera International, Inc. announced the immediate availability of Caldera OpenLinux Workstation 3.1.1 and Caldera OpenLinux Server 3.1.1. These versions of OpenLinux Workstation and OpenLinux Server feature several technical enhancements and capture the best tools for Linux software development and deployment. In addition to these technical updates, each release features localization in English, German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese Traditional and Chinese Simplified languages. The new version includes Linux 2.4.13 kernel, KDE 2.2.1, support for Caldera Volution Messaging Server and Caldera Volution Manager 1.1 & Samba version 2.2.2 (OpenLinux Server only).

"A year after Australia's one-man army started pounding out code for GNU/Linux's version of .Net, he's looking to double the quarter of a million lines of code already written before done, and hopes to do so in six months if he can convince some new "code demons" to sign up to the cause. "We're moving full-steam ahead," said Rhys Weatherley, the Brisbane developer who had written 254,423 lines of code by December last year - just 12 months after throwing himself into his Portable.NET project." Read the rest of the story at ZDNews.