"Over the past year, the information technology elite have started to dismiss Linux as a flash in the pan that tried and failed to dominate in a world owned by Windows. Woebegone Linux and open-source companies are scattered across the landscape like so much shrapnel. The stock prices of IPO high fliers VA Linux and Red Hat currently trade near half of their pre-IPO offering prices. Meanwhile, Windows XP gets the press and the plaudits. But what's happening behind the scenes?" Does Linux found its place in... Hollywood, being the No 1 choice for a rendering farm? Read the rest of the feature article at Salon.com.

Rocklyte Systems is a New Zealand-based software engineering company and creators of the Athene operating system and Pandora Engine. Athene is an object based operating system that is being developed for use in PC's and embedded systems. The user interface is completely rewriteable and is capable of emulating other interfaces such as the Windows and Amiga desktop environments (developing your own, custom desktop GUI is a matter of writting a script!). The Pandora Engine is an all-purpose object oriented SDK, aimed at assisting developers in all areas of the technology industry and it also the base of Athene. The engine is based on Modular Object Oriented technology, which allows you to create true object oriented programs using almost any language. Athene and Pandora are available for both Windows and Linux. Read more for an interview with Rocklyte's Paul Manias and two new screenshots, showing AtheneOS running under its newly released Windows version.

The FreeBSD Handbook is the primary source of documentation produced by the FreeBSD Documentation Project. This new edition contains over 650 pages of material about FreeBSD and has been completely updated to reflect FreeBSD 4.X and 5.0-CURRENT. More information at BSDToday. In related news, "FreeBSD Unleashed" by Michael Urban and Brian Tiemann was also released recently. The book is published by SAMS Publishing and you can buy it at the Daemonnews Mall. Update: The "FreeBSD Unleashed" book includes the latest version of FreeBSD 4.4 in its cover CD-ROM as well as a snapshot of the FreeBSD-CURRENT 5.0 unstable branch.

xMach is an open source 4.4BSD-like BSD operating system based on the Mach microkernel. Primary focuses are on security, portability, and staying unbloated. xMach work began in November of 1999 by Joseph Mallett, project founder and Core Team Member. In one of my recent stormings to the IRC, I stoped by the #xmach channel and met Joseph. Read more about our brief conversation regarding the xMach operating system.

"Nothing determines the peculiar behavior, the feel - even the ultimate success or failure of an operating system - like its virtual memory design." A must-read article for all the Linux coders regarding the problems of the Linux VM so far and the solutions presented recently. Another good reading regarding VMs is an article about the FreeBSD VM, which is known to be one of the best VMs available.

AOL Time Warner's Netscape division placed its Netscape 6.2 (NS 6.2) browser-suite upgrade for the Linux, Macintosh, and Microsoft Windows platforms on its FTP servers today. In related news, K-Meleon 0.6 for Windows released today while Galeon for Unix is marching for version 1.0. Both applications are trimmed down Mozilla-based browsers, specifically coded for speed and efficiency. Update: MozillaNews.org wrote a review of the latest browser suite from Netscape.

"If these OS's were cars, XP would be the Warner Brothers Special Edition minivan, and 7.2 would be a Yugo well on its way to becoming a KIA. Damn." This is a... pretty funny article regarding the experience of a TheRegister journalist, trying to compare both RedHat and WindowsXP. Our take: AFAIK, all he had to do was to decrease the PIO mode value of his CD-ROM in his computer's BIOS. After doing that, the Linux installation should have worked just fine.

Following up on last week's interesting interview with REBOL's own Carl Sassenrath, Rebol Technologies announced today that StreamCast, makers of Morpheus and next generation peer-to-peer content distribution networks, will base Morpheus 2.0 on REBOL's X Internet operating system (IOS) technology to provide interactive programmable content to more than 30 million users by the end of the year.

The well known to 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' fans, Wil Wheaton (the 'Wesley Crusher' actor) is being interviewed by Slashdot. Wil talks about TNG, his relationship with computers and the Free Software, his work at NewTek (makers of the 'Lightwave' 3D application) and the legendary "Shut up Wesley!". Great to see an actor turned to a computer geek rather a geek (or singer/model/housewife/fisherman) turned into an actor!

WINE is definetely not an emulator. Neither a runtime. Wine is an implementation of the Windows 3.x and Win32 APIs on top of X and Unix featuring a Windows compatibility layer. Wine provides both a development toolkit (Winelib) for porting Windows sources to Unix and a program loader, allowing unmodified Windows 3.1/95/NT binaries to run under Intel Unixes (some screenshots here). Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely alternative implementation consisting of 100% open source Microsoft-free code, but it can optionally use native system DLLs if they are available. WINE's project leader and CodeWeavers' software engineer (a company which sells a modified WINE version), Alexandre Julliard, answers a series of questions to OSNews regarding the project and its future.

Plural OS is a multitasking, microkernel operating system being developed based on the XOpen Single Unix Specifications. The project only started a month ago. Another hobby OS, Clicker, a multitasking open-source operating system project, is based on a modular microkernel and a brand-new architecture. With its new release today, Clicker made a leap, the OS was able to run its first binary application.

With the release of WindowsXP, the well-known technical web site have published three articles: "Price, Performance, Pitfalls": Which edition? How fast? How compatible? Answers from the Labs. "The First Few Weeks": Much to like, but room for improvement. "It's Finally Here": A collection of news, reviews and XPlanations from around Ziff Davis. We should also not forget the very interesting --technically-- article they featured some months ago, regarding kernel enhancements to be found in WindowsXP's kernel.

The calling card for the Linux-Mandrake distribution has always been ease of installation and use, and 8.1 delivers the goods in this department. First time users will find many of the pains of installation are handled automatically by the installation program. Experienced Linux users will appreciate a multitude of installation modes and options. Read the rest of the review at Linux.com.

PC Magazine offers a six-way shootout between Red Hat, SuSE, Debian (Potato), Caldera, Mandrake, and Turbo Linux. Red Hat takes top honors in the final reckoning (which can be viewed by downloading a PDF on the last page of the report.) From the article: "Widespread industry acceptance and ease of use make Red Hat's distro a solid choice for general use, but don't rule out other distributions until you've studied them and know which excel at specific tasks."