The Unununium-based distribution FRuSTRaTiON, version 0.3, has just been released. Features improved console support, new keyboard code with unicode support, ext2 file system support; and it can now run applications. Unununium is a Single-Addressing-Space environement entirely developed in 386+ assembly with an emphasis on speed. The system is entirely dynamic: Any component of the system may be reloaded at any time; there is not even a static nano-kernel. Channeled IRQ, dynamic linker, memory allocation, 3d engine and communication channels are only a few of the elements present in the system. Multiple virtual consoles support, fixing the thread engine and starting the development of a GUI are their current development priorities.

"Viewsonic, the monitor manufacturer has entered into the Tablet PC market and in a big way. The new ViewPad 1000 Tablet PC has a touch screen hi resolution monitor with built in camera, a celeron 800 Mhz Processor and it even has a built in WAN, LAN and Wi-Fi Wireless LAN abilities. This is great for people on the go or those that would like a casual PC at home without a million features. Maybe the Tablet PC market will take off where the Internet appliance market failed." Get the story at DesignTechnica. We also hear that the TabletPC will run a custom version of WindowsXP in the near future.

"GNOME is not an independent software project; it is a part of the GNU system. This means GNOME does not exist just for its own success. It has a purpose: to provide the GNU system with a desktop. So while we should try to make GNOME successful (all else being equal), that's not the highest goal of the work on GNOME. If, on the other hand, GNOME and the rest of the GNU system are widely used, but mainly in combination with proprietary software, they will have succeeded only part-way, and a big task will remain ahead of us." Read the rest of the answers, and also have a read to the issue that was raised a month ago between RMS and some of the GNOME members.

"It's been a tough year for Linux companies. Those that didn't go bust announced large layoffs as investors realized that businesses built around a free operating system weren't poised for aggressive growth. The Linux Hatchery at this month's Comdex convention was home to just two companies, down from about 150 last year." Read the rest of the story at NewsAlert.

Interactive Studio has published the QubeOS web site which serves as the developer's web site for Qube application developers. You can also download there the Windows, DOS, and Linux compatible Qube environment and the Windows Qube SDK. An interesting article found on QubeOS web site is about the Object Routing technology, a technology which Michal Stencl has been developing for Qube. OSNews featured an interview with Michal recently. Our Take: A port to FreeBSD would also be desirable.

Niklas Angebrand sent us information regarding the V2 Operating System, an OS written in assembly which was pretty popular 1-2 years ago. "V2_OS is a project which was started by the V2_Labs who wanted a superfast and scalable OS. They then designed a fully modular with its own superfast and supersmall filesystem. This OS got very popular and was soon released under the GPL, and it was even on SlashDot, twice. Now it has come to the point where the old design can no longer be developed further, as it sets many (ridiculous) limits. The new kernel, 0.70, needs coders, and people that know of OS designs. Its goals of design is maximum speed without limits and the tiniest size possible. These design goals are important, but the most iomportant element is the modularity. V2_OS needs you! V2_OS wants you!"

"Phil Schiller, Apple's VP of worldwide marketing, has gone on the record to suggest March as the date when new Macs ship with OS X as default. Macs have shipped with both the old and the new operating systems preloaded since May, but with OS 9.x as default, and Apple has been pretty cagey so far on even suggesting a date for the big switch." TheRegister reports.

An interesting debate has started between important people in the open source circles. Stallman and Kuhn in their essay 'Freedom or Power?' state that: "However, one so-called freedom that we do not advocate is the "freedom to choose any license you want for software you write We reject this because it is really a form of power, not a freedom." Eric S. Raymond fights back: "In other words, Stallman and Kuhn want to be able to make decisions that affect other developers more than themselves. By the definition they themselves have proposed, they want power". Tim O'Reilly started the debate: "If Freedom Zero for developers is the freedom to offer software on whatever terms the developer sets and a user will accept; Freedom Zero for users is the right to choose whatever software they like, without interference from platform vendors who try to deny that choice."

Norwegian ex-Amiga coder Kurt Skauen started designing & writing AtheOS in 1996. Until late 1999, AtheOS (a name derived from the Greek Goddess Athena) used to be called AltOS. AtheOS has even seen complete rewrites along the years, and today is on version 0.3.7. Come with me and see what AtheOS has to offer today to you. All your questions answered and we also include five new screenshots.

Brandon Sharitt contacted us and introduced us the operating system he is working on: "I've recently joined yet another opensource operating system that is supposed to unify all other operating sytems while 'destroying' Microsoft. The only difference with this one is that it may actually work. The project is called BoxOS."

Mozilla.org made available for download binaries of the Mozilla 0.9.6 Milestone. New to this milestone are fixes for about 1,600 bugs including: Mozilla now displays page icons in the url bar (Expect support for shortcut icons (aka favicon) in Mozilla 0.9.7). Mozilla can now display Windows .BMP and .ICO images on all platforms. Print Preview has been implemented. Macintosh Page Setup has been implemented. Mail message "labels" support has been implemented. Mail "prefill mail filter" support has been implemented. The new Search for item on the context menu lets you search for any text you highlight on a web page. In related news, Netscpape 6.2 and also Netscape 4.79 (based on the old 4.x codebase) were released very recently.

The VMS (Virtual Memory System) operating system is available only on VAX and Alpha processors, and in spite of its undeniable qualities, its future seems uncertain. The FreeVMS project tends to the coding of an operating system under the GPL licence according to the specifications of the VMS systems. This operating system will function at least on i386 architecture, PPC, Sparc and Alpha processors. It is developed using the C language and it consists of a POSIX kernel and a DCL command line interpreter. In other news, MenuetOS 0.61 was released just a couple of days ago.

"The revolution triggered by Linux may be slowly starting to fade. Many companies are becoming increasingly protective of their intellectual property rather than embracing open source during the economic slump. The ideological purity of the open-source software business is being diluted by a new era of pragmatism as start-ups adjust to the economic slump." Reported at ZDNews.

"The desktop metaphor was a brilliant innovation--30 years ago. Now it's an unmanageable mess, and the search is on for a better way to handle information. If you have ever forgotten what you named a file or which folder you put it in, you probably will agree that it's time for a change. The desktop metaphor is decades old, arising from early-1970s work at Xerox's fabled Palo Alto Research Center, and was never intended to address today's computing needs. TechReview searches for our next computer Interface.