There's an interesting article over at FreeSoftwareMagazine.com about what you can do with the free time the coming holidays will likely present you with. This being an article at the Free Software Magazine, it focusses mainly on - you guessed it - Free software. The suggestions are interesting, but we have a few of our own to add.

From Phoronix: "Have you ever wondered on what operating system Java works the best? While by no means is it a conclusive multi-platform comparison, for this article we ran a number of Java benchmarks on both Windows Vista Premium and Ubuntu Linux to see how the Java Virtual Machine performance differs. In addition, when running Ubuntu we had tested Sun's official Java package as well as the OpenJDK alternative."

Sun just released xVM VirtualBox 2.1.0, a major update with several new features, among them: better 64-bit support, hardware-assisted virtualization on MacOS, OpenGL 3D acceleration, easier networking on Windows and Linux, emulated SCSI controllers and full VMDK/VHD support including snapshots.

It was recently announced at the Android project website that the said mobile system would be receiving an update bringing to light many new features and various bug fixes. The Android team has already begun putting the new code on the public repositories under the "cupcake" branch. Some of the more notable new features and fixes include plentiful email and browser fixes, new video support, and even "basic x86 support," though we're not quite sure just where they're headed with that one.

I read in InfoQ: "Ja.NET is a port of Java 1.5 SE to the .NET platform. The compiler is based on the Eclipse JDT, which has been modified to generate IL as well as Java Byte Code. Java traditionally compiles each class into a separate file, but this creates an unacceptable overhead for .NET. To address this, a tool based on Cecil is used to create larger assemblies much in the same way Jar files are created for Java."

The openSUSE Project is proud to announce the release of openSUSE 11.1. The openSUSE 11.1 release includes more than 230 new features, improvements to YaST, major updates to GNOME, KDE, OpenOffice.org, and more freedom with a brand new license, Liberation fonts, and openJDK. This is also the first release built entirely in the openSUSE Build Service. Get it today!

MacFUSE 2.0 was recently released onto the world, and now, its author, Amit Singh, as given Mac users something they've been waiting for ever since they first laid eyes on Mac OS X: access to numerous old (and more recent) file systems, through something called AncientFS. Always wanted to mount v1tap DEC tapes as ordinary volumes in Mac OS X? Here's your chance.

IBM's primer to Cygwin. Cygwin is a UNIX-like environment for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Cygwin includes a real UNIX shell, a Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) emulation library, and thousands of UNIX utilities ported to Windows. Learn how to drop to Cygwin and use its UNIX-like command line to manipulate the system.

In a muckraking Spiegel.de article, suppliers to well-known computer manufacturers are accused of mistreating workers and violating Chinese labor law: "According to a Hong-Kong based human rights organization, working hours total up to 370 hours per month, workers aren't receiving the legal minimum wage and in the run-up to Christmas, days off are cut out entirely." One of the reasons that high tech hardware has become so widespread and useful is because it's so inexpensive. As this article demonstrates, this affordability can come at a price.

Apple, which has outpaced the overall personal computer market this year despite its strategy of eschewing discounts, showed its first signs of weakness in November. NPD analyst Steve Baker blamed a 35% drop in sales of desktop Macs, noting growth in Apple's laptops still outpaced rivals . The decline marks a sharp reversal for Apple, which has enjoyed robust demand this year for its Macs, even as spending on Windows-based PCs slowed along with sales of other electronics like flat-panel TVs. Note by Kroc: With apologies to OSNews reader judgen for changing the news source provided from SmartHouse to WSJ.

In a move that will surely revive the tiring rumour that Steve Jobs has serious health issues, Apple has announced that not only will they back out of MacWorld San Francisco , but also that Steve Jobs will not hold his usual keynote address at the coming MacWorld event this January - which will be the last MacWorld attended by Apple. The keynote will instead be delivered by Phil Schiller. Surprising? Hardly.

Earlier this month we reported on RISCOS Ltd possibly undertaking legal action against RISC OS Open Ltd , with the latter being the shared source project started by Castle. This news came down pretty hard on the already small RISC OS community, but it did have a number of positive effects: representatives from both ROL and ROOL were quick to explain that there is absolutely no animosity between the two companies, and that the community has nothing to fear.

Microsoft's first-ever iPhone application is a slick photo viewer with a browsing capability that handles a large number of photos on a mobile device screen. The Seadragon mobile application is free through Apple's application store. It a product of Microsoft's Live Labs division, which focuses on developing Web-based technology and applications. Seadragon incorporates the Deep Zoom feature, which is also integrated into Silverlight 2, Microsoft's multimedia tool. It allows a user to quickly magnify a particular area of a photo, regardless of its size.

Even the most experienced Linux admin can sometimes feel frustrated trying to do a simple task in a new *nix environment like Solaris or BSD. This quick tutorial should ease the transition and clarify the most common terminologies in Solaris 10.