The IcedTea project provides a harness to build the source code from OpenJDK using Free Software build tools and provides replacements libraries for the binary plugs with code from the GNU Classpath project. This release adds the "Zero-assembler" port which will allow IcedTea to run with zero (ok, minimal) porting effort on any GNU/Linux architecture that has a gcc and libffi port available. JNLP support has been added through the addition of NetX, which makes a lot of java webstart applications work out of the box. Check out the screenshots. Gary Benson will give a talk about the zero-assembler port at FOSDEM during the free Java developer meeting where GNU Classpath, OpenJDK and many other Free Java projects come together to plan the future of Free Java on GNU/Linux.

Mozilla has announced the official release of the third Firefox 3 beta, which includes many user interface improvements and a handful of new features. Firefox 3 is rapidly approaching completion, and much of the work that remains to be done is primarily in the category of fit and finish. There will likely only be one more beta release after this one before Mozilla begins issuing final release candidates. Additionally, jemalloc from FreeBSD will be the default internal memory allocator for Firefox.

The Fedora 8 Xfce Spin has been released. "Fedora Xfce Spin is a bootable Fedora Live CD image available for x86 and x86_64 architecture. It can be optionally installed to hard disk or converted into boot USB images and is ideal for Xfce fans and for users running Fedora on relatively low resource systems. As a additional bonus, this release rolls in updates for Fedora 8 released till yesterday (2008/02/12)."

The FreeBSD project has released the second release candidate for FreeBSD 7.0. "We sincerely hope this will be the last of the public tests for 7.0 and that the -RELEASE builds will start in about a week and a half. If bug(s) considered big enough to be show-stoppers are found we will of course reconsider but hopefully we're in good enough shape now to proceed with the release."

Comc: "Fault".

The Linux Foundation has posted the second half of its long and thorough interview with Linux founder Linus Torvalds, part of the Foundation's 'open voices' podcast. While the first part of the interview focused on the Linux development community, this time Torvalds sounds off on everything from patents and innovation to the future of Linux. According to Torvalds the reason Linux hasn't taken off is that most people are happy with the way things are. “If you act differently from Windows, even if you act in some ways better, it doesn't matter; better is worse if it's different.” Torvalds also attributes much of the frustration with Windows Vista to this same idea. In other words, it's not that Vista is worse than XP, but it's different and that causes distress among users.

InfoWorld reviews the MacBook Air, and concludes: "The MacBook Air is not perfect, but it sure is attractive and functional. If you're looking for a desktop replacement system, get a MacBook Pro. If you're looking for a basic laptop, get a MacBook. If you're looking for supreme portability and more than reasonable performance, definitely get a MacBook Air."

Innotek has been bought by Sun. The press release reads: "Sun today announced that it has entered into a stock purchase agreement to acquire innotek, the provider of the leading edge, open source virtualization software called VirtualBox."

With many recent stability fixes and other improvements by Michael Lotz (mmlr) as well as others - he was able to finally nail down a couple last minor tweaks that allowed him to checkout the Haiku source from the SVN repository, compile a raw Haiku image, and test it in QEMU entirely from his Haiku install. This is the first time ever that Haiku has reportedly 'self-hosted', an unofficial important requirement for an alpha release. Please note that there are a few technicalities to be ironed out before the process can be easily reproduced by all. Update: Please note that Haiku won't be taking over the world just yet.

"Free/Open Source software has grown considerably from its roots in the UNIX tradition of the command line interface and early X Windows-based graphical environments. As desktop use has increased concurrently with advances in desktop development, serious user interface and experience issues have arisen. Celeste Lyn Paul of User Centered Design, Inc. and the KDE Project presented, 'A Quick and Dirty Intro to User Centered Design in Open Source Development', Saturday at SCaLE 6X. Her talk emphasized the importance of including designers in the development process."

Today, Apple has released the much anticipated Mac OS X 10.5.2. The hefty combo update weighs in at almost 350MB, but it can also be downloaded via Software Update. The updates includes general operating system improvements that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, as well as imrpoved Back to My Mac support, new view for Dock based folders, and much more.

Comic: "Bleeding".

The final 1.0 version of the Nexenta Core Platform has been released. "Nexenta Operating System is a free and open source operating system combining the OpenSolaris kernel with GNU application userland. Nexenta Operating System runs on Intel/AMD 32/64bit hardware and is distributed as a single installable CD. NexentaCore is a minimal (core) foundation that can be used to quickly build servers, desktops, and custom distributions tailored for specialized applications."

Ken Hinckley from Microsoft Research has unofficially put together a prototype Tablet PC note-taking application designed and built from ground up around the pen. InkSeine (rhymes with 'insane'), which gives you the ability to easily search the web or your local computer directly from your ink. Although it's scheduled for a public release on February 15, 2008, Microsoft insists that it is not intended for public consumption: "InkSeine is a research demonstration only, and is not a Microsoft product, nor is it intended to become a product. It is just something we built as a pure research project to explore novel pen and ink functionality."