KernelTrap offers an informative look back in time at the November 1991 release of the 0.10 Linux kernel, continuing their historical series of articles about the early beginnings of Linux. Quite entertaining is a quote from Linus Torvalds talking about when he accidentally deleted the Minix partition that he was developing Linux from, causing him to make Linux usable for more than just reading and posting to newsgroups. The article also discusses the creation of the linux-activists mailing list, offering browsable archives of that first Linux discussion forum, full of interesting gems. And finally it describes the first Linux distribution, MCC Interim, which was created and used by the University of Manchester to teach C programming and UNIX.

"Judge Dale Kimball has issued a 102-page ruling on the numerous summary judgment motions in SCO v. Novell. Here is what matters most: he court concludes that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights. The court also ruled that "SCO is obligated to recognize Novell's waiver of SCO's claims against IBM and Sequent". There are a couple of loose ends, but the big picture is, SCO lost. Oh, and it owes Novell a lot of money from the Microsoft and Sun licenses", GrokLaw writes.

In the view of Mendel Rosenblum, chief scientist and co-founder of virtualization vendor VMware, today's modern operating system is destined for the dustbin, a scenario unlikely to please Microsoft or any of the Linux vendors. Rosenblum's keynote on Thursday wrapped up the LinuxWorld conference, preaching the virtues of virtualization, which he believes will eventually make today's complex, some would say bloated, operating systems obsolete. "It's just going to go away", Rosenblum said.

An unpatched flaw in an ATI driver was at the center of the mysterious Purple Pill proof-of-concept tool that exposed a way to maliciously tamper with the Vista kernel. Purple Pill, a utility released by Alex Ionescu and yanked an hour later after the kernel developer realized that the ATI driver flaw was not yet patched, provided an easy way to load unsigned drivers onto Vista - effectively defeating the new anti-rootkit/anti-DRM mechanism built into Microsoft's newest operating system.

"There is a sub-genre of historical fiction one could loosely call 'what-ifs'. The computer industry also has a number of such obvious what if scenarios. What if Bill Gates and Paul Allen hadn't lucked into the IBM contract for DOS, which was the basis for Microsoft's eventual hegemony? What if the UNIX operating system hadn't split into several minor variants, but gone on to become what Linux later became, only a decade or two before? What if BeOS had gone on to succeed on the desktop...?"

"Unless you are a big fan of small form-factor computing, you probably haven't been tracking the development of VIA's Pico-ITX motherboards. This form-factor was announced at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, but it has been almost impossible to get your hands on an ITX motherboard and the official U.S. release has yet to happen. A few samples have made their way to reviewers and developers, but because of their rarity coverage has been sparse."

Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian explained rather than defended his company's deal with Microsoft in his keynote address at the annual LinuxWorld Conference here Aug. 8. "I know our deal with Microsoft is controversial, but it is necessary for our customers who have to deal with both Linux and Windows in their data centers. Virtualization is also going to have to deal with both of those operating systems," he told attendees.

Ars has reviewed the brand new iMac. They conclude: "The Intel Macs are fast, the majority of apps have been released as Universal Binaries, and Apple's product line - including the new iMac - is in a good place. The iMac is also competitive on price with other all-in-one PCs, so if you absolutely love the all-in-one form factor, the iMac is one of lower-priced options available. If you've been holding on to your Power PC Mac and waiting for the right time to make the big switch to Intel, the appearance of the new iMac marks an excellent opportunity." CNet also has a review.

When Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie unveiled Silverlight at MIX07, he vowed that it would be a cross-platform technology. It appears as if the software giant is making good on that pledge: SD Times has learned that some of Microsoft's top developers have provided technical guidance for a Linux implementation of Silverlight.

In a move that will likely only further confuse the situation surrounding Vista Service Pack 1, Microsoft has posted for public download two updates that were released to beta testers last month. The patches improve Vista performance and reliability, along with the operating system's compatibility with drivers and hardware. Some of the changes include better file copy performance, faster boot times, improved compatibility with newer graphics cards, and better performance in games with advanced visuals.

Gutsy Gibbon Tribe 4 is the fourth alpha release of Ubuntu 7.10, and this alpha release brings a list of new features, including Tracker, Openoffice 2.3 Beta, AppArmor, and more. For PowerPC and PS3 see this page in the wiki.

The first beta of Mandriva Linux 2008, codenamed Cassini, is now available. The release notes are available here. A guide to major new features (some of which are not yet implemented in this beta) is available here, and the detailed technical specifications are available here. This beta is available only as a three CD Free edition (containing no non-free software or drivers) for the x86-32 architecture, with a traditional installer. Future betas will be available in One live/install CD hybrid editions with proprietary drivers, and in x86-64 versions.

Microsoft showed its new 'Softgrid' technology today that allows apps to run as if they were inside a second copy of Windows. But unlike traditional virtualisation apps, there's no second Windows desktop getting in the way. For example, Microsoft showed Office 2003 and Office 2007 running side-by-side, even though they can't actually be installed on the same copy of Windows. Initially, the technology is for corporate users only, but it has huge obvious benefits for home users as well. First steps towards this?

University of Cambridge researcher Robert Watson has published a paper at the First USENIX Workshop On Offensive Technology in which he describes serious vulnerabilities in OpenBSD's Systrace, Sudo, Sysjail, the TIS GSWTK framework, and CerbNG. The technique is also effective against many commercially available anti-virus systems. His slides include sample exploit code that bypasses access control, virtualization, and intrusion detection in under 20 lines of C code consisting solely of memcpy() and fork(). Sysjail has now withdrawn their software, recommending against any use, and NetBSD has disabled Systrace by default in their upcoming release.