In the GNOME bugzilla, there is an ongoing discussion about whether or not to include a patch into the default GNOME installation which would enable GNOME to (optionally) have a global application menubar, similar to that of the Mac OS and KDE (in the latter it is optional and off by default). Installation instructions and .deb packages, as well as a 60-page (and counting) discussion of the patch, are available on the UbuntuForums. Read on for a poll on this issue.

The facelift the AROS project had planned is now complete. Most importantly, due to the recent legal troubles concerning Amiga, the project has changed its name from "Amiga Research Operating System" into "AROS Research Operating System". They have also redone their website. There is also development news; the USB UHCI and OHCI support has been completed, and write support for the FAT filesystem has been added, among other things.

Craig Mundie is trying to fill Bill Gates shoes. Well, at least one of them. Keenly aware that no one person can replace Microsoft's cultural icon, the company has divided his responsibilities among two top executives. Ray Ozzie has taken over as chief software architect, but Gates' role overseeing technical strategy and policy has gone to Mundie.

"With the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard pushed back to October, Apple has bought itself more time to tie loose ends in the current Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger operating system and will put forth those fixes via its first 'dot ten' software update in quite some time, AppleInsider has learned. According to those people familiar with the matter, the first pre-release builds of Mac OS X 10.4.10 began making the rounds in Cupertino earlier this month."

"It's the end of the line for 32-bit operating systems, Microsoft has proclaimed at its annual Windows Hardware Engineering conference After the software giant has gotten over its hangover from partying like it's 1999 with the release of Windows Server 2008, it will have one last 32-bit hurrah with a 'release 2' update to Windows Server 2008, and that'll be it. 32 bit CPU: if you have one, learn to love Vista - you're stuck with it.There will be no more versions of Windows - on desktop or server - that will work on 32-bit CPUs like Pentium 4 or Core Duo."

GNOME 2.19.2 has been released. "This is our second development release on our road towards GNOME 2.20.0, which will be released in September 2007. New features are still arriving, so your mission is simple: go download it. Go compile it. Go test it. And go hack on it, document it, translate it, fix it."

The fourth alpha release of OpenSUSE 10.3 has been released. "Inclusion of YaST Meta Packages handler; instLux allows users to start the Linux installation from Windows; we have removed zmd from the distribution and concentrate now on the tools opensuse-updater and zypper; TeX Live replaces teTex; first parts of KDE4svn entered Factory, its games are installed; OpenOffice.org 2.2; GNOME 2.18.1; improvements to our init script starter startpar to reduce boottime; first changes to support Sony PS3; Linux 2.6.21 with an updated AppArmor patchset."

"A while ago Thomas Leonard wrote about Ubuntu integration and asked the question 'Can we get rid of ROX-Session?'. This inspired me to attempt to replace it with the Xfce session manager and it turns out that it is both easy to do and works very well."

Mozilla's Firefox browser will probably abandon support for older distributions of Linux, a company executive has said. Mike Conner, director of Firefox development, has proposed that the browser's next edition work only with more-or-less current Linux runtimes, rather than support aged versions.

Microsoft has said it will not sue Linux users with regards to the company's patent claims. "We're not litigating. If we wanted to we would have done so years ago," said Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft's VP for intellectual property and licensing, in an interview. When asked for a reply regarding the claim of Microsoft that the Linux kernel infringes 42 of its patents, Linus Torvalds replied: "Can you get a list of which ones? Before that, it's just FUD, and there's not a whole lot I can say or do. Is there prior art? Are they trivial and obvious to one skilled in the art? Would we need to work around them? We don't know, because all I've heard so far is just FUD. If MS actually wanted us to not infringe their patents, they'd tell us. Since they don't, that must mean that they actually prefer the FUD."

"Good operating system performance depends in part on the operating system's ability to efficiently manage resources. In the old days, heap memory managers were the norm, but performance suffered due to fragmentation and the need for memory reclamation. Today, the Linux kernel uses a method that originated in Solaris but has been used in embedded systems for quite some time, allocating memory as objects based on their size. This article explores the ideas behind the slab allocator and examines its interfaces and their use."

"Jerry Rosenthal, chief executive officer of Open Invention Network, has just issued a statement about the Fortune article, which I take as a warning to any litigious folks out there who might be thinking about litigation against Linux that any such action will have consequences. 'We stand ready to leverage our IP portfolio to maintain the open patent environment OIN has helped create,' the statement concludes." Sun's Schwartz chimes in too.

"XGI Technology is still in business, but what has happened to them? We once saw hope in them for providing discrete graphics processors to take on the NVIDIA and ATI duopoly, but they have since discontinued their Volari 8 series. While they're no longer producing these desktop chips, they remain an active player in the server and embedded graphics industry - accompanied by their OSS driver."

Linux/Java has topped CEO Ed Zander's list things to look for from Motorola as it attempts a financial turnaround. At a New York press conference this morning, Zander introduced Linux-based 'Rokr' and 'Razr2' models, along with new top-level executives. Native SDKs won't be available.