Sun has announced a new set of products and services targeting developers, startups, and internet companies seeking to build and deploy their web infrastructure on Solaris 10. The three offerings are Solaris Express, Developer Edition, Solaris + AMP (Apache/MySQL/PERL or PHP), and an expanded Sun Startup Essentials program.

OpenAddict 'reviews PCLinuxOS 2007 Beta 2, and concludes: "In all honesty, any review of PCLOS will be lacking as the qualities that make PCLOS what it is are in the details. There is no one' shining point regarding this distro. The whole PCLinuxOS distribution is the shining point."

"Ubuntu is a strong desktop distro, but it falls short for some users in a few areas. Where are the multimedia codecs and DVD support, and what's with all the brown, for heaven's sake? If you'd like multimedia support with a minty fresh theme, try Linux Mint 2.2, an Ubuntu-based distro that throws in support for Flash 9, Windows Media Format, DVDs, MP3s, and troublesome wireless cards."

"This article is an overview that discusses the differences and similarities between Windows XP Starter Edition and Windows XP Home Edition. These differences are discussed for entertainment, networking and sharing, printers, system requirements, languages, and security and safety features. This article is part of a series written to provide support to independent software vendors interested in designing programs for Windows Starter."

"It's been awhile since I've done one of these but this is certainly a pivotal year in skinning. The term 'skinning' has really expanded in what it means. Today, skinning is loosely used to describe customizing in general. From phones, to PDAs, to computer cases, skinning has become an all purpose term. But for our purposes, we're going to stick with customizing the user experience of personal computers (primarily PC and Macintosh). This article will give a head's up on where I think, in my highly biased way, things stand and where I think they're going."

"On Tuesday, January 25th Mandriva introduced a new project: Metisse LiveCD. In this article we are going to investigate the features offered by this promising project and see if Metisse can compete with the popular desktops in terms of ergonomics and ease of use."

3Dfx died in the fourth quarter of 2000 and Windows XP came to life a year after. But seven years after, drivers for 3dfx cards still appear. First of all, it is nearly incredible that enthusiast community managed to support an operating system which was still in the works. Secondly - it is incredible that drivers that support both 32- and 64-bit Windows have just came out.

The KDE 4 release team started a discussion about a possible release schedule for KDE 4. Of course nothing is set yet but the topic is now hot and some interesting problems and point of views come up. In other but related news Oxygen hit the mirrors, or better, kdelibs.

Augmented Reality is the overlapping of digital information and physical environment. Sci-Fi has often portrayed A.R. as interactive floating transparent computer screens projected into the air, or perhaps the most absolute example: standing inside an entirely computer generated world.

Complaining about Windows Vista is a national past time on Internet forums these days. Windows Vista 'costs too much', 'has onerous product activation', 'requires too much hardware', etc. These complaints are often followed up by a very simple boast: 'I'm just going to switch to Linux'. But in today's landscape, how viable is that statment? Is the threat to switch to Linux an empty one, or is it entirely possible?"

"The FreeBSD project has received approval from Intel to redistribute firmware for several Intel-based PRO/Wireless devices in the base FreeBSD operating system. The inclusion of firmware for popular Intel wireless devices means that users of FreeBSD will have native wireless support for many Centrino-branded Intel PRO/Wireless devices without downloading additional software. This approval includes firmware for the Intel 2100, 2200BG, 2225BG, 2915ABG, and the 3945ABG devices."

Google is developing a program to help academics around the world exchange huge amounts of data. The firm's open source team is working on ways to physically transfer huge data sets up to 120 terabytes in size. "We have started collecting these data sets and shipping them out to other scientists who want them," said Google's Chris DiBona. Google sends scientists a hard drive system and then copies it before passing it on to other researchers.

Documentary evidence that Microsoft considered abandoning Office for Mac in order to cause 'a great deal of harm' to Apple has emerged. An emailed memo from Microsoft-founder Bill Gates to then Mac Business Unit chief Ben Waldman dated June 1997 talks about morale in the Mac Office development camp. At that time Microsoft's senior management were considering dumping Mac support. The email complains at poor sales of Office, which it attributes to a lack of focus on making such sales among reps at that time.

"The wait is almost over. It may have taken two weeks longer than Red Hat would have liked, but Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, the updated version of the company's commercial Linux platform, will be launched along with a bevy of new products and services on March 14. The delivery of RHEL 5, the fourth major commercial server release for Red Hat, will better position its Linux against Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 as well as Windows, Unix, and proprietary platforms."