In a recent interview with the online edition of the Austrian daily Newspaper Der Standard, Mono project-lead Miguel de Icaza pleads for a cooperation between Mono and Microsoft's .Net: "I think that the deal should include a technical Mono/.NET collaboration, and even go as far as Microsoft recommending Mono for all of their developers looking at migration."

"Dr Michal Schulz has made an initial commit of the AROS USB stack, enabling the use of USB mice and creating the foundations to add support, subsequently, also for other devices. Please notice this is pre-alpha stage software, this means only USB 1.1 UHCI controllers are supported for now, and maybe it won't work correctly on your motherboard. Next thing to develop will be extensions to USBHID class, allowing to use graphic tablets and USB keyboards with AROS, and OHCI controllers support. We must note that support for USB 2.0 EHCI controllers wasn't defined in bounty Michal is working on."

"The Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit Update for Windows Vista provides documentation, samples, header files, libraries, and tools you need to develop applications that run on Windows. This release of the SDK supplies updated compilers and documentation. The updated compilers are the same ones that recently shipped in Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1. This SDK also includes the samples, tools, headers, and libraries that shipped in the Windows SDK for Vista in November, 2006."

"Sun and Red Hat have both submitted new versions of their trusted operating systems for Common Criteria certification evaluation. While these systems are being evaluated against the same CC protection profiles and at the same evaluation assurance level, these systems differ in significant ways that affect how a customer might choose to use such systems."

"There have been a lot of rumors lately from 'unconfirmed' sources about Leopard's expected ship date. For a while, everyone was sure it was going to ship mid-to-late March. Then mysteriously, the ship date (according to these anonymous sources) got shifted to mid-April - perhaps because we are already in late March. Oops. Developers who work closely with Apple have been dying to tell the world how very, very wrong we all are. We have always maintained an air of skepticism regarding the early release speculations, but confirmation of these suspicions have been bombarding us lately. Our sources have told Ars that there is very little chance ('and that would be pushing it') for Leopard to ship in late April - that is, if Apple wants to ship with a halfway stable operating system."

"Misery, heartbreak, sorrow, and despair. No, I'm not talking about adolescence; I'm referring to what happens when you're stuck with a PC from Hell. Systems that were overpriced and underpowered, parts that failed two days after the warranty expired, marathon phone calls with brain-dead tech support staff - over the years we've suffered more than our share of ills, and so have millions of other innocent PC users. But picking these 10 Worst PCs of All Time wasn't as easy as it sounds."

Bernd Korz has announced that the Zeta development team and Magnussoft are parting ways . The team and Bernd will continue to develop Zeta, and the service pack (Zeta v1.51) will still be released in the coming weeks.

PC-BSD announced that it will deliver Opera in the next version of PC-BSD. Opera will be "one less thing you need to download after installation", as Matt Olander, CTO of iXsystems puts it, to get "a more usable system" out of your PC-BSD box.

Techgage has reviewed SabayonLinux 3.3 and concludes: "Fans of Sabayon will be pleased. Things just keep getting better. For those who have never touched SL, you should give it a try and see what you are missing. Even if you don't plan on changing desktops (like myself), it's one of the best distros to play with, or use as a Live DVD if you are on the road a lot. I had a few people test it out on Apple computers, and it works great there as well. No one is left excluded! Kudos to Fabio and his team for the great work on this latest release."

"In this article we look at some of the programs and projects - some obvious, others less so - that influenced the history of the RISC OS platform and its users. These are our suggestions, not a top ten and certainly not in any particular order. What other applications would you add to the list?"

After a long development period, we're ready to introduce the first "release candidate" of OSNews version 4. OSN4 is a very big change for us - for years, we've worked with the mantra "We render everywhere." We are still using MySQL and PHP, like in Eugenia's OSNews v2, but with the sudden prevalence of newer web technologies, we've decided that in order to really offer the best platform for our readers, it was time to enter a brave new world. Read on for details and the link. Updated: ("read more" to see update)

Microsoft is frequently dinged for having insecure products, with security holes and vulnerabilities. But Symantec, no friend of Microsoft, said in its latest research report that when it comes to widely-used operating systems, Microsoft is doing better overall than its leading commercial competitors. The information was a part of Symantec's 11th Internet Security Threat Report. The report, released this week, covered a huge range of security and vulnerability issues over the last six months of 2006, including operating systems.

"Nearly thirty years of growth haven't exhausted the potential of the REstructured eXtended eXecutor language. The first of the widely used 'scripting' languages continues to expand its capabilities and platform range, and it makes for a particularly good match with AIX."

I wrote the following article for university. It tries to explain the difference between three kernel types in such a way that less-computer savvy people should understand it. I had a 1500 word limitation, so detailed elaborations were out of the question. "In this article, I will try to make the 'microkernel vs. monolithic kernel' debate more accessible and understandable for laymen. I will explain the purpose of a kernel, after which I will detail the differences between the two competing designs. Finally, I will introduce the hybrid design, which aims to combine the two. In the conclusion, I will argue that this hybrid design is the most common kernel type in the world of personal computers today." Because of the limitations, this article contains little news for most of you. Still, I thought I'd share.