"Beryl 0.2.0 is a complete overhaul of Beryl. The last stable release (0.1) featured a very fun, and eye-candy based compositing window manager. However, since it's release, many parts of Beryl have been rewritten, replaced, or simply dropped. It’s filled with eye-candy, better user support, new features, and stability."

Google has chosen the mentoring organizations that will be participating in Google Summer of Code 2007. Most of the usual suspects made the list, as well as a few newcomers, including Haiku. Google is now accepting student applications.

"Today, the GNOME Project celebrates the release of GNOME 2.18, the latest version of the popular, multi-platform Free desktop environment." The GNOME 2.18 start page has all the details, such as release notes, download locations, and screenshots.

AROS will be ported to the EFIKA. "Earlier this week John accepted the AROS EFIKA Port Bounty. Said another way, John will port Amiga Research Operating System to the EFIKA." In an email, BBRV also said MorphOS 2.0 is 'coming'. They promised more news on that soon.

"The Sony UX1XN is quite possibly one of the smallest laptops ever. Think of the smallest laptop you've ever seen, and this will be smaller. Probably. Everything about it is dinky - it's barely bigger than a thick-ish paperback book, yet it packs a full Vista-touting PC inside its diddy dimensions."

Over two years have passed since Red Hat launched their last version of Enterprise Linux; today, their new version was released, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. There's a review already: "This article will give you a first look at the new technology that has gone into the release. We also had a chance to talk to some folks within Red Hat to get the inside view on what RHEL 5 means in the context of the company's new community-pleasing strategy."

Microsoft has announced that it will not be releasing any new versions of its Visual FoxPro development software past Version 9.0, but the company will continue to support the technology through 2015. Instead of releasing new versions of FoxPro, Microsoft will release core portions of the FoxPro software to its CodePlex community development site, said Alan Griver, a group manager within the Microsoft Visual Studio team, which leads the FoxPro team.

"Stardock released WindowBlinds 5.5 today. WindowBlinds is a program that enables users to customize the look and feel of the graphical user interface of Microsoft Windows. WindowBlinds 5.5 is a major update in that it is the first program to allow users to change the look and feel of Windows Vista. For Windows Vista users, WindowBlinds 5.5 makes use of the new hardware accelerated Desktop Window Manager to ensure the highest level of performance."

With an absence of fanfare, but otherwise on schedule, Microsoft opened up its download page for Service Pack 2 of Windows Server 2003, both 32-bit and 64-bit editions. Perhaps most importantly, enterprises won't have to wait until Longhorn to be able to utilize Windows Deployment Services, the company's new image-based system for pre-composed, remote Windows installations.

"Triggered by recent examples of bad behavior and dissatisfaction among developers and users alike, the Gentoo Council has drafted a new Code of Conduct that will be enforced for both developers and users. The draft of the Code of Conduct is currently being discussed on the Gentoo-dev mailing list."

"When Bill Hilf came from IBM to join Microsoft three years ago, the company's stance on open source vacillated wildly. It would swing from outright indifference to overt nastiness. Today, something else is unfolding: Microsoft is striking a surprising balance. It has stopped dismissing open source licensing and community development as dangerous folly or evil foe, and is looking for a way to both compete and co-exist."

When Windows Vista was released in early 2007, a significant amount of attention was given to the new user interface called Aero, that sets out to give Windows a slicker look and feel and promises more fluid operation. But eye-candy aside, how does the new Aero interface stack up compared to Windows XP and Mac OS X in terms of low-level user interface efficiency? "Windows Vista increases the amount of user interface friction of the operating system. Windows XP and particularly Mac OS X performed better than Windows Vista in these benchmarks."

While the US courts recently reaffirmed Microsoft's FAT patents, the German Patent Federal Court has just dismissed the patent for use in Germany. According to a report in the German news publication Heise Online, the court has denied the protection that the European Patent Office granted to Microsoft under EP 0618540 for a "common namespace for long and short filenames". This was based on Microsoft's U.S. Patent No. 5,758,352. The German Patent Court stated that the patent claims Microsoft made are "not based on inventive activity".

"The CentOS development team is pleased to announce the release of CentOS 5 (Beta) for i386 and x86_64. It is available via beta.CentOS.org mirrors and bittorrent. This release corresponds to the upstream vendor EL5 beta2 release."