Have you ever had your taskbar filled with 10 applications all doing something that involved waiting for a task to finish? Document Printing Progress, a K3b CD burning dialogue, Audio Encoding via KAudioCreator, File Transfers in Konqueror, Kopete, KTorrent, checking email in KMail... The new Jobs support in KDE 4 will unify the display of progress for these tasks, making it easy to see and manage what is happening on your system. Read on for details.

If you've ever asked for advice on how to set up dual-booting, you've doubtlessly come across online tutorials that only tell part of the story. You probably ended up spending all weekend researching the intricacies of adjusting partition sizes, boot loaders, installing operating systems in the right order, and other fun topics. Well, we have good news: APCMag has put together the definitive dual-booting guide between Vista and Ubuntu.

In Part 1 of this series you saw how programs on the POWER5 processor work using the 64-bit PowerPC instruction set, then in Part 2 you learned how the PowerPC instruction set addresses memory, and how to do position-independent code. In this article, you learn how to use the very powerful condition and branch instructions available in the PowerPC instruction set.

Open source was behind Intel's decision to add Solaris to its list of supported operating systems, according to a top official from Intel during a teleconference with reporters. In other news, Sun returned to profitability.

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs was questioned by US investigators about stock options backdating at the company, according to several reports citing unidentified lawyers. Apple and Jobs' attorney did not immediately return telephone calls seeking comment on Tuesday. The US Attorney's Office in San Francisco was also not immediately available.

"The most visible part of Windows Vista is the Aero interface, and while we can't deny that it looks very swish we find it very hard to get excited by a shiny new GUI. Instead, we're looking forward to new Vista hardware, which includes a new use for the humble USB memory key and much, much more. So what will the ultimate Windows Vista notebook offer?"

"Linspire announced plans to standardize software installation across Linux distributions by expanding its popular CNR digital download and software management service to support several of the most popular desktop Linux distributions in 2007. Previously available only for Linspire and Freespire desktop Linux users, the CNR Service will begin providing users of other desktop Linux distributions a free and easy way to access over 20000 desktop Linux products, packages and libraries."

"With the Vista launch imminent, you may be wondering what version you should be buying. Thanks to the four primary versions available, this is no easy task. Many will be swaying towards the Ultimate Edition, but should you save your cash?"

A VMware appliance built on Ubuntu which allows for easy Nokia N800 Internet Tablet console and GUI development, including debugging in the nested Xephyr X server is available. This appliance is targeted at the N800's Maemo Bora 3.0 platform. This is of particular interest to developers who are thinking about developing for the N800 or wanting to do a quick port/recompile, and are unsure of or not willing to go through the install procedures.

"So I was a little surprised to receive email a couple of days ago from Microsoft saying they wanted to contract someone independent but friendly (me) for a couple of days to provide more balance on Wikipedia concerning ODF/OOXML. I am hardly the poster boy of Microsoft partisanship! Apparently they are frustrated at the amount of spin from some ODF stakeholders on Wikipedia and blogs. I think I’ll accept it: FUD enrages me and MS certainly are not hiring me to add any pro-MS FUD, just to correct any errors I see." So basically, it seems as if Microsoft is trying to 'hire' people to edit Wikipedia.

"Microsoft recently unveiled a new web site called 'Windows Vista Test Drive', designed to allow business users, consumers, and the merely curious to find out what running Microsoft's latest operating system might be like, without actually having to install it."

"So, you're tired of Windows and thinking of trying Linux. There are lots of good distros, RedHat or Novell have all the enterprise cred you might need. And there's a support community too, it's a no brainer... Well, that's all true enough – but why not try Solaris - in its OpenSolaris form - too? It's just as available, at Open Solaris.org, where there's a pretty active community going."

Reckon you won't upgrade to Vista until the first service pack is released? That's looking likely to be the second half of this year, according to Microsoft's latest email blast. The company has put out a call for "customers and partners (to) actively test and provide feedback on Windows Vista SP1 to help us prepare for its release in the second half of CY07". Microsoft hasn't released details of exactly what changes will be wrought in Vista SP1, which has been assigned the codename 'Fiji' but some OS components which missed the RTM cut-off will almost certainly be rolled into the update. One of the candidates for this better-late-than-never brigade would be the Windows PowerShell, previously Microsoft Shell - a .NET-based command line shell with its own scripting language.

"Oracle's Linux initiative has so far failed to make a serious dent in Red Hat's business or even in its stock price. Red Hat is actually worth slightly more today than it was when Larry Ellison launched his apparently not-so-scary RHEL clone the week before Halloween. But it is a little early to conclude that we are living in the best of all possible worlds for Red Hat. True, the company's financial results for the November quarter reassured easily-stampeded Wall Street investors who panicked in the first days after Oracle's announcement. But the fact remains that Red Hat's stock is worth 25% less today than it was a year ago. This decline reflects fundamental concerns not about the immediate threat from Oracle but about the long term value of Red Hat's business model."