Calmira XP is no more. "After almost 15 years of Windows 3.1 and 5 years of Calmira XP this is the time to say goodbye to this great project. I had a great time developing this, and I hope you enjoyed using it. As a farewell-gift I made a last version which includes all the graphical enhancements of Calmira XP 4.0, but without the experimental LFN-support; so this is a stable version. Now it's time to search for a new, fresh project."

RISCOS Ltd has released a preview build of RISC OS 6 Select 4 for Select subscribers to download. The release came just in time for the Midlands 2006 show this weekend after the company pulled out all the stops to finish the preview package. Copies of the operating system were available on CD from the event in Wolverhampton. The preview version is expected to be the forerunner to a full bug fixed Select 4 release, which will only be available to users who have continued to renew their Select subscriptions. An announcement sent out on Friday evening read: "RISCOS Ltd are pleased to announce the immediate availability of RISC OS 6 Preview for Select subscribers. The RISC OS 6 Preview release gives RiscPC, A7000 and VirtualRPC-Adjust users an opportunity to experience recent developments within RISC OS through the Select scheme."

CPU maker Intel is pressuring smaller rival Via Technologies to exit the CPU market, industry sources in Taiwan claim. In exchange, Intel will allow Via to continue making PC chipsets which use Intel's patented technology, say the sources at PC mainboard manufacturers, who do not wish to be named.

"This aims to be the most comprehensive kernel comparison of the latest most popular UNIX style kernel versus the latest most popular current Windows kernel. A kind of kernel comparison FAQ. In Q4 2006, this means Linux 2.6.18/2.6.19 kernel versus the Windows Server 2003 R2 kernel. In Q1 2007, this will mean Linux 2.6.20 kernel versus Windows Vista kernel."

"It's been a good week for Microsoft's documentation efforts as the company achieved important milestones with regulators on both sides of the Atlantic. US antitrust authorities signed off on Vista and IE7 and announced that Microsoft was making good progress in its efforts to document certain server protocols in Windows. In Europe, where Microsoft has encountered more problems and increased fines over the state of its documentation, the company got a rare bit of good news as the European Commission completed its initial review of the revised documents."

"Tabos is a new operating system, at this stage of development aimed to run on Intel's x86 platform. Although it is our first try in creating a runable, modern OS, it seems that we are on the right way. We decided to develop a modular monolithic kernel with module loading support, using x86 platform features to achieve this goal: multitasking, paging, virtual memory, dma, pci, acpi are yet to be implemented."

Microsoft is beating Oracle hands down with the security of its database, according to a new report. David Litchfield, a security researcher with NGS Software, published a whitepaper entitled Which database is more secure? Oracle vs. Microsoft on 21 November comparing the number of software vulnerabilities patched by both vendors in their respective products in the past six years.

House is a demo of software written in Haskell, running in a standalone environment. It is a system than can serve as a platform for exploring various ideas relating to low-level and system-level programming in a high-level functional language.

A whole flurry of RISC OS news the last few days. A port of Gnash is in the works, while a survey showed that users of the RISC OS word processors TechWriter/EasiWriter want .doc support. Meanwhile, RISC OS got transparent windows. Drobe also has a short article on re-writing RISC OS.

openSUSE 10.2 RC1 has been released: "I'm glad to announce Release Candidate 1 of openSUSE 10.2 codename Basilisk Lizard. It contains a large number of enhancements and updates done by the open source community and Novell's development teams. Screenshot walkthrough here.

On the day after Thanksgiving, Xandros will be giving business Linux users an early holiday present: Xandros Desktop Professional version 4.0. This new version of this well-regarded Debian-based desktop is designed to work in both Linux- and Windows-based office networks. It comes ready for use on NT domain, Active Directory, and Linux/Unix NIS-based LANs. This new version also comes with a fancy 3D effect desktop. Expect a review here on OSNews soon.

"The latest release of GNOME is here: GNOME 2.16.2! This is the second release in a series of point releases for the 2.16 branch. Come and see all the bug fixing, all the new translations and all the updated documentations brought to you by the wonderful team of GNOME contributors! While development continues on the GNOME 2.17/2.18 road, we didn't forget about making a new release that is rock solid. And simply better than the previous one."

While Microsoft may cast the Nov. 2 patent cooperation agreement it pushed on new partner Novell Inc. as a way to protect corporate users of the SUSE Linux operating system from potential lawsuits, CIOs today said they weren't worried in the first place.

Ars reviews the PlayStation 3 personal computer game console, and they say: "The PS3 doesn't have any grand ideas; Sony wanted something high-tech, so they started from scratch with the processor and GPU, but what does it get them? Very little so far. The controller is a mash-up of ideas from their old systems, the 360's triggers, and the Wii's motion-sensing capabilities, but once it has that tech it doesn't really know what to do with it. The Blu-ray adds cost, but adds very little to the gaming experience for the user. It's great as a media player, but for those of us who love games first and foremost, we have to look at it skeptically. The PS3 is a system with no core message, and that is what keeps it from being elegant. Will it do great things in the future? I hope so, the possibility and potential are certainly there. For now, it's power looking for a mission statement."