Palm has effectively committed itself to producing handheld devices based on the Palm OS - which it no longer owns - by agreeing to pay USD 44m for a perpetual licence for the source code underlying the Garnet incarnation of the operating system. The move is tantamount to Palm re-acquiring PalmSource.

Pegasos.org has (one of) the (only) first reviews of the Efika, the system on a chip thing from Genesi (or bPlan? I lost track). "What can I say? It's a great piece of hardware. bPlan lives up to our expectations yet again. They even exceeded them about its media capabilities. For thin client or tiny desktop usage it will work just fine as long as you choose a low footprint window manager. As a network workgroup server I can't see any difficulties with this hardware. Configure it and you're set."

In common with a lot of people who used to use RISCOS, I don't use it now and that is the focus of this article: Why don't I use it any more and what would it take to make me use it again? Of course, an article of this sort still has worth as there is bound to be some degree of correlation between my feelings, experiences and hopes in relation to the platform and those other people.

Michael Loeffler has announced the release of OpenSUSE 10.2 to the ftp servers. "As usual, we ship all the latest open source packages available at the time. But we want to give special mention to the redesigned GNOME and KDE desktop, Firefox 2.0, ext3 as new default file system, support for internal SD card readers, new power managment and last but not least our improved package management." Update: Screenshots.

Will Backman interviews FreeBSD Developer Kip Macy about the new FreeBSD/sun4v (UltraSparc T1) port. Kip explains the details of the T1 architecture, how mature the port is and what issues (documentation, licenses, etc.) he experienced while doing the port.

AMD has started to ship chips made on the 65-nanometer process. These chips will consume about 30 percent less energy than the same ones produced on the 90-nanometer process when running at the same speed. In the first chips shipped on this process, virtually all of the benefit comes in reduced power consumption, said Nick Kepler, vice president of logic technology development at AMD.

Gael Duval has announced the first test release of Ulteo, a new distribution started by Mandrake-founder Gael Duval. From the release announcement: "Here is the first public version of Ulteo! Its codename is 'Sirius' because we want to make it a star." From the release notes: "This installable live CD is based on Debian and Ubuntu packages. It's installed on the hard-drive using 'Yuch'. A daemon, called UGD (Ulteo General Daemon), is always connecting to Ulteo servers to see if a newer, more up to date system is available. It can then upgrade to this new system." Ulteo is based on Ubuntu 6.06 and uses kernel 2.6.15, X.Org 7.0, KDE 3.5.2, and Firefox 1.5.0.8. The CD image is available for download. Update: Screenshot tour. Rejoice, boys and girls.

Our friends over at Hi-Mobile sent us in for a review two items this last week: the velerable LG Chocolate KG800 and an add-on camera flash accessory for Sony Ericsson fast-port phones. Check in for more.

"Last week, AMD showed off a working quad-core processor at an event in San Francisco. The company had promised a quad-core demo by the end of the year, and they did manage to deliver, even if all the audience saw was a Windows machine running task manager. Clearly, the silicon for their next-generation core microarchitecture, codenamed Barcelona (also popularly called 'K8L'), has a few kinks left to be worked out."

Sun has been touting the efficiency of servers using its first-generation UltraSparc T1 'Niagara' processor, but it's promising greater gains with the chip's sequel. The first Niagara consumes about 70 watts running flat out. Sun now thinks Niagara 2 will consume between 70 and 80 watts, John Fowler, executive vice president of systems, said in a meeting with reporters at Sun offices here Tuesday. Although that power consumption is 'just a teeny bit above Niagara 1', Fowler said, the newer chip absorbs several functions that today require separate electronics and also can handle 64 simultaneous instruction sequences, called threads - twice that of Niagara 1.

"Trolltech's Linux/Qtopia-powered Greenphone aims to provide a real (rather than emulated) hardware platform for mobile phone application developers to test their applications on. This hands-on review takes an in-depth look at the phone's software environment, and at the development tools supplied with it."

Ubuntu Feisty Fawn Herd 1 (Ubuntu 7.04 alpha 1 in English) has been released. Download links can be found in the release announcement. The Kubuntu variant has been released as well. Screenshots are available for Ubuntu as well as Kubuntu.

As part of the 2.6.20 development process, patches adding support for the 'PS3 game console and other devices' (built on top of the IBM Cell) have been merged. The code has been written by Sony.

Intel said Tuesday its diminutive low-cost laptop will be evaluated in Brazil next year alongside a cheaper alternative from a nonprofit group seeking to bring computers to poor children worldwide. The company said it would donate 700 to 800 of the USD 400 (EUR 300) 'Classmate PC', to the government for a large-scale evaluation in schools. Intel has already tested the computers on a smaller scale with students and teachers in a poor neighbourhood of Campinas, near Sao Paulo.