Drobe.co.uk has photos of the upcoming RISC OS 6/Select 4 in action, as well as an outline description of the operating system's new features, along with more details of the announcement. "The key features of RISC OS 6 include a highly modularised operating system to aid portability, stability and maintenance of the OS; legacy support components; and updated graphics, toolbox, programming library, networking, and desktop components."

Apparently, OpenBSD turned 11 today. " It's been eleven years to the day since the formation of the OpenBSD Project. In celebration, here's a little timeline of memorable events. Feel free to add your own entries and links." Congratulations.

This whitepaper by a member of the Windows XP Embedded team introduces XPe's new File Based Write Filter. Basically, FBWF enables enhanced flash memory reliability through stateless operation, reduced wear, and improved servicing functions.

Adobe has released a beta for Flash Player 9 for Linux. "While we are still working out exactly how to distribute the final Player version to be as easy as possible for the typical end user, this beta includes 2 gzip'd tarball packages: one is for the Mozilla plugin and the other is for a GTK-based Standalone Flash Player. Either will need to be downloaded manually via the Adobe Labs website and unpacked."

Slackware Linux 11 was released at the beginning of this month, which marks 13 years of continued development. Slackware Linux, while not the first Linux distribution, is the oldest surviving one, and is starting to show signs of aging. The first version of Slackware Linux was released on July 16, 1993, by Patrick Volkerding. More here.

Microsoft will release the final build of IE7 today to customers. IE7 will be made available via Automatic Updates on the 1st of November. At the moment there is no link on Microsoft.com, but Yahoo has the final build bundled with Yahoo Mail. FlexBeta is currently hosting Internet Explorer 7 Final without the need of downloading Yahoo Mail. My take: Read about my thoughts on IE7's new interface on my blog.

The GNOME team has released the first developer release en route to GNOME 2.18, and as always, odd numbered releases are development release, so this one is called GNOME 2.17.1. You can go read the 2.17 schedule page if you want more information.

Sun Microsystems engineers have begun designing Niagara 3, a second sequel to the company's ambitious lower-end processor. John Fowler, executive vice president of Sun's server division, confirmed the development in an interview Tuesday and suggested it will continue Sun's push to squeeze more processing cores onto the chip. This new member of the Sparc family will be built using a manufacturing process with 45-nanometer circuitry elements, he said.

Novell today announced the global availability of the Integrated Stack for SUSE Linux Enterprise, a software bundle that combines SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell with a mixture of open and private source software from IBM, tailored for IBM systems.

The long-touted Microsoft Vista/Office 2007 tandem launch is on for the last week in November in New York, sources said. This event will focus on business usage and scenarios. The new client Windows operating system and Office client and server applications have been promised for volume business customers by year's end and for consumers by early 2007. Jeff Raikes, president of the Microsoft Business Division, would not comment on a specific launch timing or venue but said the company remains on track for the two promised delivery windows. He applied the usual caveat: Microsoft will not ship the code if it's not ready.

The sixth development release of the OpenSolaris-based, desktop-oriented Nexenta OS has been released: "Nexenta OS Alpha 6 is now available. Release Highlights: Nexenta Zones - opens the possibility to create custom zones and pre-install with selected software; integrated BrandZ - allows running Linux userland; SVR4 packaging - to install native Solaris packages (missing drivers, etc.); OpenSolaris build 50, with numerous kernel fixes and features."

"As presented at the Opera Backstage event in London today, Opera 9.1 will include enhanced fraud protection. Today we display the name of the certificate owner in the right end of the address field when you're on a secure site. In 9.1 we will reuse that field to display more information about the trust level of the site you visit."

The popular MySQL database is slated for a future split between what MySQL AB calls the Community and the Enterprise versions. Read the official announcement and further opinions and explanations from Kaj Arno (MySQL VP of Community Relations) and Stephen O'Grady (software industry analist). In Arno's own words: "We recognise that the needs of the MySQL Community are different from the needs of commercial enterprise customers. After 11 years of producing our software, we can no longer hope that a single offering is the best solution for both Community and Enterprise users. Consequently, we are introducing two different offerings for each distinct target group."

"A couple of weeks ago, Apple invited me to its campus to get a close-up look at Apple's Xserve Xeon. It is a marvel of physical design, so much so that I find that it implausible that Xserve Xeon and Xserve G5 could have been designed by the same company. Xserve G5 was pretty tight, but Xserve Xeon makes its predecessor, not to mention ever PC 1U rack server I've seen, look slapped together. I was struck by perfectly Xserve Xeon was designed, and in particular by how easily it comes apart. I have high standards in this regard. I told a friend that I will only buy or recommend servers that I can install, remove, disassemble and repair with one hand, a TSA-approved butter knife and no instructions."