OpenSSE 10.1 'remastered' has been released. "This release combines the 10.1 GM and all online updates that we have released for 10.1 so far, including libzypp, which should make the installing and working experience much smoother for everyone. We have created new CD ISO images and supplied delta ISOs from the goldmaster. The non-OSS DVD images will show up next week, we had to retract and will remaster. If you are running SUSE Linux 10.1 already, there is no need to download these images at all. Just do an update from our update repository to get all our security updates. This remastered media are useful for new installations."

Recent high-profile security problems with Internet Explorer have done little to dent its market share - or maybe not, according to conflicting reports on web browser use. Web analytics firm OneStat.com reckons that IE's global usage share is 85.85 per cent, an increase of 2.8 per cent since July 2006. Mozilla Firefox's open source browser claims second place with a share of 11.49 per cent, a decrease of 1.44 per cent since July 2006. Apple's Safari claimed 1.61 per cent (down 0.23 per cent), and Opera held 0.69 per cent of the market. However, statistics from websites tools firm Net Applications, cited by Ars Technica, paint a contrasting picture.

Microsoft has restructured its Windows Core Operating System Division into five teams in a move designed to better focus on PC hardware and provide a richer set of customer solutions. The software giant is also making changes on the security front by bringing its security, Trustworthy Computing and Engineering Excellence teams together in one group, known as the Trustworthy Computing Team, Jim Desler, Microsoft's group public relations manager, told eWEEK Oct. 12.

Microsoft on Thursday released a beta version of Virtual PC 2007, the latest version of the company's virtual machine software that is capable of running Windows Vista as both a host and guest operating system. The update takes advantage of new hardware virtualization technology from both Intel and AMD. Virtual PC 2007 Beta is available for download from Microsoft's Connect beta site.

"Though delayed for a while and later to market than most Mandriva fans would probably prefer, the new Mandriva Linux 2007 PowerPack Edition is finally here, nearly a year after the previous release. 2007 is typical Mandriva through and through: attractively themed in KDE, easy to install without skipping the technical details, a little bug-ridden here and there, and full of new and interesting software technologies. This release does have its own identity, though; not only has the standard theme been redesigned for the first time in several years, but this is the first Mandriva release to include a legal DVD movie player."

Geeks.com were very generous sending us over their SupportPlus SP-PMP51C (aka Sorell SV-10) portable media player for a review. This PMP is unique because among extended media features (20GB, A/V playback/rec, line-in, fm radio/rec, voice rec, text viewer, OGG support, lots of accessories) it also includes a 1.3MP swivel camera (with VGA video recording) selling at the fair price of $199 (use the promo code "GEEKPLUS" to buy the item for just $149).

In an attempt to convince The Open Group that they finally want to fully Open Source Motif and CDE Peter Howkins has started a petition to help gauge how much interest there is. CDE, the Common Desktop Enviroment, was the default desktop on several commercial UNIX distributions. Motif is a X Windows widget API used in many programs, including CDE and other projects such as nedit and DDD. Howkins is not going to try to convince anyone to use either of them, but if you use them and would like to see them Open Sourced please sign the petition. For more background information about CDE and this petition visit the petition site or go straight to signing the petition.

Ext3 has become one of the most popular Linux filesystems. However, with hard drives sneaking up on a terabyte, concerns exist that ext3 won't be able to handle 21st-century storage requirements. With this in mind, the Linux kernel developers have just released the first real-world test version of ext4.

Palm has launched a new sibling in its Treo smartphone line today, the Treo 680, using the PalmOS. "For people who are ready to move up to a full-featured mobile phone that includes everything needed to stay organized, Palm today announced the Palm Treo 680 smartphone, a GSM/GPRS/EDGE quad-band world phone. Customers will find the Treo 680 smartphone easy to use, slim and compact, yet packed full of features beyond its stellar phone capability, such as email, web browsing, messaging, multimedia, calendar, contacts and more." No Wifi though. At the same time, Palm OS died.

If the plan is perfectly executed, Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project will deploy 100 million laptops in the first year. In one fell swoop, the nonprofit organization will create the largest computing monoculture in history. Wary of the security risks associated with a computing monoculture - millions of machines with hardware and software of identical design - OLPC officials are seeking help from the world's best hackers to review the full specifications of the laptop's security model.

"The European Commission has taken steps to promote the use of open source systems and software in the public sector. It has selected a consortium led by Unisys Belgium to create and manage the Open Source Observatory and Repository, the company announced. Other members of the consortium are the Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology, consultancy GOPA Cartermill, and the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos of Madrid. They will provide an internet service and portal enabling European administrations to centrally store and share the software code of their open source applications and exchange open source knowledge."

'The most secure Windows ever' may be very secure from hackers and malware - but what do you do when Longhorn Server let's you install the OS, set up Active Directory, and initialize the domain without once asking you to even create an administrator password? "What happened to Windows Server? Where did all of the stringent security checks and ultra-protection of Windows Server 2003 go? Windows Server 2000 was quite insecure, and Windows Server 2003 turned over a new leaf... But it seems Microsoft is more than willing to flip that page back - even Windows Server 2000 required an Administrator password at the very least."

Windows XP Embedded SP2 Feature Pack 2007, due to be released on Nov. 1st, will include a redesigned command-line scripting tool. This whitepaper introduces the new tool and gives a few examples of what it can do. XPECMD, as it's called, is said to be a major upgrade to CMI Explorer, the tool that shipped with XPe SP1.

"Version control systems, or source management systems, are an important aspect of modern software development. Not using one is like driving a car too fast: it's fun and you might get to your destination faster, but an accident is inevitable. This article provides an overview of Software Configuration Management systems and their benefits, including CVS, Subversion, Arch, and Git. It also reviews the most common SCM architectures. Finally, it explores some of the new approaches that are available and how they differ from the earlier methods."