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.

PostgreSQL 8.2 is now released (sources, binaries) while you can read the release notes here.

SkyOS has gotten a new virtual filesystem, dubbed BranchFS. This makes it possible to branch filesystems, convert read-only media into read-write media, and add SkyFS attributes to non-SkyFS volumes. "BranchFS makes it possible to make a reversible filesystem. By using your system partition you can revert to a previous state (with just one reboot) and and when using a CD BranchFS makes it possible to make changes to the content. BranchFS is still in heavy development but branching a LiveCD works quite well already. The first SkyOS LiveCD will be based on BranchFS."

"The first One Laptop Per Child hardware devices are still months from deployment, but you can sneak a peek at their Sugar desktop environment and bundled applications by running an OS image under an emulator. It's a great way to finally get some hands-on time with this long-anticipated project, even though it's not perfect."

ReactOS, the open source implementation of a Windows XP/2003 compatible operating system, does support now Intel Mac computers with bootcamp installed and Parallels' virtual machine. Furthermore the new ReactOS roadmap has been published yesterday. Today's interview features ReactOS developer and former project coordinator, Steven Edwards. Read it all on the ReactOS website.