"With the release of the first beta of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, eWEEK Labs was looking forward to getting an early look at the progress Red Hat has made with the platform since RHEL 4. Unfortunately, Beta 1 of Version 5 is too flaky for even testing purposes. The biggest problem we encountered was RHEL 5's thoroughly broken software management system."

"The wxWidgets toolkit contains powerful, cross-platform tools for graphical user interface development. In addition to its native C++, several languages offer wrappers for use with the toolkit. Learn how to use the wxWidgets toolkit to create elegant and highly useful GUIs in your language of choice."

With Release Candidate 1 now out the door, Microsoft is putting what it calls the 'fit-and-finish' on Windows Vista's user interface, and the company is looking for feedback from users testing out the beta release. Dave Vronay, a research manager with the Windows User Experience Compliance team, says Microsoft is taking a lot of time to track down minor UI glitches - something it has never done before. "You can actually participate in this process by providing your feedback on the various pre-release versions of Vista we are putting out," says Vronay. The company is hosting a forum in which users can offer their rants and raves. Also, Microsoft has confirmed all versions of Vista will ship on the same disk.

El Reg has published a review of the Asus Lamborghini VX1 laptop. "The Lamborghini brand stands for luxury, speed and performance, but price aside, the Asus VX1 fails to deliver on the promise. It's not a bad machine, but neither is it the laptop equivalent of its famous namesake."

"I love Gentoo, I also hate it with a vengeance. I’m not talking small time peeves here, like the way Krispy Kremes icing gets all over your fingers (and by extension, clothes). I’m talking the type of frustration that is expressed in multitudes of expletives, some of which would make the profinsaurus cry. Why? Because, by definition and by nature, a source-based distribution is its own worst enemy."

The Windows Client team explains the reasoning behind an important change in Vista's user interface. "One of the first things people notice when they start using Vista is the absence of menu bars. Explorer, photo gallery, media player, and IE all don't show menus by default and just use the so-called 'command module'. What is up with that? Do we hate menu bars? And more importantly - what is the guidance that third-party developers are supposed to follow? Let me break it down for you." And on a slightly related note: Mary Jo Foley has left MicrosoftWatch to start working at ZDNet.

NeoSmart has published their Windows Vista RC1 Monster Review, which tries a kind of "thorough overview" of everything Vista will ship with this close to RTM. Especially interesting is the brief security run-down. And of course, there are screenshots as always.

"Google is experimenting with the open-source version of Sun's Solaris operating system as a possible long-term prelude to replacing its massive global network of Linux servers, according to sources. With dozens of data centers worldwide estimated to house hundreds of thousands of Intel servers supporting its flagship search engine, a Google move to OpenSolaris would be another of several recent votes of confidence for the platform."

Two US software firms are asking the European Commission to take action against Microsoft's new Vista operating system, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Adobe Systems has told EU regulators that Microsoft should be banned from incorporating free competing software for reading and creating electronic documents with Vista, the paper said, quoting people familiar with the situation. Anti-virus software maker Symantec will send officials to Brussels next week to brief journalists about features of Vista that it has told EU regulators will undercut rival makers of computer security software, the paper said.

"There are hundreds of Linux distributions. This handy reference guide includes the ones we think are especially interesting for desktop Linux users - from Arch Linux to Zenwalk - and we plan to update the list on an ongoing basis. Whether you're looking for an easy Windows-to-Linux migration distro, one for home use or serious enterprise workstation use, a free one, a commercial one, a tiny one to fit alongside Windows 98 on an old underpowered laptop, or one aimed at educational institutions, we think you'll find something suitable."

While some BeOS users have enjoyed USB Mass Storage support on compatible (read: Dano USB stack-equipped) systems since the release of the USB Storage Module back in 2004, it today became possible to use this driver with an entirely legal USB stack on BeOS R5. In addition, USB 2.0 now works on R5, whereas Be's stacks have only ever supported USB 1.1. Michael Lotz's commit allows the driver to operate on R5, and on the SVN mailing list, he has stated that in testing, he has written to and read data from his Playstation Portable at USB2 speeds using this combination.

Based on information discussed at the OOoCON conference in Lyon, OpenOffice starting with version 2.0.4 may include Firefox-like extensions. Also on the board is to incorporate the use of Mozilla Sunbird and Thunderbird into the OOo suite, connectors for Sun Calendaring and Microsoft Exchange support, and even an eventual redesign of OpenOffice 3.0 to run on top of Eclipse, Netbeans or Mozilla's XUL.

Apparantly, it's damn lies statistics time again in the Apple world, boys and girls. A few days ago, Net Applications published OS market share figures which showed that the market share of the Mac OS remained largely flat over the past year. However, today, the Switchtoamac website posted an article which looks at the same set of figures in a different way, only to conclude that when you compare last year's figures to this year's, the Mac OS has risen 25% in marketshare. We all know the saying: there are lies... Damn lies... Funny detail: while the debate rages on about half percentage points for the Mac OS, Windows XP increased its share by 8 percent the past 12 months. According to these figures, of course.

SkyOS has gotten printing support using CUPS. "With the Printer Configuration it is now very easy to add and manage your printers, be it locally connected (USB) or network (Windows, Linux, Samba, IPP) printers. The entire printing system is implemented as a service (like most other SkyOS Subsystems), which can easily be enabled/disabled on demand. With roughly 1000 supported printers the next SkyOS build will enable you to print your favorite documents in various formats."