Ars takes a quick look at Vista RC1, and concludes: "Using it as my daily workhorse for two weeks has taught me a lot of things, the first of which is that Vista is doing better than many of its critics are claiming. A day after RC1 was available to select partners, the wires lit up with story after story about how 'Vista isn't ready'. No, it's not ready. It's a release candidate, at best, a late-stage beta at worst. Having actually used the OS for a while, I'm not so sure that the sky is falling claims have much merit."

An effort by the Open Source Development Labs to help developers defend themselves against software patents has come under fire from FSF founder Richard Stallman, who believes that the plan could backfire. The controversy centers on the issue of patents on software processes, which many believe could threaten the future of open-source software and software innovation in general. Because software processes are abstract, critics say such patents effectively let companies monopolize ideas, without which software can't be developed.

Researchers with the University of California at Santa Barbara, working in conjunction with Intel, announced Monday the next step in their joint plans to produce an entirely solid-state photonic processor assembly - a chip which processes data as light waves, without the need for microscopic, yet movable, parts.

"Apple has brought BSD back into the public eye by making it the foundation of its Darwin operating system, which is in turn the foundation of the OS X software platform. Apple is a strong believer in the orchestral model; Darwin distributions are skinny, reflecting Apple's willingness to make choices among dozens or hundreds of contenders in each functional category. Apple's selections become part of OS X. More than any commercial software platform, OS X is unified, consistent. And soon it will be Unix."

"Although we'd all like it to be otherwise, the process of porting an operating system to new hardware is hardly an instantaneous one, and it is not always easy. You might run into a number of potential difficulties, especially if you are coming to the problem for the first time. This article, and likely the next couple in the Testing and measuring the TAMS 3011 series, details my experience porting NetBSD to the TAMS 3011. These articles are not about the finished port, but about the process of developing it. I can only hope you find the hilarious errors as funny as I found them frustrating at the time."

A 28-page book chapter about loadable Linux kernel modules and device drivers is available for free download on LinuxDevices.com. The chapter, an excerpt from the second edition of 'Linux for Embedded and Real-Time Applications', shows how kernel modules can be loaded, unloaded, compiled, and architected.

"At the time CDDL was being introduced, I wanted to write an illustrated version of it. Merely because hardly anyone would read the full license text. Even if they did, I doubt 9 out 10 would have understood it completely. A recent CDDL/GPL misunderstanding that made news and started flame wars, prompted me to revisit an old illustration."

"MythTV is a Linux based, multimedia software that allows you to view and record TV shows to your hard drive in the manner of Tivo, Windows Media Center and Beyond TV. MythTV recently released 0.20 version of their awesome TV/PVR/Multimedia Frontend software. I installed the latest version to see if it was really as good as it looks."

Just when you thought fancy effects on Linux desktops started to get remotely understandable, focussing on Aiglx/Xgl with Compiz, a fork of Compiz is announced: Beryl. This is the logical continuation of the popular compiz-quinnstorm branch, used by many Ubuntu users. "During this summer, and during the last few weeks, some major additions were done in compiz-quinnstorm, bringing a whole new decorator, cgwd, which was designed to be fully themable, and a new settings backend, csm, which intended to drop most of the gnome deps - there were other reasons for this, but this is not our current subject. Consequently, we reached a situation where it's quite impossible to come back." The main reason is general unwillingness to work with and unresponsiveness to the developers of the -quinnstorm branch from the official Compiz guys.

On 23rd and 24th September 2006 at Empoli's (near Florence) Palaesposizioni building the 2006 edition of Pianeta Amiga will take place. The convention, which gathers Italian Amiga users but also hosts alternative systems such as MorphOS and BeOS/Zeta, will celebrate its 10th birthday. Among the events: an Amiga Developers Conference, demo of the latest Amiga OS4 version, the Sputnik web browser, and the 'Samantha' project: new Amiga OS-compatible hardware.

A short review of Mandriva 2007 RC2, outlining the new Xgl/Aiglx and Compiz 3D desktop. "This has to be the best live CD I've used, let alone the best Linux desktop. The new features like the 3D desktop are stunning and hopefully will increase productivity (once I've gotten over the excitement of it all), and the new Ia-Ora theme will keep me happy for a long time to come." Update: Mandriva has announced the immediate availability of Mandriva Corporate Server 4.0 with virtualization features.

The Alacarte menu editor is one of the major additions in GNOME 2.16. Already previously available in Ubuntu and other distributions, Alacarte adds a degree of customization that has been generally lacking since GNOME dropped its previous (proper) menu editor more than five years ago during the early 2.x releases. More on the review at Linux.com.

After Dell and Apple, Toshiba is now too issueing a massive recall of Sony-made laptop batteries. The batteries, used in Dynabook and Dynabook Satellite laptops manufactured between March and May this year, could fail on the road because of problems with storing and transmitting power, Toshiba spokesman Keisuke Ohmori said. The total of recalled Sony batteries is now about 6.5 million. Even airlines have prohibited the use of Dell and Apple laptops in-flight.

"While other articles seem to discuss the impact of this drastic change for some older Windows users, here we are going to discuss how those newbies looking to Linux can tell you if are truly ready for Linux, and which Linux distro would be the logical and best choice for their own needs and/or tastes. More here.