Patrick Volkerding has just released Slackware 11 RC4. Take a look at the changelog for more info.

Here are some screenshots of the new test version of Ubuntu, and a video showing no slowdown after loading over 40 applications on a 1 GB RAM, P4 desktop.

What is the future of programming? I retain a romantic belief in the potential of scientific revolution. To recite one example, the invention of Calculus provided a revolutionary language for the development of Physics. I believe that there is a “Calculus of programming” waiting to be discovered, which will analogously revolutionize the way we program. Notation does matter." More here.

After a year from last 1.0.4 version, new one brings a lot of changes, new features and bugfixes. Details about changes and download links can be found here.

Simon and Tim (and team) are working on a programming technology called Software Transactional Memory (STM) which provides an elegant, easy to use language-level abstraction for writing concurrent applications that is based on widely-understood conceptual constructs like Atomic operations (and, well, Transactions...). Simon, Tim and team do all the nasty locking work for you. With STM-enabled languages, you can just concentrate on the algorithms at hand and leave the low-level heavy lifting to the sub-system.

The Amiga changed the computer industry. It was based on a multitasking operating system, rivaled the graphics power of some workstations and was affordable enough for home users. Unfortunately, Commodore struggled to maintain Amiga's lead, and through a number of bizarre business decisions (refusing to license the Amiga design to Sun), went bankrupt. Read about the history of the Commodore Amiga at Low End Mac.

The resignation of Matthew Garrett, one of the most active developers in Debian, has drawn attention to some ongoing issues about how the project operates. Specifically, Garrett's announcement on his blog cites a lack of civility and a slowness in decision-making, and compares Debian unfavorably to Ubuntu, the Debian-derived distribution which is increasingly attracting the efforts of many Debian maintainers.

Microsoft's Windows Vista RC 1 is done. Now it's up to the estimated 6 million testers to which the company is planning to release the code to determine if it really is ready for prime time. Microsoft has posted the RC 1 build, Number 5600, on its TechBeta Web sites for select technical beta testers, including TAP partners, on September 1. Microsoft is planning to broaden the beta to include up to six million participants, total, some time next week, according to industry sources. Cnet has a video introduction to Vista RC1. Elsewhere, people are going bonkers over Vista's... Start up sound. Major Tom to ground control?

Apple on Thursday evening offered developers testing its next-generation Leopard operating system the first update to the software since it was released privately last month. "This Software Update delivers improved reliability and compatibility for Mac OS X Leopard Developer Preview and is recommended for all users," Apple said of the update, distributed over Leopard's Mac OS X Software Update mechanism.

"The Debian project has updated the stable distribution Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 (codename sarge). This update mainly adds security updates to the stable release, along with a few corrections to serious problems. Those who frequently update from security.debian.org won't have to update many packages and most updates from security.debian.org are included in this update."

Another review of Gentoo 2006.1. In one respect, Gentoo Linux 2006.1 is the same as it's always been, except with newer software on the installation media. Beginning with version 2006.0, though, a graphical environment was added to the live CD along with an installation program that rarely worked properly. The good news is, the installer works reasonably well in Gentoo 2006.1; the bad news is, it's still quicker and easier to install by hand via the command line.

"The Apple III was meant to be Apple's bold entry into the business market; it ended as Apple's first commercial failure and put the company into financial uncertainty. It was also responsible for sprouting both the Lisa and Macintosh projects, efforts that would save Apple."

This free interoperability demo introduces users to the simplicity with which the newly converged WS-RT and WS-RP specifications and existent OASIS specification standards will be able to interoperate with each other. It includes an online demonstration hosted on alphaWorks with an AJAX Web service client, a tool for interoperability testing, which sends SOAP messages to a WS-RT/WS-RP Web service.

Rockbox is a replacement firmware for various audio players, that opens up new features and fixes devices shortcomings. We don't think of these devices as personal computers, but they are; and Rockbox is an alternative operating system. This review focuses on Rockbox as a replacement "OS" for the iRiver player.