The Haiku news just keeps on coming lately. "HaikuLiveCDScript is a shell script to build a Haiku live CD. It downloads, decompresses, and generates a boot image and drops files in a folder ready to be burnt. Just unpack the script files and execute 'makelivecd', and wait a while."

openSUSE 10.2 alpha 3 has been released: "I'm glad to announce the third alpha release of our 10.2 product. It's the first time that we call our distribution 'openSUSE' instead of 'SUSE Linux'." The full release announcement can be found at LinuxCompatible.

"Four short years ago, Microsoft unveiled its new framework/engine for programming and running applications in a virtual environment, and the world was stunned. Microsoft had introduced a run-time environment that was for the first time a true 'write once, run everywhere' implementation, but that was far from being the end. With .NET 3.0 on the loom, NeoSmart Technologies takes a look at how far .NET has come and just how long it can keep going."

"Blue Pill is the prototype resulting from a security study made by Joanna Rutkowska, which took advantage of new virtualization capabilities of AMD processors (known as SVM and previously as Pacifica) to inject a rootkit in a running Vista operating system. Ms Rutkowska claimed a malware using this method is undetectable. Virtualization.info met Anthony Liguori, Software Engineer at IBM's Linux Technology Center, and, most of all, one of the men behind the Xen hypervisor, to finally debunk the Blue Pill undetectabiliy myth."

Novell chief technology officer Markus Rex has hit back at criticism the company included an 'unstable' Xen virtualisation environment in its new Linux server, pointing to support from hardware partners. "We had all the major hardware partners that had virtualisation hardware like IBM, Intel and AMD. They all stood up and said 'Yes, this technology's ready, and we fully support deployments based on Xen and in combination with SUSE Linux Enterprise 10'."

Techgage reviews Sabayon Linux, and conclcudes: "After taking an initial look at Sabayon, I have mixed feelings. Though, I feel more joy when using it than anything negative. One reason this distro may stand out above others is because it takes a difficult base distro, and opens its arms for new users who want to experiment. When it's all said and done, you will have a full functional Gentoo machine after the installation, topped off with a Sabayon coat of paint. What a great looking coat of paint it is."

Apple is stonewalling open-source developers despite the company's recent release of much of the Mac OS X Tiger kernel source code, according to Proclus, administrator of the GNU-Darwin Distribution. "In order to have a free and open source system, two things are necessary. First, all the necessary source code must be obtainable by anyone, and second the system must obviously be bootable in order to use it," Proclus told MacNN. "Darwin OS is not bootable without the AppleACPIPlatform driver, which is closed source at this time." On a related note, a slew of unannounced features have been posted to the web, found in the developer preview of Leopard.

A never-shipped 3dfx Voodoo5 6000 AGP graphics card has popped up on eBay to tempt fans of historical GPUs. Speaking of fans, this boy has four of 'em, one each for the four VSA-100 graphics chips the board sports - along with 128MB of frame-buffer memory. The full-length card requires a 3.3V AGP slot should the successful bidder care to try the thing out. It also requires a power feed from the host system's PSU. Later incarnations of the card were bundled with their own, external power supply brick. The GPUs are clocked to 166MHz.

"Apple has done something really different with the Mac Pro, and it's taken a few days to put it all in perspective. Instead of three different models with several build-to-order options, Apple has a single model with a host of build-to-order options. With so many options - Apple says there are millions of possible configurations - it's not easy to come up with a simple value equation for the Mac Pro."

This is the first release that has a full graphics 2D implemenation based on Cairo enabled by default. This enables the use of applications like JEdit, FlickrBackup and JFreeChart out of the box. See Screenshots of CairoGraphics2D in action. Also new in this release is the inclusion of an applet viewer and plugin that can be embedded in webbrowsers or other applications. It works on any platform supported by the various runtimes based on GNU Classpath, including 64 bit architectures. Lots more improvements, like better gnome integration, are mentioned in the release announcement.

Much of Linux system administration involves tediously combing through plain-text configuration files. Fortunately, Linux has a rich array of UNIX-derived data extraction utilities, including head, tail, grep, egrep, fgrep, cut, paste, join, awk, and more. This article uses real-world examples that show how these simple command-line programs can make you a better sysadmin. Also look at each data extraction utility and its options, and learn how to apply them to typical day-to-day work files.

"The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the release of Ubuntu 6.06.1 LTS, the first maintenance release of "Dapper Drake". This release includes both installable Desktop CDs and alternate text-mode installation CDs for several architectures, for Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Edubuntu. Xubuntu is also included, although commercial support for it is not available from Canonical."

"Whether you ever plan on upgrading to Windows Vista or not, one thing is clear: Its impact on the world of PC hardware will be huge. We've written about how to build a Windows Vista system. This time we're not talking about building a Vista system today, but rather, about what new types of hardware Windows Vista will spawn. We'll also consider how this new generation of hardware will affect your future buying decisions."

Sony's newly announced Mylo WiFi handheld multi-function device will run a Linux OS, along with Trolltech's Qtopia app framework and Opera's device-oriented web browser, LinuxDevices is reporting.