In a surprising move, Andrew Morton, the Linux kernel co-maintainer, announced that he is moving to Google and that he will continue being a Linux maintainer. A detailed article can be found here: "It is beneficial to me (and to Linux) that I be in day-to-day contact with people who use Linux for real things. Hence Google is a good all-round fit."

Gecko, the powerful rendering engine used in Mozilla products like Firefox, is now available as an embedded widget in SkyOS. Using WidgetGecko you can easily add powerful HTML support to a SkyOS application with just a few lines of code. Embedded Gecko brings the SkyOS Media Station project closer to reality.

Following its recent partnership with AMD to put the latter's chip in its server product line, Dell Computer confirmed this week that it will launch AMD-based laptops as early as October. The move could deal another blow to rival Intel. Dell will release mobile computers running AMD's Sempron and Turion 64x2 processors in early October, representatives from both AMD and Dell, told CNET Taiwan. Initial plans will target consumer models equipped with 15.4-inch displays.

For reasons nobody quite understands, Microsoft changed a lot of settings in Vista. Any programmer whose application hard-coded directory settings will soon discover that the application will fail to run well. This article summarizes the changes and how to code around the problem in a version-neutral way.

Plenty of loud argument has ensued over whether binary-only drivers belong in an operating system based on open source philosophies. David Chisnall examines the reasoning on both sides.

Apple's Boot Camp and Parallels Desktop for Mac enable you to run Windows on Intel Macs, which is great for home, business, and education use. But how do you automate and manage mass deployments of Windows on Macs? In part 2 of his series on using disk image deployment techniques for Intel Macs, Ryan Faas shows how to efficiently deploy Windows with Mac OS X.

In a recent podcast Steve Gibson of grc.com has drawn attention to a detailed report by engineers at Symantec who demonstrate that Windows Vista contains a completely virgin network stack that has been programmed from the ground up. The Symantec software engineers have monitored the behaviour of the new stack through a series of beta releases and have documented that it contains most of the basic bugs and security holes that have long since been fixed in other stacks - even the Windows 95 stack. Since it has not had a chance to mature and develop in the wild, the likelihood that it contains new, uncharted holes and errors is very high. Some have already been found. Gibson stresses that the ramifications for the security of the new stack are disastrous.

Here's a sober talk about the reality of the mainframe today. This podcast discusses the mainframe's place in the forefront of modern day computing technology and debunks some myths about the mainframe. It also talks about the variety of development environments it has to offer developers, not just the old green-screen approach.

NeoSmart Technologies reports on what the upcoming RTM of the Microsoft .NET 3.0 Framework means, both for developers and those seeking a look at what's coming from Microsoft's direction. It includes the positive implications this has on Microsoft's laggy development process and the benefits it'll provide to developers and system programmers too.

Linus Torvalds had harsh comments about the committees organized by the Free Software Foundation to help it draft version 3 of the GNU Public License. However, so far as NewsForge can determine, none of those actually involved in the process agree with Torvalds' assessment that the FSF isn't listening to feedback.

"Finally. For years, the holy grail of the Linux desktop has been to get a major computer vendor to commit to preloading a Linux desktop. It finally happened. On August 4th, we found out that Lenovo Group, the company that has taken over IBM's Personal Computing Division, had made a deal with Novell to preload SLED 10 on its ThinkPad T60p mobile workstation. For the first time, a major OEM has committed to preloading a Linux desktop."

Microsoft's presentations on Windows Vista are not the typical Black Hat talks, but attendees are welcoming the look behind the scenes at the software giant. "I haven't felt it as a marketing pitch. It was a very technical discussion about how code review is done at Microsoft," said Josh Hoover, a veteran Black Hat attendee from Phoenix who works in security at a large financial institution. "Of course, it is all lip service at this time, until we get to test it," he added.

"The OpenVZ project today announced its operating system-level server virtualization software technology is incorporated into Debian GNU/Linux giving users full access to OpenVZ software, which helps increase server utilization rates. At the same time, the OpenVZ project revised licensing terms for its user-level utilities under the GNU GPL license to comply with the Debian Free Software Guidelines. Also, OpenVZ software now conforms with the LSB/FHS."

Last week we had a news item about a T9-like technology for PalmOS and PocketPC that its version 1.0 was released for free. Xrgomics, the company behind TenGO, sent us the new full version of the software, v2.0, plus TenGO Thumb for a quick review. Check it out!