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The 2.6 Linux kernel employs a number of techniques to improve the use of large amounts of memory, making Linux more enterprise-ready than ever before.

I purchased my first Apple Mac in October 2003, having been a Windows user for many years. It was a new iBook G4. I previously wrote an account of my early experience with this machine along with some of the problems that I encountered. A common criticism that I faced at the time was that I had written the article too early.

If it's AI and robots you wanted from this series then this one is for you. Artificial Intelligence exists today, when this and other technologies merge the result will be more like Science Fiction than any PC. The technology will be fantastic, the possibilities endless. Get it wrong, the consequences dire.

Continuing with the Linux on the AMD64 series of articles, this installment is to be a summary of two new distributions, and the changes that have been made to Gentoo since the last installment. Here I review the installation of TurboLinux 8 (both with and without the update CD), the installation of Fedora Core for x86_64, and more news on Gentoo for the AMD64.

You want to build a thread system? Experiment with an OS with memory protection and virtual memory? You want to do that without a lot of rebooting, Bochs/VMWaremagic and writing drivers? Well, then Nachos (Not Another Completely Heuristic Operating System) is for you. Nachos is an Operating System simulator. Hmm... . If you're a bit like me, you'll be wondering what in the world that is.

Before beginning, I must offer my profuse apologies to Shawn Gordon and the rest of theKompany crew. Shawn sent me the Black Adder software several months ago; however, my schedule ballooned beyond all believable bounds and has stubbornly maintained that ludicrous pace; unfortunately. I have not had an opportunity to write this review until recently, so I am sorry for my tardiness. And now to answer the most obvious question; what is Black Adder?

One of the most impressive aspects of even relatively modest PC hardware is its' ability to emulate a wide range of other platforms. Being a bit of an OS junkie myself, and lacking the space for a full computer room of weird and wonderful hardware, I emulate a range of systems from my humble desktop PC. In this article, I will describe the procedure through which you can run RISC OS 3.7 and others on a Windows-based PC and experience this classic OS (screenshots included).

Mepis Linux is a liveCD, debian based distro, with some additional features, which makes it an excellent introduction to debian. A recent review provided a good overview of the background and basis of Mepis, my review aims to focus more on the day to day use for a desktop user.

In continuing with my articles exploring the my SPARC-based Sun Ultra 5, I'm going to cover the topic of compiler optimizations on the SPARC platform. While many are familiar with GCC compiler optimizations for the x86 platform, there are naturally differences for GCC on SPARC, and some platform-specific issues to keep in mind.

Apple has introduced many improvements that goes beyond small incremental improvements to existing technologies (think Quartz Extreme, Rendezvous etc.). They have succeeded in integrating complex technologies without the complexity.

CVS is a tool to record, manage and distribute different versions of files. In other words, CVS is a version control system. It allows easy collaborative work, as each of the contributors can work in his local copy at the same time, without fear of overriding each other modifications. It allows the recovery of past versions (useful for tracking bugs), the creation of branches (for experimental development or for releases) and more.

No, I'm not going all "New Age" on you, this time I'm looking at how computers are going to get a 3rd dimension and how this will change the way we interact with them. The previous parts of this series have been based on extrapolations or previous history. This time I'm looking further forward, when technologies currently in long term development become available and open up a whole new realm of possibilities.

I considered reviewing Debian for this article. I downloaded a copy of Debian 3.0r2, making sure to get the disk with the 2.4 kernel. Everything you've heard about Debian being difficult to install? It's not totally true, but it's pretty close. I really wanted to try Debian, though, if only to use the vaunted apt-get system. I'd tried apt-rpm on a previous Red Hat installation, and it was great. Since Debian was turning out to be too difficult to put together, I decided to look for a debian-based distro.

Couldn't stop myself from trying the new Fedora 2-test1 release, even if it is an alpha! The 2.6 kernel, KDE 3.2 and Gnome 2.5 all in the same release was just to much candy to turn away from; too bad it's more sour rather than sweet at this (beta) point than I would have expected.