Sun Microsystems has acquired Belgian company Q-Layer, which specializes in cloud computing.

Retro, the free implementation of a minimalist dialect of Forth, is now available in version 10.0.

Two French developers have introduced a configuration software for Intellon-based Power Line Communication devices (PLC) at the 25c3 in Berlin. Simultaneously, the developers declared the software, called Faifa, as Open Source.

Splashtop manufacturer DeviceVM and the Taiwanese Firmware and BIOS producer Insyde have entered into a joint developer partnership.

This year's release of version 1.0 of the free runtime environment Wine is a milestone in itself. Developer Maarten Lankhorst has set another (experimental) stepping stone by getting the first 64Bit Windows program to run.

A Microsoft study once more tries to prove that a company is clearly better off with Windows as its platform. Our colleagues at the Australian iTWire Magazine have reported back with an analysis to dispute that claim.

Bazaar, the open source distributed version control system software has been released in version 1.10.

The feud between Minix inventor and operating system czar Andrew W. Tanenbaum and Linux Torvalds is legendary in the OS world. Before Linux there was Minix. Torvalds used to be a Minix user who set up his first Linux version in 1991 on Professor Tanenbaum’s operating system. Mr. Tanenbaum has now agreed to write a guest editorial for Linux Magazine. His opinion has not changed over the years: Linux (and Windows) are “unreliable.”