For anyone who hasn't heard of the ReactOS project, it is a version of Linux that undertakes the extraordinary task of running Windows XP programs using Windows XP drivers....natively. This project isn't exactly new, which is probably why we haven't been hearing much about this. The jump to version 0.3.1 does a lot of things, such as a rebuild of the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer). The HAL handles communication between hardware, software, and the kernel of the operating system. You can read the full list of updates here.

Anyone who'd like to try ReactOS can download it off of thier homepage.

After high demand for custom computers with Linux installed, Hewlett-Packard is considering a similar approach to Dell with the open source operating system. The company may soon start selling factory built systems (not customised PCs like Dell) with Linux pre-installed, although it wasn't completely clear about the matter. A few of HP's notebooks are already certified to work with Red Hat and SUSE - it even used to ship Linux systems a few years back, but these were unsuccessful HP decided to discontinue them. HP's worldwide director of open source and Linux marketing said "We are in a massive deal right now for ... multi-thousands of units of a desktop opportunity for Linux. That's an indicator." However, so far there is no information about which distribution would be used, nor which systems Linux would be offered with. This increased consumer interest in Linux could soon see other big-name OEMs provide the free OS with their systems if HP and Dell are successful.

KDE, or "K" for short, is a windows manager for the X window system in *nix. Without window managers like KDE or Gnome, the *nix GUI would be rather bleak. KDE is currently developing the next version of it's software, KDE 4. In this version, there will be a multi-lingual spell checker built into the window manager. There will also be much better support for hardware, and a gigantic tweak of the software that allows for interoperability between a Windows/Mac system and a *nix system. There is also "Dolphin", the new file manager. You can get more details of KDE4 off of dot.kde.org.

After conducting a survey to find out what consumers wanted, desktop and notebook builder Dell has announced that it is planning a new line of computers which have the option of pre-installed Linux. Until now, Dell hasn't been overly keen to provide the open source operating system, opting instead to persuade users towards Windows. However, this new line of user-ready certified desktops and laptops could encourage people buying a new computer to give Linux a try, with SUSE Linux being made available on a number of OptiPlex and Precision desktops, along with Latitude notebooks. The company may eventually choose to expand its range of Linux machines and even offer more distributions, but at present it is only working with Novell.

The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE. This release continues the development of the 6-STABLE branch providing performance and stability improvements, many bug fixes and new features. You can read the full release notes here.

FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE is now available for the alpha, amd64, i386, ia64, pc98, powerpc, and sparc64 architectures. It can be installed from bootable ISO images or over the network; the required files can be downloaded via FTP or BitTorrent as described in the sections below. While some of the smaller FTP mirrors may not carry all architectures, they will all generally contain the more common ones, such as i386 and amd64. You can upgrade FreeBSD here, or choose to download the latest release via bittorent or an FTP mirror.

There was a big surprise at the 23rd Chaos Computer Conference. A masked hacker demonstrated an Xbox 360 running a Linux and Mac OS logo on the console, followed by the phrase "coming soon". He used a copy of the King Kong game and a PCB plugged into a notebook to place the logos of the two operating systems on the Xbox 360. While giving the demonstration, the hacker did not say a single word. You can watch the YouTube videos here and here.