OS Revolution

The M64 - 0.90D release of MenuetOS was released. The major addition is the picview application from A. Mogyorósi.
Dowload it from the usual location.

Francesco Sacchi announced on the BeRTOS mailing list the release of the 2.0 release.

As you can see by wiki notifications, we have just finished releasing
version 2.0.0 of BeRTOS.
Here is a short list of new features:
* Major kernel refactoring
* New peripheral drivers:
o New I2C driver and interface
o PCF8574 I2C port expander
o FT245 USB to parallel interface
* New PID controller algorithm
* New configuration infrastructure
* New testing harness
* New logging infrastructure
* Add a first experimental embedded filesystem (BattFs)

Download | ChangeLog

BeRTOS is a real-time operating system designed for building applications for embedded systems, like reference boards, test boards, or custom boards.

Aleksey Bragin announced the 0.3.7 release of ReactOS.

Highlights from the changelog:

• Improved x64 architecture support
• The start of a real MSVC compiler support project
• Kernel improvements and bugfixes in quite a few parts: Configuration Manager, IO Manager, KE, Memory Manager, Object Manager, Process Manager
• Network stack improvements: leakage fixes, increased functionality
• Filesystem driver fixes, making them more compatible with the Microsoft NT cache manager
• Win32 subsystem improvements and synching of most of the Wine usermode DLLs

Announcement | Download | Changelog

Alistair Crooks posted on the NetBSD announce mailing list the plans for the 5.0 branch.

Some highlights from the 4.0 branch changes:

+ during the development of NetBSD 5.0, the kernel version was bumped
73 times. The previous record was 29
+ there is a new kernel threading model which has better performance
than the previous implementation
+ we have introduced the file system journalling (WAPBL)
functionality, kindly donated by Wasabi Systems
+ much work has been done in the file system arena
+ the Xen port has updated to Xen 3.3, and has support for PAE domains
and amd64 domains (both dom0 and domU)
+ Xorg is now a part of our base system
+ providing multilib functionality (64bit platforms such as amd64 and
sparc64 can now compile and run 32bit binaries seamlessly)
+ almost every subsystem has been improved.
+ our contributed external software has moved to a new framework, so
as to make license issues clearer
+ many more device drivers are present in tree
+ all security-critical software is now compiled by default with stack
protection; this makes stack overflow and stack smashing attacks
more difficult to exploit
+ address space layout randomization is now supported on selected
platforms
+ NetBSD now supports creating position independent executables (PIE)
that can completely randomize the layout of stack, code, data, shared
library layout per executable invocation

Read the announcement.

The OpenBSD team just released a new version of their super safe operating system (just two remote holes in the default install in over 10 years).

Release announcement | Diff between 4.4 and 4.3 | Download.

Ubuntu 8.10 got released today.

This release brings the usual updates in packages. Like Gnome 2.24 (release notes), Xorg 7.4, a new linux kernel (2.6.27), Network Manager 0.7, but also a number of new features like 3g support, the ability to install from an usb stick, guest sessions and bbc content to name a few.

Announcement | Download | Release Notes | Main Package List

Main Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop

Also Kubuntu 8.10 got released that features a default KDE 4.1 desktop that’s pretty spiffy.

If you have your doubts about KDE 4.1 please read the following article.

Announcement / Release Notes | Download | Main Package List

Kde 4.1 / Kubuntu 8.10

Last but not least we also have a new Xubuntu realease.
For those of you that don’t know Xubuntu is meant like a light-weight alternative to Ubuntu (hence the Gnome-like layout).

Announcement / Release notes | Download | Main Package List

Xubuntu 8.10

From the original announcement

What’s new in this release (see below for details):
- Improved device management for DOS drives.
- Many Richedit fixes.
- Various installer fixes, particularly for IE 7.
- First steps of Direct3D 10 implementation.
- Various bug fixes.

Source Download | Binary Download

From the announcement:

The Live CD features a fully graphical demonstration that presents the fundamental concepts of the Genode architecture in an interactive fashion. It runs directly on PC hardware and has been tested on Qemu and VirtualBox

Download | What’s Genode

Genode is a novel operating-system architecture that enables dynamic workload while retaining security and robustness.

I really don’t know if this fits as an operating system news but it’s pretty major.
Google just announced that they’ve released their Android mobile phone platform as open source

From the announcement:

Today is a big day for Android, the Open Handset Alliance, and the open-source community.  All of the work that we’ve poured into the mobile platform is now officially available, for free, as the Android Open Source Project. [...]
What will you do with Android?

Cheers to another release.

This one brings an improved HTTP client.

Download