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In one corner, we have the champ -- Windows. Come January, it will come out swinging with what Microsoft tells us is the latest and greatest version ever -- Vista.

In the other corner, we have the challenger -- OpenSUSE 10.1, the latest shipping version of Novell/SUSE's community Linux. Sometime this summer, its commercial version, SUSE Linux Enterprise 10, will come out looking to KO the champ.

Before this epic battle begins, let's take a look at their training camps.

Dave Korn announced GCC 3.4.6:

"This release is a minor release, containing fixes for regressions relative to earlier releases, but no new features. It is the final release from the 3.4.x series and the branch is now closed. It is thus also the final release from GCC series 3 overall."

GCC is the GNU Compiler Collection which includes C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Java, and Ada compilers. Download GCC 3.4.6 from a gcc.gnu.orgmirror.

Theodore Ts'o proposed a new patch allowing a userland program to taint the kernel by writing to/proc/sys/kernel/tainted, "to be used when userspace is potentially doing something naughty that might compromise the kernel." When asked when this would be needed, Theodore went on to explain, "the problem is that the Real-Time Specification for Java (RTSJ) **requires** that the JVM provide class functions which provide direct access to physical memory; all physical memory.