PC World reports that Intel will officially release its Pentium 4 processor on Monday.

“Linux will acquire features better suited for high-end use as a result of Caldera Systems’ pending acquisition of technology assets from Santa Cruz Operation. Linux is gradually growing up, acquiring features of the Unix operating system on which it’s based and that SCO sells. One of the features it’s still missing, though, is “clustering,” which variously means one computer can take over for another that fails or that a job can be shared among a number of servers in a group.” From a report at CNET News.com.

CNET News.com reports that ICANN has approved seven new top level domain name suffixes, including .biz, .aero, .name .coop, .info, .pro, and .museum. The new names are expected to be available in 2001.

Sean McGlynn stopped by to let us know about Plex86, which describes itself as an “open source PC virtualization software program.” In other words, it enables users to run another PC operating system concurrent with their primary operating system — no reboot required.

Ever wonder how Red Hat got started? Company chairman Bob Young explains in part one of a two part interview with LinuxWorld’s Joe Barr: “Red Hat got started, well, legally, we got started in March of ’93, when I quit my day job and went to work in my wife’s sewing closet trying to make a living. And I was doing a bunch of things at that time, but one of them was selling free software.”

“The Linux desktop battle heated up Wednesday when the developers of the K Desktop Environment (KDE) announced wide industry support for the newly formed KDE league. Developers of the competing Gnome open-source operating environment beat KDE to the punch in August when the Gnome Foundation released a laundry list of vendors backing the group.” Full report available at IDG News.

Spaceflight Now reports that the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York has approved the sale of failed global wirless provider Iridium. The name of the purchasing company is Iridium Satellite LLC, and the company plans to offer commercial satellite communications to targeted industries. Boeing will pick up maintenance duties for the network of satellites circling Earth.

The winners of the WebTechniques 2000 Web Tools Awards have been announced. Debian was the readers’ choice winner for the Infrastructure category, and the GIMP picked up an honorable mention in the Design category.

ZDNet News reports: “VeriSign’s subsidiary, Network Solutions Inc., has joined with several other companies accredited by ICANN to register domain names in .com, .org and .net in submitting a joint application for three new TLDs, .web, .info and .site. (California Representative Lois) Capps and (Massachusetts Representative Edward) Markey, both members of the House Commerce Committee, expressed concern that by approving this proposal, it would be in effect extending VeriSign’s market share. They added that Image Online Design, which is located in Capps’ district, has been running a .web TLD on an alternate root for several years.”

According to Debian Planet, just a few security issues and bug fixes are left to clean up before version 2.2r2 is released to the masses. Estimated time of arrival for this next version — which will include CD images — is any time within the next ten days.