Best programs

A patch for the Linux kernel that could allow the use of the FAT file system without the risk of infringement of patents belonging to Microsoft has been released.

In February, the corporation from Redmond sued TomTom for infringement of a patent on the FAT file system. In response to this Microsoft's action, TomTom sued Microsoft. Although, corporations reached an agreement, the problem of legal use of FAT still remains.

The new version of a free database server PostgreSQL 8.4 has been released recently.

The latest release contains 293 new features and improvements. The most important enhancements are related to commands and tools for administration and monitoring of databases. There are improvements that affect columns in tables.

Kodu is a visual programming language that makes it easy to create your own games. It has just been released on Xbox Live. The application costs 400 Microsoft points and offers a lot of possibilities for ambitious developers.

VirtualBox is a free program that enables virtualization on workstations. The new stable version 3.0 has been released lately. What's new in the third version? First of all, developers implemented support for the symmetrical processing (SMP) with 32 virtual processors. Also, support for 3D acceleration has been improved – Direct3D 8/9 in case of virtual machines with Windows and OpenGL 2.0 for machines with Windows, Linux and Solaris.

After a year of testing, Mozilla has released the stable version of Firefox 3.5.