Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 26th Nov 2009 19:41 UTC, submitted by Gabor
Astute readers probably already saw this one waiting in our backend, but since there was no official announcement yet, I decided to wait. Now that it's officially here, let's rejoice: the FreeBSD team has released version 8.0 of their operating system, packed with new features and improvements.
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:45 UTC
"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/18/13 17:32 UTC, submitted by poundsmack
A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)".
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:58 UTC
"The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/17/13 17:52 UTC
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 21:03 UTC
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 20:46 UTC
"And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 17:32 UTC
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 11:39 UTC
"The key takeaway we've reached (after two less than 24 hours playing with the iOS 7 Beta release) is this - every App must consider even basic updates to its UI to survive in a post-iOS 6 world." Great. Telling developers to update their entire application - user interface and behaviour alike - to target a look and behaviour that isn't final yet. Seems like potential for a lot of wasted work here.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/14/13 11:32 UTC
"Overall the app is really basic, and designed for on the go editing. Microsoft says it's not planning to create an iPad version, noting that tablet users can utilize the Office Web Apps instead. We'd like to see some additional options for editing, including more clear options for text formatting and the ability to insert and change images, but it's a solid attempt for something you're only really going to use for editing in emergencies." A resounding meh can be heard from all over the world.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 06/13/13 19:39 UTC
"Today, most people are using modern browsers that support the majority of the latest web technologies. Better yet, the usage of legacy browsers is declining significantly and newer browsers stay up to date automatically, which means the leading edge has become mainstream. Given these factors we've decided to retire Chrome Frame, and will cease support and updates for the product in January 2014." Eh.More News »
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Checo out PC-BSD, a desktop-oriented FreeBSD version which features a GUI installer. Is this more the way you think an installer should look like?
I have many friends who use PC-BSD on their desktops and are completely happy with it, no issues so far. So I would recommend it to try for everyone who things that FreeBSD is "too old-fashioned". PC-BSD comes with KDE and many applications preinstalled, as well as an innovative package installer which can be used with a web browser. Well, in my opinion, manually downloading things from the web and clicking on it - to install a program - is quite old-fashioned... :-)
That's a good statement. Nobody is forcing anyone to use FreeBSD. It has its places and its users. If you don't want to belong to them, it's completely okay.
You say it: For a long time. I prefer carefully engineered and implemented filesystems over those that appear and disappear in masses. For storage facilities, a reliable filesystem is very important. I'm familiar with ZFS, coming from a Solaris background. While I was comfortable with UFS, ZFS has a lot to offer. I would rather stay with ZFS than migrating all data from one file system to another one.
The native tools of FreeBSD offer you a good basis for managing your software, be it in binary form or by source. Additional programs, such as portmaster, make things much more comfortable. Of course, there are GUI frontends for them so you can manage your software with the mouse.
Well, I never had performance problems on my desktop. Sometimes, I read stories about Linux users complaining that their audio is skipping or that video playback gets desynchonized from audio. I cannot imagine that. It's 2009. Computing power is much more than some years ago. One of my first systems was a 150 MHz Pentium (1 - one, to emphasize this) with 64 (later 128) MB EDO RAM. I could compile the kernel, download an ISO via FTP, burn a CD, browse the web with a responsive Opera and have XMMS play MP3 files AT THE SAME TIME and WITHOUT SKIPPING AUDIO. It's true!
I think most performance issues on the desktop are related to the more and more upcoming tradition of bloat. I have told here (at OSNews) that bload isn't bad per se, and that it is needed (or at least an unavoidable side-effect) for modern software creation, a result of reducing development costs and always using the most modern technology. I have often complained that the "feeled overall speed" of applications is reduced when the programs are updated, usually in order to use a newer version of a library, e. g. the translation from Gtk 1 to Gtk 2. It may be that those new libraries offer new functionality, but what's the point when a program doesn't use it? You get a new interface, wow, but the program needs much more time to come up, and even worse, accessibility is reduced (e. g. the doubleclick = select doesn't work anymore in Gtk 2 since the list entries do switch into input fields, but those input fields lose focus and can't be fed by the edit buffer via the middle mouse button). The joy of the new modularized X is another topic. While it is great not to need xorg.conf in order to access modern GPUs, it can cause trouble when you can't get things working with new X that worked flawlessly in old X (e. g. XFree86), especially when you need specific settings (e. g. a german keyboard layout). The place of a centralized configuraton file (xorg.conf) has been abandoned in favour of various configuration files (for HAL, for DBUS, for PolicyKit etc.), and some of them require XML editing (instead of often more comfortable plain text). Finally, there's not sufficient documentation for those settings, or the settings are changing from day to day, so documentation isn't up to date.
Yes, to sum it up: There are many things that make me wish FreeBSD would be better, but in fact, those things aren't caused by FreeBSD! Most annoyances are grounded in incompatible hardware and bloated software.
It sometimes makes me angry, but when things don't work, I simply don't use them, because I don't need them. And just for toying around, it's not worth being angry. Life's hard enough. :-)