Linked by David Adams on Mon 4th Oct 2010 19:32 UTC, submitted by Idefix
Once upon a time, operating systems used to matter a lot; they defined what a computer could and couldn't do... Today, there's only one operating system: Unix (okay, there are two, but we'll get to that). This is why I contend that the OS doesn't matter - or that we need to take another look at the word's content, at what we mean when we say 'Operating System'.
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:38 UTC
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 11:29 UTC
The day has finally come! Jolla has finally announced the launch device for its Sailfish operating system - and by god this is a looker. It's decidedly different from other phones out there, but it has good specifications and carries a relatively reasonably price tag - EUR 399, and it's up for pre-order today, shipping in the fourth quarter of this year.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:33 UTC
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
Linked by David Adams on 05/16/13 4:23 UTC
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/11/13 21:41 UTC
"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/08/13 14:22 UTC
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/02/13 15:28 UTC
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/29/13 21:06 UTC
Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/24/13 22:24 UTC
They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/18/13 11:21 UTC
Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.More Features »
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There are interesting things in this post, but I think you misunderstood the original comment and went a bit too far in UNIX hate to make a good point.
The OP complained about several things. Apart from lack of applications on an OS that has been here for a long time, he complained about the low-leven layers (networking stack) and about the lack of vision, of plans for the future. You did not answer those.
Agreed, it's good to point this out. UNIX advocates' point is that it can be adapted to just about anything, but I'm more skeptical about this myself. It remains an OS based on text files and pipes, with a user/admin security model, not exactly the best start for a mono-user OS design.
This is highly debatable (and I'm writing a kernel in C++). Several features of C++ (exceptions, RTTI...) require runtime support and can be considered dead for kernel development. Other, like templates, are nice but more adapted to API coding than low-level OS code. When writing code at the kernel level, it's mostly classes (for code separation in independent blocks) and operator overloading (for easier debug code than printf) which prove to be useful. Where most of C++ really shines is on the interface side, and you can very well make a C++ interface to a C kernel.
Yeah, it's written in managed code, like those experimental OSs written in Java we've had for ages. And ?
This is ridiculous. Singularity has been canned by microsoft and doesn't have the tools which server users use daily. Plus, being fully written in managed code, it will have a comparatively weak performance, maybe suitable for the desktop but not for the power-hungry server market.
Oh, come on ^^ Aren't you burying it a bit fast ? Look at the current state of Haiku, it's not desirable for anyone else than BeOS fans, and afaik there are no plans to change this.
User-friendliness is about UI, and that of Haiku is not nearly close to KDE for that matter. It's for devs that UNIX apis are terrible, and they use extra layers like QT anyway.
This is just ridiculous. A compiler is a compiler, no matter how you see it. It has a well-defined purpose, so there's not much room for improvisation. GCC compiles well-optimised code from many languages to a very wide range of binary targets, so it's a good compiler, there's nothing else to say about it