Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 10th Oct 2006 15:14 UTC, submitted by Charles A Landemaine
"iXsystems, an enterprise-class hardware solution provider, announced today its acquisition of PC-BSD, a rock solid UNIX operating system based on FreeBSD. PC-BSD is a fully functional desktop operating system running FreeBSD version 6, with a KDE desktop interface and graphical system installer. Its PBI system, developed exclusively for PC-BSD, lets users download and install their applications in a self-extracting and installing format. iXsystems' acquisition of PC-BSD will provide funding to the PC-BSD project to increase distribution of PC-BSD and develop future versions of PC-BSD. Development is currently underway for a version of PC-BSD that will allow for easy installation and operation on servers, workstations, and laptops."
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 22:23 UTC
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 13:38 UTC
"The Verge has learned that HTC's Chief Product Officer, Kouji Kodera, left the company last week. Kodera was responsible for HTC's overall product strategy, which makes the departure especially notable on the heels of the global launch of the make-or-break One. It's not just Kodera. In the past three-odd months, HTC has lost a number of employees in rapid succession." I really hope HTC pulls it together.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 13:30 UTC, submitted by JRepin
"It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian 'sid' at the time of the Debian 'wheezy' release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release." Important note: 75% of Debian packages are supported bu Debian GNU/Hurd. Impressive.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 22:06 UTC
"The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:45 UTC
"There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they're holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International, which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world. AOI hasn't filed a tax return anywhere in the world for the last five years, yet it earned $30 billion in income from 2009 to 2012, according to a Senate report released yesterday." Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many more - these companies might not be breaking any laws, but it's obvious to anyone that what they are doing is scummy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 15:53 UTC
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."More News »
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2006-10-11
Not that I have anything new to say that hasn't been said already, but I figured I'd cast my opinion(s). I write as a FreeBSD user and advocate, and I've used it as my primary desktop OS for several years. I don't use PC-BSD primarily but I do have it installed on a test laptop and I've played around with it (I prefer Gnome anyway).
First of all, I'm not worried about this purchase. iXsystems is Matt Olander's company and I've been familiar with his name and the company for a while now.
Secondly... I agree that the license debate is off-topic and a dead horse. Fight it in some other thread.
Next... I agree that FreeBSD's ports/package system isn't perfect. It has lots of room for improvement. But PBI is not the answer. The concept flies in the face of numerous established good ideas that have held for many years. While I am not against change and new ideas in-general, this isn't a "new idea". This is an old road that has been down before and did not pan out. Shared libraries are meant to be just that: "shared".
Next... I am always greatly-offended by the "RAM is cheap" argument that encourages bloated and lazy programming techniques and OS design. It is little fundamentally-wrong ideas like that early in the process that, extrapolated to the big picture, result in OSes (like we see from some vendors) with obscene software requirements. Please stay off the slippery slope "hardware is cheap" comeback... that is no excuse to not take memory-usage into account in every low-level design decision. Sure, you might look at your individual app and say that having your own private copy of alternate library versions loaded into memory only adds another 500K, but multiple that over and over... people run more than one application at a time, then there is the overhead of the DE itself (KDE in this case) and the OS. My machine has 512MB. If RAM is so cheap, feel free to send me some out of your own pocket, since you're so quick to dimiss it as an infinitely-expendible zero-cost commodity.
It is just plain rude to dismiss memory usage (and peoples' pocketbooks) like that, for a questionable return. People have a wide range of systems they like to run their OS on, and it's bad enough that both KDE and Gnome have seriously narrowed their installable market due to their rather severe disregard to memory usage. Even Firefox (my browser of choice) has taken a similar attitude and the fact that developers don't seem to mind that it takes up 2-3 times more RAM (hundreds of megabytes) than my largest WINDOWS app irks me to no end. If PC-BSD continues in its current mentality, it will by-design put both DEs to shame and become the new epitome and king of bloat (maybe they're competing with Vista for the title?).
And lastly... PC-BSD needs to seriously fix the PBI updater. It flat out doesn't work and it appears to be a known problem. That was a deal breaker for me when I set up the test system. If I can't keep my software up-to-date, my OS is broken. It's part of the reason I left Windows for FreeBSD: portupgrade -Ra