OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Xen Backed by Novell, IBM: Too Far, Too Fast?

Submitted by gergnz 2006-07-17 OS News 8 Comments

Lots of news on Xen. Firstly, "This is a document about how to set up XEN and iSCSI on 3 Debian Stable machines so that you can have a virtual host that can be migrated live between 2 of the machines. The third machine will be the common disk for the virtual machine that is seen via the 2 machines running XEN." Secondly, "IBM and Novell are throwing their considerable weight behind Xen, but some experts are suggesting that these companies may be pushing this nascent technology too far too fast." Lastly, "You can now run OpenSolaris domains under Xen as dom0 with OpenSolaris domUs too."

Windows Fundamentals Screenshots, Information

Thom Holwerda 2006-07-16 Windows 55 Comments

Bink.nu has more information and screenshots on Windows Fundamentals. "Microsoft Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs is a Windows-based operating system designed for enterprise customers with legacy PCs who are not in a position to purchase new hardware. WinFLP provides the same security and manageability as Microsoft Windows XP SP2 while providing a smooth migration path to the latest hardware and operating system."

Freespire Beta 1 Released

Submitted by jake tate 2006-07-16 Linspire 87 Comments

Kevin Carmony of Linspire/Freespire has announced that the first beta of Freespire has been released earlier than anticipated. Get it from the download page. According to Carmony, this release includes out-of-the-box support for proprietary formats such as .mp3 and WMV, plug-and-play support for Ati and nVIDIA cards without user intervention, Click-N-Run, and much more.

Submitted by falko 2006-07-16 Ubuntu 8 Comments

"VMware has just released version 1.0 of its free VMware Server. With VMware Server you can create and run guest operating systems such as Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, etc. under a host operating system. This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions on how to install the free VMware Server on Ubuntu 6.06 LTS."

Multipurpose Multimedia Processing with GStreamer

Submitted by anonymous 2006-07-16 Multimedia, AV 13 Comments

"This article introduces you to GStreamer, a universal multimedia processing library that makes multimedia handling easy. GStreamer can answer many problems, such as 'I need to store all audio samples coming from various sources in a common format'. Because all formats are treated alike, you only need to write one tool. This saves time and makes the solution more robust and easier to maintain. Moreover, after you learn the GStreamer concepts, there's almost no limit to what you can apply it to."

Shared Source Microsoft Device Emulator 1.0 Release

Eugenia Loli 2006-07-16 Wireless 9 Comments

The Shared Source Device Emulator is a compressed archive of the source code to the Device Emulator V1.0, buildable using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. The Device Emulator is a software simulation of an ARM CPU and motherboard, that runs the Windows CE and Windows Mobile operating systems. This source release can be used as an research and experimentation platform: the CPU emulator can be modified or replaced, as can the motherboard, peripheral devices, and emulator UI. If ported to Unix it will make easier the development, debugging and testing of ARM-compiled Qtopia and Linux-based applications for phones/PDAs.

A First Look at IronPython: Where Python Meets .NET

Eugenia Loli 2006-07-15 .NET 84 Comments

Jeff Cogswell writes: "I'm about to make a confession. Even though I've written several books and articles about C++, I have a secret: C++ isn't my favorite language. I have lots of languages that I use, each one for different purposes. But the language I consider my all-time favorite is Python."

Why I Will Not Buy a New (Intel) Macintosh

Thom Holwerda 2006-07-15 Apple 136 Comments

Not too long ago, I sold my iBook, right after the new MacBook was announced. I planned to buy that same MacBook somewhere this summer; however, I started to doubt. I had second thoughts. Let me explain why I decided to not buy a new Mac, but instead opt for a used G4 PowerMac. Note: After being absent for a week, here is another Sunday Eve Column.

Submitted by Umbra 2006-07-15 macOS 22 Comments

On Symantec's blog website, the company writes: "Researchers and engineers who are working in the security field must have strong constitutions - especially when it comes to weathering negative backlash and tired conspiracy theories whenever security and Mac OS X are mentioned in the same breath. With that in mind, in an effort to improve the quality of the dialogue, I would like to discuss some important issues regarding Mac OS X and security. Let's start with the hot-button issue of Mac OS X viruses. Simply put, at the time of writing this article, there are no file-infecting viruses that can infect Mac OS X."

Using DesktopBSD

Submitted by BSD_User 2006-07-15 BSD & Darwin 28 Comments

Dru Lavigne explains the basics of DesktopBSD. "DesktopBSD provides many features that will allow a complete Unix novice to start using the operating system immediately." She concludes: "If you have been hesitant to try FreeBSD because you heard the install was difficult or were afraid you would have problems configuring the GUI or sound or networking, now is a great time to take the plunge. Both PC-BSD and DesktopBSD provide you with a fully configured, ready to use system so you can be up and running in under half an hour."

Interview: Andy Ritger, Christian Zander from NVIDIA About FreeBSD

Submitted by BSD_User 2006-07-15 3D 22 Comments

Will Backman speaks with Andy Ritger and Christian Zander from NVIDIA about the NVIDIA FreeBSD graphics driver. The interview gives an overview of the drivers current features, plans for future improvements, and a brief discussion about licensing and NVIDIA's open source efforts. Thanks to the FreeBSD guys themselves for this summary.

Installing Software in GNU/Linux

Submitted by Borys Musielak 2006-07-15 Linux 56 Comments

Here's a quick guide on how to install applications using various types of package formats in Linux. It is aimed at people new to Linux. "Installing software in GNU/Linux looks quite different to the way you’re probably used to from Microsoft Windows. This is due to philosophical reasons. GNU/Linux is a free (as in freedom) operating system. Most of the software is free as well. Thus, the programs can better cooperate with each other and often depend on each other for getting a job done."

Keeping up with KDE 4 Development

Submitted by Konqi 2006-07-15 KDE 8 Comments

The new KDE://radio podcast site keeps you informed and on the leading edge of KDE4 development. It holds at the moment 7 interviews which were recorded at the KDE Four Core developer meeting and deal with the new liveui framework, Akonadi PIM Storage Service, the Human Interface Guidelines, and more.

NTFS-3G: Full Read-Write Open Source Linux NTFS Driver

Eugenia Loli 2006-07-15 Linux 88 Comments

Finally Linux has got full read-write open source NTFS support! Preliminary benchmarks show that the still unoptimized driver already sometimes twice as fast as ext3 and 20-50 faster than the commercial Paragon NTFS. Interestingly Captive NTFS, which uses the native Windows NTFS driver, fails all benchmarks with file loss.

A Review of Motorola’s Linux-based Rokr E2 Music Phone

Eugenia Loli 2006-07-15 Wireless 5 Comments

Motorola's Linux-based Rokr E2 mobile phone looks ready to challenge Sony/Ericsson's Walkman phone in the hot emerging market for converged PMP phones (portable media player phones), according to this hands-on review. The phone uses the Chaemeleon API (enhanced Qt, no SDK available).

OpenCyc 1.0 Released

Eugenia Loli 2006-07-14 Geek stuff 18 Comments

OpenCyc is the open source version of the Cyc technology, the world's largest and most complete general knowledge base and commonsense reasoning engine. OpenCyc can be used as the basis for a wide variety of intelligent applications. This is release 1.0 of OpenCyc featuring the complete Cyc ontology of over 260,000 terms and their definitional assertions numbering over 1.8 million. OpenCyc requires about 500MB of disk space and performs best with over 512 MB RAM. One GB of RAM is recommended for Cyc when accessed by Java applications.

GNOME 2.15.4 Released

Thom Holwerda 2006-07-14 Gnome 48 Comments

GNOME 2.15.4 has been released. "This is our fourth development release on our road towards GNOME 2.16.0, which will be released in September 2006. GNOME 2.15.4 has some rough edges but you should definitely try it to see how well it works." Easiest way to get it is via GARNOME.

KOffice 1.5.2 Released

Thom Holwerda 2006-07-14 KDE 16 Comments

"The KOffice team is announced KOffice version 1.5.2. This is mainly a bugfix release but also contains numerous translation updates. Especially KWord, KSpread and Kexi have received critical bug fixes."

Review: Intel’s Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Extreme

Thom Holwerda 2006-07-14 Intel 14 Comments

After an 18-page in-depth review of Intel's new processor line, The Tech Report concludes: "After years of wandering in the wilderness, Intel has recaptured the desktop CPU performance title in dramatic fashion. Both the Core 2 Extreme X6800 and the Core 2 Duo E6700 easily outperform the Athlon 64 FX-62 across a range of applications - and the E6600 is right in the hunt, as well. Not only that, but the Core 2 processors showed no real weaknesses in our performance tests."

EC: ‘We Had to Fine Microsoft’

Thom Holwerda 2006-07-14 Microsoft 49 Comments

In a Q&A, Neelie Kroes, who fined MS for not complying with the EC's antitrust ruling, said: "I regret that the Commission has had to take such a step today, but given Microsoft's continued non-compliance to date, I have been left with no alternative. Today's decision reflects my determination to ensure that Microsoft complies with its obligations.Microsoft has claimed that its obligations in the decision are not clear, or that the obligations have changed. I cannot accept this characterisation - Microsoft's obligations are clearly outlined in the 2004 decision and have remained constant since then."