OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Date set for phase 2 of Intel’s Core launch

Submitted by Steven Norwagger 2006-07-12 Intel 6 Comments

Intel's Core 2 Duo will be unveiled at an event scheduled for July 27 at Intel's headquarters. The desktop version of the Core 2 Duo, formerly code-named Conroe, will be the focus of the July 27 event. A notebook version, known as Merom, will follow in August.

Submitted by wakeupneo 2006-07-12 Microsoft 91 Comments

The European Commission fined Microsoft 280.5 million euros ($357.3 million) on Wednesday to punish its failure to comply with a landmark 2004 antitrust ruling.

Submitted by Lakedaemon 2006-07-11 SkyOS 79 Comments

A set of major changes in SkyOS is now complete. The entire GUI subsystem was rewritten to support desktop composing including flicker free drawing, double buffering, full alpha transparency, plugable composing effects, etc. Secondly, PE support has been dropped completely, and all libraries, applications, drivers, and the kernel are now ELF binaries. Thirdly, everything is now compiled with GCC 4.1.1 and the latest binutils. And last, but personally definitely not least: SkyOS now has support for BeOS people files. Other than the above, a lot of bugs were fixed as well.

Gates: No Qualms Delaying Vista If Necessary

Thom Holwerda 2006-07-11 Windows 57 Comments

Speaking at a forum in South Africa regarding a plan for Microsoft to make major technology investments in the country, Bill Gates said there was an "80 percent chance" Windows Vista would by ready for its planned January launch. He also had no qualms about delaying the OS further if necessary.

Submitted by alcibiades 2006-07-11 Apple 64 Comments

Macintouch has done a hardware quality survey among owners of PowerMac G5s (3000 PowerMacs) regarding hardware quality, support quality, and more. The conclusion: "The Power Mac G5's 17% first-year failure rate remains far higher than the industry average of 5%. If Apple is to maintain its premium pricing, it should provide premium reliability. As things stand, high Power Mac prices must include high warranty service costs built-in. With an overall failure rate of 23%, a quarter of which occur outside of Apple's 1-year warranty, and an average of 1.29 repairs per affected unit implying repeat problems, Power Macs are neither cheap for Apple to service after the sale, nor cheap for buyers. Power comes at a cost." Ok. Run Forrest, run!

Belenix 0.4.4 Released

Thom Holwerda 2006-07-11 Solaris 1 Comment

Belenix 0.4.4 has been released. "This release marks one more important step for OpenSolaris LiveCD performance. After a couple of months of hacking and testing this release includes an enhancement to the HSFS filesystem module that improves CDROM access time by upto 30%. In addition a bunch of work is going around packaging so the next major release should be complete with packaging based on Pkgsrc." Get it at their download page.

Microsoft Unveils Dynamics CRM Live

Thom Holwerda 2006-07-11 Microsoft 1 Comment

Microsoft has - finally - announced its version of on-demand CRM software. For more than a year the software giant has nosed around the fact that it's working on customer relationship management as a service, but it wasn't until its annual Worldwide Partner Conference here July 11-13 that Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live made its formal debut.

Sun Puts Opteron Into Blades

Thom Holwerda 2006-07-11 Oracle and SUN 15 Comments

Sun is coming out with the latest of its Opteron-based Galaxy servers, including its first system that will give the hardware maker a presence in the fastest growing and highly competitive blade space. At an event in San Francisco July 11, Sun officials will introduce not only the new Sun Blade 8000, but also another server that can scale to 16 processors and a system code-named Thumper that combines both server and storage capabilities in a single box. There's even a slideshow.

Review: Syllable 0.6.1

Guest post by Christopher Nelson 2006-07-11 Syllable, AtheOS 21 Comments

Like many others, I was a long-time lurker on the atheos mailing list. I was happy to see it get forked, because it seemed to mean that some real progress would get made. In many ways that seems to have happened, and in others... Not so much. Note: This is the 3rd entry to our Alternative OS Contest which runs through 14th July!

End to Win98 Support May Boost Desktop Linux

Thom Holwerda 2006-07-11 Windows 78 Comments

From today, Microsoft will no longer issue security updates or provide support for Windows 98 and Windows ME, which could lead users to trying alternative operating systems such as Linux. Eight years after launching Windows 98, Microsoft will finally wash its hands of updating and plugging security gaps in its ageing operating system. The software giant originally planned to pull the plug in January 2004 but decided to extend support because of the increasing threat from Linux.

Roaming Ethernet Configuration with Guessnet

Submitted by lh8 2006-07-11 Internet 5 Comments

"If you use your laptop in many different locations, you must be tired of having to configure your network manually every time. Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol is a nice alternative, but what can you do in places where DHCP is not an option. Guessnet is the right tool for that job."

Using Microsoft’s PowerShell Through SSH

Submitted by influx 2006-07-11 Windows 27 Comments

"One of the first things that an admin wants to do with PowerShell is run remotely. To do this securely, you must encrypt your data. SSH has been the proven way to do this. So the question becomes, how do I connect SSH and PowerShell together? With a little bit of kludge, it is possible."

SUSE Enterprise Desktop 10 has World’s Best Desktop Search

Submitted by Dan Warne 2006-07-11 SuSE, openSUSE 47 Comments

According to APC Magazine: Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 includes the most fully integrated desktop search we’ve seen on any operating system, which is a crowning achievement for Novell.

GCC 4.1.1 Released

Eugenia Loli 2006-07-11 General Development 14 Comments

The GNU Compiler Collection contains frontends for C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Java, and Ada as well as libraries for these languages. In this version: important security improvements on the generated code. Various optimizer improvements. Many Java (GJC) fixes and improvements. Support has been added for the IBM System z9 109, the MorphoSys architecture. Many other changes.

Submitted by Hakime 2006-07-11 macOS 2 Comments

"Static analysis refers to a method of examining software that allows developers to discover dangerous programming practices, poor use of language features, or potential errors in source code, without actually running the code. If you use Xcode with C or Objective-C, you can gain real quality improvements by understanding the basics of static analysis techniques and by integrating these techniques into your development process. In this article, we show you how to use GCC to help verify C and Objective-C programs."

Can Xandros Linux Desktop Replace Windows Media Centre?

Eugenia Loli 2006-07-11 Oracle and SUN 15 Comments

With its Linux desktop product, Xandros is focusing on short list of features to push Microsoft off the desktop. Microsoft is currently fighting a virtual game of king of the hill with OS competitors attempting to claw their way to the high ground. The latest challenger is Xandros, armed with its Linux-based desktop operating system Xandros Desktop Version 4 Home Edition Premium.

Replace Your Mouse with Your Eye

Eugenia Loli 2006-07-10 Geek stuff 26 Comments

Computers of the future could be controlled by eye movements, rather than a mouse or keyboard. Scientists at Imperial College, London, are working on eye-tracking technology that analyses the way we look at things. The team is trying to gain an insight into visual knowledge - the way we see objects and translate that information into actions.

Review: Parallels Desktop

Thom Holwerda 2006-07-10 OS News 35 Comments

Ars reviews Parallels Desktop for MacOS X, and concludes: "People pondering the switch to a MacBook can rest assured that with the exception of USB device support and hardware accelerated 3-D applications, their needs will be well met by this little workhorse of a program. Between the networking that just works, the impressive speed and the inability of the client operating systems to know they are running within a 'virtual machine', I think you'll be hard-pressed to find software for any x86 OS that doesn't work within a Parallels VM."

Source: EU To Cap Microsoft Daily Fine at USD 3.8 Million

Thom Holwerda 2006-07-10 Legal 31 Comments

The European Commission plans to raise the ceiling of future fines on Microsoft to 3 million Euros (USD 3.8 million) a day if the company continues to defy an antitrust decision, a diplomatic source said on Monday. He was speaking as European competition regulators met to discuss the amount of a fine the European Union's executive arm will impose on the software giant for failing to comply with the 2004 decision that it abused its dominant market position.

Open Source Versus .Net Stacks

Thom Holwerda 2006-07-10 .NET 19 Comments

Open-source and .Net zealots can both take away positives from eWEEK Labs testing of various application stacks, but a mix-and-match approach wins the day. Bottom line: Open source and .Net better learn to play nice.