OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Windows Vista Beta 2 Reviews Trickling In

Submitted by Reindeer Flotilla 2006-06-01 Windows 23 Comments

The inevitable flood of Vista Beta 2 reviews are starting, and today there are two prominent reviews. Tom's Harware UK has spent 500 hours with Vista and given it a general thumbs up in its screenshot heavy review. Ars Technica also takes a look at the progress of Vista, but trivializes some larger Vista features, such as the completely rewritten Windows Mail.

Starter Toolkit for DB2 on Rails Released

Adam Scheinberg 2006-06-01 General Development 1 Comment

Starter Toolkit for DB2 on Rails is a set of tools that enables rapid building of Web applications with Ruby on Rails and DB2. It comes with a unique, one-click installer for pre-tested and reconfigured installation of not only Ruby and Rails, but a complete DB2 Express - C solution. Several Demos available showcasing the toolkit.

Microsoft to Rebuild Windows Graphics System

Submitted by Dan Warne 2006-06-01 Windows 32 Comments

Microsoft is to overhaul Windows' graphic driver model after realising that the one that will ship with Windows Vista - Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) 1.0 - needs improvement in the way it shares GPU resources between programs and Windows itself.

KDE 3.5.3 Released

Submitted by Anonymous Reader 2006-06-01 KDE 18 Comments

The KDE Project announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.5.3. Unusually for a maintenance release, new features were implemented due to the long release cycle of the eagerly-awaited KDE 4. Significant enhancements include an improved startup time, speedups in KHTML, over 800 minor issues fixed, small new features and new translations.

Submitted by brewin 2006-05-31 AMD 49 Comments

AMD may be looking to buy graphics company ATI Technologies, a move that would benefit the overall graphics industry, according to RBC Capital Markets. "The synergies of this seem consistent with the recent announcements by AMD to significantly increase capacity over the next few-years," wrote analyst Apjit Walia in a note to investors Wednesday. "We believe ATI is a rare-buy in the semiconductor space right now given the near-term tie-up dynamics."

OpenSUSE 10.1 Is Versatile, But Uneven

Thom Holwerda 2006-05-31 SuSE, openSUSE 15 Comments

Novell's OpenSUSE 10.1 is a solid, multipurpose Linux-based operating system that - in addition to being a very good distribution in its own right - offers an early peek at the SUSE Enterprise Linux Desktop product that Novell is set to ship this summer. What has always (and still does) set SUSE apart is the measure of management homogeneity that the distribution brings to this diverse set of components - mostly through its Yast system configuration framework. Overall, eWEEK Labs appreciated the ambitious scope of OpenSUSE 10.1's configuration tools, but we also ran into some areas in which Yast's reach frustratingly exceeded its grasp.

Sun Releases Fire 5000 Plan

Thom Holwerda 2006-05-31 Oracle and SUN 17 Comments

Sun Microsystems will fire up to 5000 workers this year, as the company tries to cut costs and make it easier to post quarterly profits. All told, Sun expects to cleave off between 11 per cent and 13 per cent of its 37500 person workforce. The firings mark the first mass layoff to take place under new CEO Jonathan Schwartz. Sun has historically been reluctant to let go of staff, despite Wall Street's constant calls to trim costs via layoffs. CNet has more.

Firefox 2.0 Alpha 3 Released, Including Google Security Features

Thom Holwerda 2006-05-31 Mozilla, Gecko 23 Comments

"The next version of Firefox will come out of the virtual box with Google's anti-phishing tools built in. While the Googlified security services have been available through use of the Google Toolbar for either Firefox or IE6 for quite some time already, this marks the first default installation. And we all know how much Google values the defaults."

UK Firm To Unveil Wall-Socket PC

Thom Holwerda 2006-05-31 Hardware 16 Comments

Newcastle-based Jade Integration will launch one of the smallest thin-client computers available in the UK to date, the Jack PC, next month. Containing all the electronics needed to run as a low- to medium-power PC, the Jack PC, as its name suggests, will fit into a standard size wall socket. The entire PC sits on two layered circuitboards. It contains an AMD RISC processor to help reduce power consumption and heat output. The Jack PC thin client fits into a wall socket and is so energy-efficient it can get its power over Ethernet.

Microsoft Debuts Windows Live OneCare

Thom Holwerda 2006-05-31 Microsoft 35 Comments

After a year in beta testing, Microsoft on Wednesday took the wraps off Windows Live OneCare, its all-in-one security and PC care subscription service. That package includes antivirus, anti-spyware and PC tuning and backup tools, along with free support for $49.95 USD per year.

GNOME 2.14.2 Released

Eugenia Loli 2006-05-31 Gnome 9 Comments

The latest bug fix release of GNOME is here: GNOME 2.14.2. You can get release notes and download links from here. Please note that both libxml2 and libxslt tarballs need a patch and that the libxml2 tarball also needs a second patch.

Review: Ubuntu Dapper RC

Submitted by luna6 2006-05-31 Ubuntu 53 Comments

Because of Ubuntu's big release tomorrow, a review of the latest release candidate. It concludes: "To sum up my experience with Ubuntu’s Dapper I will say that it is easily the most impressive Linux distribution I have used to date. The combination of speed, stability, ease of use and the excellant apt-get package manager, makes it the Linux distro to beat. The 5 years of upgrades is another incentive to try out Dapper as well. This would be the first time I would recommend a Linux distro to any computer user (including Windows users) and feel confident they would like the system, as well as be able to use the system proficiently shortly after testing out the system."

Sun Says GPL Is a Possibility for OSS Java

Submitted by anonymous 2006-05-31 Java 56 Comments

In his Weblog entry last week, Jonathan Schwartz wrote that "despite the cynics, using a GPL license is very much on the table" as a possible option for open source Java. Schwartz also reported that Sun is making serious progress on open sourcing Java. "We're now making serious progress on open sourcing Java (and despite the cynics, using a GPL license is very much on the table), while focusing the debate on what matters most: not access to lines of code (that's already widely available), but ensuring compatibility," said Schwartz.

Submitted by fsmdave 2006-05-31 Wireless 20 Comments

"Games under GNU/Linux have usually been a lacklustre affair. For every Tux Racer, there are a hundred sub-standard Pac-man clones you'd be embarrassed to advocate. For every commercial version of Quake, there's a hundred other worthy games the publisher elected not to port to GNU/Linux. Without good games, there's no market, and without the market, no effort is spared. And so the cycle continues. In this article, I will look at two of the areas in which GNU/Linux games have succeeded, and a new device that combines them both, which could help expose GNU/Linux to the populous."

Submitted by diegocg 2006-05-31 KDE 31 Comments

Thiago Macieira says in his blog: "With commit 546830, KDE says good-bye to one of its longest friends: DCOP. The technology has served us well for 6 years, to the point that has become one of our most proeminent features." From now on, the KDE 4 tree will use DBUS. Due to the very extensive use of DCOP in KDE, this is a big jump for DBUS, "probably bring more applications into D-BUS in one go than there currently are".

FreeBSD Announces Google Summer of Code Projects

Submitted by Joel Dahl 2006-05-31 FreeBSD 2 Comments

"The FreeBSD Project is pleased to announce its participation in the Google Summer of Code program designed to introduce students to open source software development. The FreeBSD Project received over 120 applications, amongst which 14 projects have been selected for funding."

Who’s Who At the 2006 OpenBSD Hackathon, Part II

Submitted by Joel Dahl 2006-05-31 OpenBSD No Comments

"Tables are cluttered with laptops, servers, switches, cables and cords as the 2006 OpenBSD hackathon continues in Calgary, Canada. Small groups of developers talk and debate around LCD screens, while others work individually on their own projects. Behind the scenes, a donated 10 megabit wireless connection provides Internet access to all. IP addresses and DNS are provided by stock bind and dhcpd processes running on an OpenBSD server."

Hooking Windows Messages in .NET

Submitted by esther schindler 2006-05-31 .NET No Comments

"In the previous article in this series, you discovered a whole world of messages that the .NET Framework doesn't even capture. These messages can signal all kinds of events, request changes, and even can end your application. Unfortunately, the techniques described in that article only work for messages that the CLR passes to your application. Sometimes, you want to track messages that the CLR doesn't support."

Submitted by Tyr. 2006-05-31 Solaris 1 Comment

"This article explains how a Solaris OS application with large memory requirements can effectively create a subprocess without unduly running out of memory or creating a deadlock. It also explores a related issue of how application memory is committed in the Solaris OS as opposed to other operating systems such as Linux." Here's a related article on ZFS and Solaris Containers

Guest post by alcibiades 2006-05-30 In the News 73 Comments

Dell and its business model has been the focus of a lot of comment on Apple oriented forums in recent months. The Dell model is said to be unviable, and Dell's recent news is said to prove this. A limited endorsement of sorts for the so called "end to end model" in music has been published by Walt Mossberg in the WSJ. Recently a real sky-is-falling article with this theme has appeared here. This is a subject that matters. If the advocates of the so-called "end to end model" are right, it implies that the industry structure which allows us all to source hardware from wherever we want, and run a variety of OSs on it, is in danger.