OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Microsoft Opens Codeplex

Submitted by houp 2006-05-22 Microsoft 21 Comments

"CodePlex is an online software development environment for open and shared source developers to create, host and manage projects throughout the project lifecycle. It has been written from the ground up in C# using .NET 2.0 technology with Team Foundation Server on the back end. CodePlex is open to the public free of charge." Microsoft goes open source, and it also launches pay-as-you-go computers.

Magnussoft Now Worldwide Distributor of ZETA

Thom Holwerda 2006-05-22 Zeta 19 Comments

"A new distribution partner for the alternative operating system ZETA OS has been announced. The worldwide distribution rights for the ambitious Operating system have been granted to Magnussoft Germany. This also means that the continuation and future of operating system ZETA, despite the problems of yellowTAB GmbH, has now been secured. A first production run to satisfy the increasing demand for version 1.2 has already been initiated. The first copies from this run should arrive at existing dealers within a couple of days."

Review: SUSE Linux 10.1

Submitted by SilentBob4 2006-05-22 SuSE, openSUSE 57 Comments

Mad Penguin has published a review of SUSE 10.1, including info on multimedia, XGL/Compiz, and a flash movie of the installation. They conclude: "The desktop itself is one to be reckoned with. I was able to be instantly productive with this release of SUSE. I didn't need to “fiddle” with anything outside of getting multimedia support back in place, but that's another argument for another day isn't it? The bottom line is that I was able to install the OS and apps, sit down, and go right to work."

Kororaa and the GPL: Update 1

Submitted by anonymous 2006-05-22 Open Source 65 Comments

After Kororaa announced its GPL problems and me writing a column about it, the people behind Kororaa have now posted an in-depth follow-up: "I have been receiving lots of information which I have been sorting through, thank you to everyone who has emailed me (although I would have also thanked you personally via email). I contacted both ATI and nVidia for some clarification on particular issues, however neither have answered my questions. Nevertheless, this is what I have found so far."

FreeBSD Security Survey

Submitted by Joel Dahl 2006-05-22 FreeBSD 25 Comments

"The Security Team has been concerned for some time by anecdotal reports concerning the number of FreeBSD systems which are not being promptly updated or are running FreeBSD releases which have passed their End of Life dates and are no longer supported. In order to better understand which FreeBSD versions are in use, how people are (or aren't) keeping them updated, and why it seems so many systems are not being updated, I have put together a short survey of 12 questions. The information gathered will inform the work done by the Security Team, as well as my own personal work on FreeBSD this summer."

Submitted by Hakime 2006-05-22 macOS No Comments

"If you are developing EFI applications or drivers for Intel-based Macintosh systems, it is likely that you will prefer to develop on Mac OS X rather than on Windows, Linux, or any other system. The rest of this document will help you jumpstart EFI development on Mac OS X. In fact, you can use either the PowerPC or x86 version of Mac OS X for hosting an EFI build environment."

Spam Filtering Techniques

Submitted by anonymous 2006-05-22 Internet 13 Comments

"The problem of unsolicited e-mail has been increasing for years, but help has arrived. In this article, David discusses and compares several broad approaches to the automatic elimination of unwanted e-mail while introducing and testing some popular tools that follow these approaches."

C++ Mediator Pattern for Object Interaction

Eugenia Loli 2006-05-22 General Development 7 Comments

Monolithic software products (those with a multitude of highly coupled components) are often blamed on the use of procedural languages, but it's just as easy to produce overly interdependent classes in object-oriented languages. Stephen B. Morris shows how using the mediator design pattern can help reduce class interdependencies, aid componentization & ultimately help make classes service-oriented.

Cocoa: Working with XML

Eugenia Loli 2006-05-22 macOS 9 Comments

Objective-C and Cocoa is the predominate language/framework on the OS X operating system, but it is fairly uncommon otherwise. One way to enable an application written in this language to communicate with applications written for other platforms is via the universal XML. Marcus Zarra walks you through constructing, transmitting, and deconstructing an XML document using Objective-C and Cocoa.

Apple Shunned Superstar Chip Start-up for Intel

Thom Holwerda 2006-05-21 Apple 55 Comments

Did Apple make a mistake by switching to Intel? We may never know, but Apple had more options than has been previously reported, The Register can exclusively reveal. A chip start-up that created a high performance, low power processor compatible with existing Mac software had been working closely with the computer company for many months. "PA Semi was counting on that deal," said one source. "They had lots of guys walking around in a daze when Apple went to Intel. They had no idea that would actually happen." Ars's Hannibal, criticaster of Apple's reasoning to switch to Intel, also expressed his thoughts on this issue.

RISC OS 3 Caught Running on Amiga Hardware

Thom Holwerda 2006-05-21 RISC OS 13 Comments

"The developer of the ArcEm port to Amiga OS 4 has sent in a video of RISC OS 3 running on his 800MHz Amiga computer. He described the RISC OS 3 desktop as slightly sluggish, although games fare much better in the Archimedes emulator. The video shows Chris briefly using the desktop, fiddling with the Filer and Task Manager, before loading up the familiar Lander demo - including the inevitable crash landing that shortly follows."

MacOS X, Linux, and Open Source

Thom Holwerda 2006-05-21 macOS 51 Comments

Lately, OSX, or more specifically its kernel, has had a lot of attention. Benchmarks made by AnandTech have shown that OSX' kernel has some serious performance issues. As a result, some have uttered the idea Apple might replace the kernel of the MacOS with another kernel-- Linux seems, to them, the most viable option. Secondly, there have been speculations that Apple is closing the x86 version of its kernel. Note: Sunday Eve Column.

Submitted by jayson.knight 2006-05-21 Windows 15 Comments

"Shipping with Windows Vista will be the latest version of Internet Information Services (IIS), which includes a broad collection of features and capabilities that have been anxiously awaited by both developers and IT Pros. Scott Guthrie and Bill Staples describe and demo new features in IIS 7.0."

Syllable 0.6.1 Released

Thom Holwerda 2006-05-21 Syllable, AtheOS 15 Comments

The Syllable team has released Syllable 0.6.1. New in this release: initial ACPI support and better PCI resource management, new application events API, lots of driver updates and additions, new versions of Syllable's browser and mail client, ports of CUPS and Samba3, and support for the REBOL language.

Apple Denies the Closing of Darwin x86 Kernel

Submitted by anonymous 2006-05-21 macOS 38 Comments

In the Fed-Talk mailing list, Ernest Prabhakar (Apple's product manager for Open Source & Open Standards) denies that Apple is going to close the Darwin kernel for x86: "Just to be clear, Tom Yager was speculating about why we have - so far - not released the source code of the kernel for Intel-based Macintoshes. We continue to release all the Darwin sources for our PowerPC systems, and so far have released all the non-kernel Darwin sources for Intel. Nothing has been announced, so he (and everyone else) certainly has the right to speculate. But please don't confuse 'speculation' with 'fact'."

FreeBSD Self-Hosting on Sun Niagara UltraSPARC T1

Submitted by Joel Dahl 2006-05-21 FreeBSD 11 Comments

FreeBSD now both boots and survives a complete 'make buildworld' on the Sun Niagara UltraSPARC T1 CPU. "I'm proud to announce that FreeBSD on the T1 is now stable enough that it can 'make buildworld' natively. The source is currently available in perforce under the view //depot/projects/kmacy_sun4v/... I probably won't roll it back into CVS until the logical domaining support is done. I'm looking forward to receiving input from individuals who plan to deploy it to find out what workloads to target in performance tuning."

Submitted by da_Chicken 2006-05-21 Office 37 Comments

"In the hubbub over the ODF and competing 'what you see is what you get' word processors, a long-standing alternative model of word processing systems has been mostly overlooked. The author of LyX, Matthias Ettrich, calls this approach 'what you see is what you mean'. However, it's a philosophy that you will find in many 'native' free software text-processing systems everywhere, from online 'content management systems' to book publishing. You write what you mean, then you use some type of formatter to create presentation layouts. LyX, with its integrated graphical environment, may be the friendliest place to learn it."

Novell Experiments with Alternative Driver Model for Linux

Thom Holwerda 2006-05-20 Novell and Ximian 57 Comments

"In order to broaden Linux hardware support and simplify the process of acquiring, installing, and updating device drivers, Novell has created a new driver system that will enable vendors to supply drivers to users directly. Linux drivers are traditionally maintained in the kernel itself, and third-party drivers that aren't available in the kernel often have to be installed manually, a process that generally involves compilation. In many cases, users have to wait for the next kernel release cycle before they can get software support for the latest hardware. Novell's new Partner Linux Driver Process could potentially resolve some of those problems by providing a simple and consistent process for deploying drivers independently."

Interview: Steve Jobs

Submitted by Anonymous submission 2006-05-20 Apple 53 Comments

CNBC had an interview with Steve Jobs. In the interview, Jobs talks about the new Apple store in New York which will be open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The interview is quite lightweight - Jobs doesn't reveal anything we haven't heard before and the questions aren't particularly incisive. One interesting comment is made towards the end of the interview though. When asked about AMD, Jobs says that AMD is strong in the high-end server sphere but that Intel have the best notebook and desktop chips (he mentions Intel's Yonah chip) which is where Apple's primary focus lies.

Hacking SUSE 10.1

Submitted by anonymous 2006-05-20 SuSE, openSUSE 23 Comments

"When you're done installing SUSE Linux 10.1 OSS, your desktop system is not complete. You might still need support for Java programs, MP3 audio files, and browser plugins for Macromedia Flash, Adobe Acrobat, RealPlayer, and Windows Media Video. You may also want to add support for playing DVD videos on your computer, and to try out the new XGL graphical toys. Here's how to effectively make SUSE Linux 10.1 into the perfect desktop OS."