OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Interview: Andreas Jaeger, SUSE Linux

Thom Holwerda 2006-05-30 SuSE, openSUSE 19 Comments

"We asked Andreas Jaeger, Project Manager at SUSE Linux, about his experiences with managing a massive and complex software project, and to give us some hints about the next SUSE release, the development of which is scheduled to start in just a couple of weeks." I especially like the release notes question, to be honest.

RISC OS Found on Pocket PC PDA

Thom Holwerda 2006-05-30 RISC OS 7 Comments

"It's a sight that will stun many users. To run RISC OS on a PDA is something we've been crying out for. Here, RISC OS can be seen running on a PocketPC PDA, with no Microsoft software in sight. The Pocket Loox computer even uses a 520MHz ARM-compatible XScale processor. However, the break through came about after Jan Rinze Peterzon ported the open source RiscPC emulator RPCemu to Windows CE. The screenshots show the standard RISC OS 3.7 desktop running in a 480x640 in 32,000 colour screen mode. Draw can be seen in action, drawing lines in a new document, on the Fujitsu Siemens hand-held device."

Continuations and Advanced Flow Control

Submitted by IdaAshley 2006-05-30 General Development 10 Comments

"Flow control is usually straightforward: sequence, selection, iteration. And many programmers, having been raised on these primary control structures, have a difficult time seeing what other kinds of flow control might be necessary. This article introduces continuations and teaches you to think about flow control in radically new ways."

Submitted by chrishaney 2006-05-30 Debian 21 Comments

The Elive project has released the first beta build of the upcoming Elive 0.5 Enlightenment live CD. "New live CD system - Elive has moved from Morphix to DSS; new kernel 2.6.15 with a lot more hardware support, also for wireless networking, take a look to the list of new drivers added; new installer features; Elive has new system of elive-skel, you can select 'night look' or 'elive look' in the boot of the live CD system; introductory tutorial to Enlightenment hot keys on E16; Unionfs version 1.1.4; Evidence doesn't crash any more; email client integrated with the system." There's a screenshot tour.

Submitted by dylansmrjones 2006-05-30 OS News 40 Comments

The Spoon microkernel has as one of its goals: "A stable and efficient microkernel with clearly defined interfaces which provide all the necessary functions needed to build a modern and complete operating system on top." The project's progress page lists the latest achievements, and there's even a screenshot page.

Squaring the Open Source/Open Standards Circle

Submitted by Andy Updegrove 2006-05-30 Linux 15 Comments

"Linux is at risk of suffering a similar fate to that suffered by Unix. That risk is the danger of splintering into multiple distributions, each of which is sufficiently dissimilar to the others that applications must be ported to each distribution. The bad news is that the rapid proliferation of Linux distributions makes this a real possibility. The good news is that it doesn't have to, because a layer of standards called the Linux Standard Base has already been created, through an organization called the Free Standards Group, that allows ISVs to build to a single standard, and know that their applications will run across all compliant distributions. And happily, all of the major distributions have agreed to comply with LSB 3.1."

Interview: Karl Lehenbauer of FlightAware

Submitted by Nix_User 2006-05-30 FreeBSD No Comments

FlightAware uses FreeBSD/amd64 systems to track the locations of up to 70000 flights per day. Will Backman speaks with Karl Lehenbauer about how FlightAware is successfully using FreeBSD with other open source technologies to drive their product.

Submitted by theosib 2006-05-30 3D 33 Comments

At the end of February 2006, the Open Graphics Project team released schematics for their development board, OGD1. An article on KernelTrap was written about this, explaining the release under GPL and the nature of PCB schematics (logical connections between chips) and artwork (physical component placement and circuit trace routing). Just last Friday, was announced the first draft of the artwork. For the most indepth information, check out the OGD1 page on the OGP Wiki, which links to PDFs for each of the routing layers and a composite image of all of the layers.

Oracle and Open Source

Submitted by Mark Brunelli 2006-05-30 Databases 9 Comments

Open source is hot these days, and Oracle knows it. The company is facing challenges from open source competitors by embracing open source technology in its own right - acquiring and developing key companies and products in this area - as well as fighting to show its merits over other open source choices. How does Oracle stack up against PostgreSQL? How do Oracle and Linux work together? What's next for Oracle on the open source front?

45 Minutes to a Moodle Education Server

Submitted by MarkRais 2006-05-30 Fedora Core 1 Comment

"This beginner article by Mark Rais provides step-by-step instructions for installing Moodle, a Learning Management System, on to a Fedora Linux server. It provides everything necessary to setup a full powered intranet web-server that can support course listings, event calendars, student/teacher communication and much more."

Using Geometric Transforms for Text Effects in .NET

Eugenia Loli 2006-05-30 .NET 18 Comments

Peter Aitken points out that text is just a graphic image and therefore can be manipulated like any other graphic. .NET provides some built-in tools for manipulating the size, shape, and orientation of text. Just be sure it remains readable!

PC-BSD 1.1 Released

Thom Holwerda 2006-05-29 PC-BSD 32 Comments

"PC-BSD 1.1 was released today, along with a PBI update file for users running 1.0, who wish to update to 1.1. This release brings the core operating system up to the latest version of FreeBSD 6.1, adds better driver support to the kernel, and improves the speed on many systems." Update: Screenshots.

Microsoft Announces Internet Explorer 7+

Thom Holwerda 2006-05-29 Internet Explorer 110 Comments

Microsoft has said that the version of IE7 for Vista will differ slightly from the one for XP and down. "I want to announce that we will be naming the version of IE7 in Windows Vista 'Internet Explorer 7+'. While all versions of IE7 are built from the same code base, there are some important differences in IE7+, most significantly the addition of Windows Vista-only features like Protected Mode, Parental Controls, and improved Network Diagnostics. These features take advantage of big changes in Windows Vista and weren’t practical to bring downlevel."

Prerelease of X-Windows for OS4

Thom Holwerda 2006-05-29 Amiga & AROS 15 Comments

"A prerelease of X-Windows version X11R6.3 for OS4 is now available on OS4-depot. It is a complete unix-like environment, which is meant as a base for ports from the linux-world." It includes X11R6.3 and various other components.

Enterprise-Level Ubuntu Linux Due This Week

Submitted by georfge 2006-05-29 Ubuntu 53 Comments

The developers of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution plan to make a new landmark version of the software widely available this week. Ubuntu's public schedule for releasing the software lists 1 June as the date for the new version, code-named 'Dapper Drake', to be made public. The milestone release will be officially supported by the project for a longer period than previous versions, and will be billed as suitable for enterprise use.

ROX Desktop in New Debian Package

Submitted by anonymous 2006-05-29 Debian 11 Comments

The spirit of the RISC OS desktop can now be easily be installed on Debian GNU/Linux systems, after the ROX desktop collection was released in a Debian package. The package came about after Dennis Tomas decided pull the suite into one place for users to download and install. The ROX desktop takes familiar user interface components from the RISC OS desktop, such as drag'n'drop and the filer, to create a more friendlier desktop for users of Unix-like operating systems. User Dan Macdonald told us: "It is now incredibly easy for people to install a full ROX (RISC OS on X) desktop, complete with auto-mounting of removeable discs, under Debian Linux."

Google File System Exposed

Submitted by Slassher 2006-05-29 Google 25 Comments

"I had a course on distributed system in my Engineering curriculum, and I was really fascinated with the way people use this technology for work. As my interest grew in this field, I started to read a lot on this. As a result, while browsing a few pages, I found a link to Google File System. Honestly, it didn’t make any sense to me. Where would Google deploy this proprietary file system? Or is Google planning to have an operating system? I decided to have a look at it nonetheless and here’s a quick overview of my findings."

Submitted by jeanmarc 2006-05-29 Haiku 4 Comments

Micheal Phipps addresses the Haiku Bounties website: I have received some questions about the 'Haiku Bounties' website and I wanted to answer them here. It is run by a gentleman who has been a good friend to Haiku for a long time now. I have every confidence that he is trying to do the right thing for the Haiku community and that he will be upfront and honest with the money and that you can trust his word." Haiku has also hired its 2nd employee.

ProPolice Patches for FreeBSD Released

Submitted by Víctor Balada Díaz 2006-05-29 FreeBSD 4 Comments

Jeremie Le Hen has created some ProPolice patches for FreeBSD 6.x and 7-CURRENT. ProPolice is a gcc extension written by Hiroaki Etoh for IBM that tries to prevent stack-smashing attacks. You can find the announcement of the patches here, more info about ProPolice on the IBM ProPolice page, and you can download the FreeBSD patches from here.

Who’s Who at the 2006 OpenBSD Hackathon, Part I

Submitted by Joel Dahl 2006-05-29 OpenBSD 3 Comments

The 2006 OpenBSD Hackathon, c2k6, is well underway in a conference room at a hotel in downtown Calgary, Canada. The event started yesterday, May 27th, attended by nearly 50 OpenBSD developers from all over the globe. OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt is thrilled by what is already proving to be another successful event. "I don't think anybody else does this, developers suspend their lives for a week to focus entirely on just development."