OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Wine 0.9.9 Released

Submitted by Dylan 2006-03-05 Windows 26 Comments

This is release 0.9.9 of Wine, a free implementation of Windows on UNIX. New features include better web browser support, recursive directory change notifications, debugger improvements, and lots of other bug fixes and under-the-hood improvements.

Submitted by misha 2006-03-04 Oracle and SUN 72 Comments

Sun's CEO Scott McNealy has published an open letter to HP, proposing a merger of their respective UNIX platforms. In the past, Sun's top execs have been highly critical of HP-UX's future. Sun's president Jonathan Schwartz has repeatedly referred to the 'demise' and its troubled commitment to Intel's Itanium chip. Now, it seems, they've hit on a new idea. "We propose an alternative," writes McNealy in the letter, "that Sun and HP commit to converge HP-UX with Sun's flagship volume UNIX, Solaris 10.'

Submitted by Tyr. 2006-03-04 Windows 119 Comments

A Microsoft developer and cryptographer responded in his blog to a news story by the BBC about the problems strong encryption built into Vista might cause for law enforcement. "Over my dead body," he said, regarding the possibilty of including a law-enforced backdoor in Vista.

FUDcon 2006 Presentations Online

Submitted by anonymous 2006-03-04 Fedora Core 5 Comments

The presentations and reports from the Fedora users and developers conference, FUDCon, are available. Christopher Blizzard, Red Hat desktop team leader, talked about the future of the Linux desktop and current gaps and Greg Dek, Fedora community relationships manager, and several others talked about Fedora in India.

RISC OS Roadshow Goes East

Submitted by Harry Decker 2006-03-04 RISC OS 4 Comments

Christmas last year saw RISCOS Ltd embark on a road show tour of the UK to bring one day shows to Manchester, London, and Birmingham. The fun continues with the RISC OS Roadshow going Dutch at the Hotel Mercure in Nieuwegein, Netherlands. The date is Saturday 17th June, 10:00-17:00 local time.

Get to Know Firebird in 2 Minutes

Submitted by Carlos H. Cantu 2006-03-04 Databases 7 Comments

"If you are reading this paper, this is probably your first encounter with the Firebird RDBMS. This paper will present to you the main features of the Firebird database. At the end, I am sure you will be anxious to download its lightweight installer and try it out yourself."

Better Networking with SCTP

Submitted by anonymous 2006-03-04 Internet 6 Comments

"SCTP is a reliable, general-purpose transport layer protocol for use on IP networks. While the protocol was originally designed for telephony signaling, SCTP provided an added bonus - it solved some of the limitations of TCP while borrowing beneficial features of UDP. SCTP provides features for high availability, increased reliability, and improved security for socket initiation. This article discusses the key features of SCTP in the Linux 2.6 kernel and takes a look at the server and client source code that shows the protocol's ability to deliver multi-streaming."

Wozniak’s Claims: True After All

Thom Holwerda 2006-03-03 Apple 20 Comments

A few days ago, Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak allegedly said that Apple should spin off its iPod division, and that going with Intel is 'consorting with the enemy'. Wozniak was very quick to deny having made the claims; Peter Nowak, the reporter in question, now has the proof that Wozniak did indeed say what was reported. Transcript and audiotape : they both back Nowak.

SGI Kicks off New Era by Firing 12% of Its Staff

Thom Holwerda 2006-03-03 SGI and IRIX 25 Comments

SGI's new CEO has wasted no time performing a major shakeup at the server company. Moves announced today include substantial layoffs, executive departures and SGI's plans to tweak its server business. SGI will fire close to 12 per cent of its workforce - 250 staffers - in the hopes of saving some extra cash. Word of the layoffs arrives just about a month after SGI moved former CEO Bob Bishop aside and tapped Dennis McKenna as its new chief. SGI heralded the layoffs as proof of McKenna's quick, decisive action, issuing a statement titled 'CEO Delivers Aggressive Changes in First 30 Days as Part of Turnaround.' The Inq speculates about nVidia buying SGI's graphics dpt. Update: Couldn't resist.

Office 2007: Users Wary of Changes

Thom Holwerda 2006-03-03 Microsoft 52 Comments

While Microsoft faces a host of challenges in maintaining its market share numbers and persuading customers to upgrade to its 2007 Office System suite of products when released in the second half of this year, its competitors face an equally daunting task of winning users away from Office 2007 and growing their numbers. Heading the list of challenges facing Microsoft is the fact that Office 2007 has a new user interface, which could require extensive staff retraining at a significant cost, as well as a new file format, which has the potential to create compatibility issues.

Mandriva Linux One 2006 Beta 2 Released

Thom Holwerda 2006-03-03 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 20 Comments

Mandriva One 2006 Beta 2 (an installable live CD) has been released. "The second beta of Mandriva Linux One 2006, our new installable live CD, is now available from most public mirror sites. This fixes a range of issues from the first beta." Download locations.

Q&A with the Windows Vista Bitlocker Team

Eugenia Loli 2006-03-03 Windows 15 Comments

BitLocker Drive Encryption is a new feature in Windows Vista that provides enhanced data protection for your computer. BitLocker is Microsoft's response to one of their top customer requests: address the very real threats of data theft or exposure from lost, stolen or inappropriately decommissioned PC hardware and tightly integrate the solution into Windows. Windows Connected recently had an opportunity to ask the Windows Vista Bitlocker team a number of questions.

Linspire May Offer Ubuntu CNR Service

Submitted by anonymous 2006-03-03 Debian 44 Comments

Linspire and one of its biggest desktop Linux rivals, Ubuntu, are talking about collaborating to offer Linspire's CNR (Click-N-Run) application download service to Ubuntu users. CNR is a subscription service ($20 annually) through which users can install thousands of software programs with 'literally' one click, CEO Kevin Carmony said. Ubuntu, according to DistroWatch.com the no. 1 most popular Linux distribution (as ascertained by number of clicks), has nothing like CNR available for its users. Both Linspire and Ubuntu are based on the Debian kernel.

Submitted by masterjack 2006-03-03 Morphos 5 Comments

Following the MorphZone Bounty Program, Pavel 'Sonic' Fedin has, after a lot of work, released MOSNet 1.0 on Sourceforge together with the MOSNet SDK. This is a big leap for MorphOS users, which previously had to rely on emulated software to get networking up and running.

AOP Myths and Realities

Submitted by anonymous 2006-03-03 General Development 7 Comments

"What's keeping you from trying out AOP? Whether you think it's only good for low-level functions like tracing and logging, worry that it'll get in the way of unit testing, or would simply rather stick with the object-oriented alternatives, Ramnivas Laddad gives you good reason to reconsider. Follow along as this popular author and speaker digs beneath the surface of 15 myths that hinder the adoption of AOP."

Submitted by boisvdav 2006-03-03 SuSE, openSUSE 23 Comments

The OpenSUSE project has announced the development version SUSE Linux 10.1 Beta 6. Also, the revised released schedule for SUSE Linux 10.1 and the start of the SUSE Linux 10.2 schedule with eight months development have been posted. The project attended FOSDEM 2006 and the slides of the talks given there are now online (audio/video recordings will follow soon). Last but not least the preview phase of the openSUSE Build Service has started.

ODF Alliance Formed to Push ODF Adoption by Governments

Submitted by Andy Updegrove 2006-03-03 Office 7 Comments

"In a well-orchestrated PR bliltz, 36 Companies, associations, and end-users today announced the formation of the ODF Alliance. The ODF Alliance was first proposed by IBM at meeting of key players and others held at an IBM facility in Armonk on November 4 of last year, and has now been brought into existence under the wing of the Software and Information Industry Association."

All Hail Shale: Shale Isn’t Struts

Submitted by anonymous 2006-03-03 General Development 10 Comments

"What Shale isn't is a shrink-wrapped, well-documented, well-tested product complete with an automated installer and a polished management interface. now find out what it is, as Brett McLaughlin unveils this mighty - and rightful - heir to the legacy of Struts. In this first of a five-part series, Brett explains what Shale is, how it's different from the Struts framework, and how to install and set it up in your development environment."

SimpleKDE: Cut-Down KDE

Thom Holwerda 2006-03-03 KDE 67 Comments

The ModdingDen has an interview with the lead developer of SimpleKDE, a cut-down, lightweight version of KDE. "The main reason is that we find KDE too cluttered and too bloated; and we want something faster, more simplistic and easier to use. Honestly, I'm pretty happy with my own KDE installation, but I especially observe beginners having difficulty in adapting themselves to it." The interview dates 9th January 2006, but since we never covered SimpleKDE on OSNews, it's interesting nonetheless. Read more about SimpleKDE at their website. And yes, boys and girls, there are screenshots too.

Origami Project Revealed?

Thom Holwerda 2006-03-02 Wireless 31 Comments

LonghornBlogs thinks that it has found out what the Origami project really is about: and we've all seen it before. They have photo's of what might be the device: a mini-tablet PC running XP Tablet Edition. "I have an extremely reliable source that told me the device pictured above exists for real now, will cost $500, and will be available before the end of the year." Speculate at will, boys and girls!