OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Linux Kernel Boots on Intel iMac

Thom Holwerda 2006-02-17 Linux 68 Comments

The Linux kernel is now up and running on an Intel iMac, and as such the Linux guys have beaten the windows guys. "Using elilo and a modified Linux kernel, we can boot from a USB hard disk on the 17" iMac Core Duo. We are using the hacked vesafb driver to inherit the bootloader's framebuffer, keyboard and a USB network card work. Gentoo runs and can compile the Linux kernel." Note that you can't really do much more than stare at the shell prompt, as no graphical environment boots yet.

Microsoft Releases Details on Office 2007

Thom Holwerda 2006-02-16 Microsoft 36 Comments

Microsoft on Feb. 16 is set to announce 34 Office suites, programs, servers, services and tools - 13 of which are new - that form part of its 2007 Microsoft Office family of products, previously knows as Office 12. Retail pricing for the comparable versions of the product has not been increased, remaining unchanged from the retail prices for Office 2003, John Cairns, senior director of licensing and pricing in Microsoft's Information Worker division, told eWEEK. More information at CNet.

FOSS for os/2: Keeping the Flame Alive

Thom Holwerda 2006-02-16 OS/2 No Comments

"After a decade of neglect and increasingly reluctant support from IBM, the manufacturer, the OS/2 community persists. Where users of GNU/Linux or FreeBSD have turned to free and open source software for political and philosophical freedom and software quality, the surviving OS/2 community has been turning to FOSS as a means of defending members' right to use the operating system of their choice. The result is a small but surprisingly diverse collection of projects that, to a GNU/Linux user, is a mixture of the familiar and exotic."

Genesi Selects Tundra Tsi109TM for PPC High Density Blade Server

Thom Holwerda 2006-02-16 Hardware 23 Comments

"Tundra Semiconductor Corporation today announced the Tundra Tsi109 Host Bridge, the industry's highest performing host bridge for PowerPC, will be integrated into the Genesi High Density Blade Server, demonstrating the Company's rapidly strengthened position as the industry's leading supplier of host bridges for PowerPC." A lot of chit-chat press-release nonsense, but the bottom line might be that Genesi is trying to fill the PowerPC void left by Apple's move to Intel.

Submitted by Dubbayoo 2006-02-16 Databases 16 Comments

Oracle tried to acquire open-source database maker MySQL, an indication of the profound changes the software giant is willing to make as it adapts to the increasingly significant collaborative programming philosophy. MySQL Chief Executive Marten Mickos confirmed the acquisition attempt in an interview at the Open Source Business Conference here but wouldn't provide details such as when the approach was made or how much money Oracle offered.

Review: Palm Treo 700w Smartphone

Submitted by Andy 2006-02-16 Wireless No Comments

"The Treo 700w excels as a phone, and has a number of advantages over the Treo 650, but is still not the best Windows Mobile smartphone on the market. It is rather bulky for a daily-use phone and it fails to take advantage of the full power of Windows Mobile. Rather, it seems to have been designed to move the functions of the the Palm-based Treo over to a Windows platform."

‘First’ Mac OS X Trojan Sighted

Submitted by kristof 2006-02-16 macOS 81 Comments

Antivirus researchers have discovered what's claimed to be the first computer Trojan to infect Apple Mac OS X computers. The malware, dubbed Leap-A, spreads via the iChat instant messaging system as a file called latestpics.tgz that infected machines send to contacts on an infected user's buddy list. The malicious file, which poses as a set of pictures, is a compressed Unix shell program. The user is prompted for admin credentials to launch the malicious code, which is better described as a Trojan than a virus. Mac OS X users who do this will find their machines infected.

Submitted by skx2 2006-02-16 Linux 6 Comments

"Recently I inheritted ownership of an SVN server which was misbehaving. Trying to determine why it wasn't working correctly involved a few hours of testing, careful thought, and caffeine. Eventually I got it working correctly using the often-overlooked tool strace. strace is a common tool upon many GNU/Linux systems including Debian. Put simply strace is a 'system call tracer' - which is where it gets its name from. Using strace, as root, you can monitor the system calls made by any process upon your system. This can be enormously beneficial when you have a misbehaving program."

Intel EIST SpeedStep Investigation

Submitted by Michael 2006-02-16 Intel 5 Comments

"Looking over our EIST results today using a Pentium M 750, Intel's technology certainly has its advantages. Switching between the five power-modes, there was evident change in the CPU temperature as well as the power consumption. In addition, the frequency/voltages immediately scaled appropriately when switching between demanding and non-demanding environments. For those, however, seeking to over-ride the switching process at a low frequency/voltage, in order to conserve the battery life, heat output, and noise will find the performance to be severely hampered. As the last portion of our tests had shown, the compilation time had increased 212%, encoding time 218%, frame-rate had decreased 5FPS, and the Mflops had dropped over 233%."

Episode 2: Are We Happier When We’re Fighting?

Adam Scheinberg 2006-02-16 Podcasts 40 Comments

Are IT people happier when they are fighting? OSNews, episode 2 can be downloaded as an MP3 (3.02 MB) or a Ogg Vorbis (4.77 MB) file. Our podcast is located at osnews.com/files/podcast.xml.

Optimizing Your Application with System Trace in Shark

Eugenia Loli 2006-02-16 macOS 12 Comments

With Shark's System Trace, you get a detailed view of how your code interacts with Mac OS X. This advanced article digs deep into Shark, and how it helps you optimize your code.

GNOME 2.13.91 (2.14 Beta 2) Released

Thom Holwerda 2006-02-15 Gnome 33 Comments

GNOME 2.13.91 has been released. As always, the odd-numbered branches indicate dev-branches, and as such the 2.13.x series is the step-up to the GNOME 2.14 release, planned for March this year. The 2.13.91 release is the second beta. Release notes: platform, desktop, and bindings; downloads: platform, desktop, and bindings.

Novell Linux Desktop 10 Beta Planned for March

Submitted by Jane Walker 2006-02-15 Novell and Ximian 51 Comments

Novell plans to release a beta for its Linux Desktop 10 including new features offering better interoperability with Microsoft Office and Open Office, said Ted Haeger, Novell's director of user communities, at the Southern California Linux Expo. The beta, tentatively scheduled for release next month, will include a new feature, dubbed Xgl. Haeger said Xgl will allow users to jump between screens and multiple desktops. Targeted to CAD software users, Xgl has a practical side that allows users to have better window- and file-sharing capabilities.

Interview: Paul Leroux of QNX Software Systems

Guest post by Grant Hayes 2006-02-15 Original OSNews Interviews 12 Comments

Today we're happy to feature an interview by Grant Hayes of MacSlash with Paul Leroux, a technology analyst with QNX Software Systems, who is participating in Embedded World 2006. In the interview, Paul discusses the changes QSS has experienced in the last couple years, new and established competition, and moving forward in the marketplace with new technology.

Why XP Will Never Officially Work on a Mac

Thom Holwerda 2006-02-15 Apple 129 Comments

"Apple has shiny new x86 based iMacs and the eloquently named MacBooks (yech) out on the market, and reviews, barring a few fawning toadies in the print media, are exceptionally rare. The usual Apple cooked benchmarks abound, but there is no real third party analysis, I think mainly because it is afraid of what will be found. The biggest bloomer is its tacit non-denials of the fact that the current x86 macs will never run XP in an approved or corporately acceptable fashion, and Vista is a long long long shot. Apple knows, is doing nothing to quell the rumours and speculation, and I think that's irresponsible."

Ben Goodger: Firefox Memory Leak a ‘Feature’

Thom Holwerda 2006-02-15 Mozilla, Gecko 98 Comments

"A lot of people complain about the Firefox 'memory leak(s)'. All versions of Firefox no doubt leak memory - it is a common problem with software this complicated. We look to fix the issues where we can. David Baron and others have done a huge amount of excellent work in this area. What I think many people are talking about however with Firefox 1.5 is not really a memory leak at all. It is in fact a feature."

FSF: Linus Has ‘Misread’ GPL3

Thom Holwerda 2006-02-15 Open Source 29 Comments

Linus may have it wrong on digital rights management, but it's the vague wording and confusing concepts - like what is meant by a 'derivative work' - that is causing the real headaches over the next General Public License. A representative of the Free Software Foundation, leading the effort around GPL 3.0, said that Linux creator Linus Torvalds had 'misread' the license's provisional terms.

Review: ASUS W5F Notebook, Featuring Intel Core Duo

Submitted by Chandan Mehta 2006-02-15 Intel 10 Comments

"If we were to get dramatic, we would say: 'Intel came, Intel saw and Intel conquered.' The fact of the matter is, Intel did just that. It promised the holy grail of mobile computing by increasing performance without battery life trade off, and delivered on all promises. If you waited for the Core Duos to come out, you made a wise decision. Intel's Core Duo is the best you can buy in mobility right now. It runs cooler, faster and more efficiently than anything anyone has to offer right now."

Submitted by 0xbadbeef 2006-02-15 Oracle and SUN 12 Comments

Sun Microsystems is trying to persuade Hewlett-Packard to move its HP-UX Unix customers over to Sun's Solaris, Sun President/COO Jonathan Schwartz said at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. But HP is not interested, an HP representative said. During his presentation at the conference and in a subsequent interview, Schwartz said Sun has proposed merging the road maps of HP-UX and Solaris. And on a related note, HP will offer complete SUSE Linux server packages.

Review: Chicken of the VNC

Submitted by Mirko 2006-02-15 macOS 17 Comments

"I had a situation where I needed to control two computers over the Internet. The best solution for me was to use VNC networking technology. VNC stands for Virtual Network Computer and is a real nice way to remotely control computers through a GUI interface in which you see the remote desktop. I tried all of the Mac OS X VNC clients I came across and from my experience Chicken of the VNC is the way to go."