OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Trolltech Renames, Updates, Expands Qt/Embedded

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-18 Qt 14 Comments

Trolltech has updated and renamed its graphics toolkit and development kit for embedded Linux devices. "Qtopia Core" is based on a Linux port of the company's Qt 4.0 development framework, and replaces its earlier Qt/Embedded product. It targets "single-application products" built on embedded Linux.

Sun Ultra 40: the Ultra 20s Bigger, Badder Brother

Submitted by James Dickens 2006-01-17 Oracle and SUN 35 Comments

Someone has found the manual to Sun's Ultra 40 - which hasn't even been announced yet. The machine clearly is the bigger brother of the Ultra 20. It apparently sports two AMD Opteron processors (single or dualcore; 2.0Ghz or faster; 1MB cache), eight PC3200 DIMM slots (2GB per DIMM), and more. It will come pre-loaded with Solaris 10 (obviously) but RedHat/SUSE Linux Enterprise/Windows are also supported, in both 32bit and 64bit.

Total Computer Newbies Move On (Part III)

Guest post by Charles Williams 2006-01-17 Linux 100 Comments

What ever happened to the total computer newbies who tried Debian (part I | part II)? Mike, Diane, Mary & Carla are still doing very well, although much has changed since the first articles were written. They no longer use Libranet. They no longer use Gnome & believe it or not, Windows has now been installed. Read along to find out what happened.

iMac Core Duo Review

Submitted by Tyler Too 2006-01-17 Apple 39 Comments

Ars reviews the Intel iMac, and concludes: "For $1299, the iMac Core Duo is a good buy. You get a 160GB SATA hard drive, a dual-layer DVD burner, and a 1440x900 17" LCD monitor along with a dual-core CPU. I'm always reluctant to play the cross-platform price comparison game, but I will note that this machine stacks up quite favorably in terms of price and features with Pentium D desktops. All in all, the iMac Core Duo is an impressive machine. If the rest of Apple's product line moves to Intel this smoothly, the transition should prove to be a big success."

Submitted by Kelly Rush 2006-01-17 SkyOS 48 Comments

A new video is available at the re-designed SkyOS website, showing the proof-of-concept work on a Media Station application for SkyOS. This proof-of-concept shows the first steps of what will hopefully become a full, specialized application (or possibly complete version) of SkyOS in the not-too-distant future. Additionally, a number of other new features can be seen in this video.

Interview: Steve Jobs

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-17 Apple 31 Comments

"Steve Jobs foiled the rumormongers once more at last week's Macworld Expo. Most observers expected that Apple would announce the first Macintosh computers that partake of powerful and efficient Intel Core Duo microprocessors, the same used by top-notch Windows machines. But almost no one thought that the first of these machines would be the most popular Macs that Apple makes - the elegant desktop iMac and the workhorse PowerBook laptop (now renamed the MacBook Pro). After his keynote, he spoke to NewsWeek's Steven Levy, between sips of tea."

Interview: Martin F. Krafft, Author of The Debian System

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-17 Debian 14 Comments

"This interview was conducted with Martin F. Krafft, the author of 'The Debian System'. Despite Debian GNU/Linux's important role in today's computing environment, it is largely misunderstood and oftentimes even discounted as being an operating system which is exclusively for professionals and elite users. In this book Krafft, explains his concept of Debian, which includes not only the operating system but also its underpinnings."

Firefox ‘Passes 20 Percent Market Share’ in Europe

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-17 Mozilla, Gecko 35 Comments

Mozilla Firefox has achieved a market share of over 20 percent in Europe, according to the latest figures released by French Web metrics firm XiTi. XiTi, which based its figures on a sample of 32.5 million Web site visits that took place on Sunday 8 January, said that Finland has the highest proportion of Firefox users, followed by Slovenia and Germany. It found that the open source browser is used by 38, 36 and 30 percent of users in these countries respectively.

Windows XP Service Pack 3: Not Until 2007

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-17 Windows 20 Comments

The 'preliminary' due date for the next collection of fixes and patches for Microsoft's desktop operating system is as more than a year later than many company watchers were expecting. Microsoft has gone public with a tentative date for its third service pack for Windows XP. And that date - the latter half of 2007 - is considerably later than many company watchers were expecting.

Companies Push Linux Partitioning Effort

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-17 Linux 8 Comments

A push is under way to endow Linux with a virtual partitioning technology used by rival operating systems to make servers more efficient. SWsoft is trying to get OpenVZ made part of the mainstream Linux kernel - the software at the heart of the operating system - and a part of the major commercial Linux versions, said Kirill Korotaev, a project manager at the company. In this, it has a major ally: Red Hat, the top seller of the open-source operating system, which plans to add the software to its free Fedora version of Linux for enthusiasts.

Perpendicular Storage Coming in 2006

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-17 Hardware 19 Comments

"Your friend the traditional hard drive may be undergoing changes soon. No, we're not talking about the threat that flash storage poses to the dominant storage medium, though that's an emerging player on the scene. No, our favorite plattered friend may be reorienting itself in a literal sense. Perpendicular storage is coming to a computer near you, perhaps sooner than you think. What is it? We'll break it down for you as Seagate comes to market with the first fruits of a promising technology." Update: People, you just got to watch the flash animation... It's... Really, just go see it.

What Is Perl 6?

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-17 General Development 14 Comments

"Perl 6 is the long-awaited redesign and reimplementation of the popular and venerable Perl programming language. It's not out yet - nor is there an official release date - but the design and implementations make continual progress. Innumerable programmers, hackers, system administrators, hobbyists, and dabblers write Perl 5 quite successfully. The language doesn't have the marketing budget of large consulting companies, hardware manufacturers, or tool vendors pushing it, yet people still use it to get their jobs done. Why argue with that success? Why redesign a language that's working for so many people and in so many domains? Sure, Perl 5 has some warts, but it does a lot of things very well."

Anonymity on a Disk: Anonym.OS

Submitted by tup 2006-01-17 OpenBSD 7 Comments

To many privacy geeks, it's the holy grail - a totally anonymous and secure computer so easy to use you can hand it to your grandmother and send her off on her own to the local Starbucks. Titled Anonym.OS, the system is a type of disk called a 'live CD' - meaning it's a complete solution for using a computer without touching the hard drive. Developers say Anonym.OS is likely the first live CD based on the security-heavy OpenBSD operating system.

UK Judge Frowns on Software Patents

Submitted by John Mills 2006-01-17 Legal 10 Comments

A UK judge has questioned whether software patents should be granted, and has criticized the U.S. for allowing "anything under the sun" to be patented. Sir Robin Jacob, a judge at the UK's Court of Appeal who specializes in intellectual-property law, spoke about the potential problems surrounding software patents at a seminar for the Society for Computers and Law on Thursday evening in London. "Do we need patents for computer programs? Where is the evidence for it?" Jacob asked.

Submitted by Raven 2006-01-17 Syllable, AtheOS 1 Comment

Syllable will have a booth at FOSDEM 2006. Kaj de Vos writes: "Today seems as good a day as any to announce that Syllable will have a booth at FOSDEM, the renowned open-source conference in Brussels, Belgium, that will be held in the weekend of 25 and 26 February this year."

Submitted by adkilla 2006-01-17 Hardware 1 Comment

"In this article, I'm going to be dealing in hard facts, coupled with a little bit of conjecture and speculation as to the future of mobile computing in 2006. When we look back on 2005 we can see it as primarily a year of transition. Since the debut of Intel's Centrino platform, coupled with ATI's release of the Mobility Radeon 9600, notebooks have been maturing as a competitive computing platform at an alarming rate. While I don't really think 2005 will be remembered necessarily as a banner year in new technologies, I think it was a strong transitional period. Mobile technology is maturing at an alarming rate; in 2006, we're going to see some major milestones."

Video of iMac Core Duo vs. iMac G5 Booting

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-17 Apple 64 Comments

In this video two iMacs with equal 512 MB RAM are booted at the same time. One is a 2.1 Ghz G5, one is a 2.0Ghz Intel Core Duo. The Intel is on the left, the G5 is on the right. Some users said that the G5 iMac might have a problem for booting so slowly but others say that it's a normal "first time" boot.

Ubuntu Dapper Drake Flight CD3 Released

Submitted by Peter Leese 2006-01-16 Ubuntu 80 Comments

Ubuntu Dapper Drake Flight CD3 has been released. I haven't received the email on ubuntu-devel yet, but the .iso files appear to be up (Ubuntu | Kubuntu). Improvements in this release include an updated installer CD boot splash, X11R7, GNOME 2.13.4, improved and simplified menus, new default desktop panel configuration, some new applications such as XChat-GNOME, a faster live CD, live CD persistence, and more. In addition to software improvements, Launchpad is now officially open for business for all bug tracking.

GPL 3: First Draft Available

Submitted by anonymous 2006-01-16 Open Source 76 Comments

The Free Software Foundation has published the first draft of the GPL v3, the successor to the most popular open source license. The rationale behind some of the changes are here, while comments are here. Danese Cooper of OSI has posted her comments too. Update: Stallman: "We've partly removed the inconveniences of preventing a user from combining code from various free software packages." More here.

Fedora Core 5 Test 2 Released

Submitted by Philipp Esselbach 2006-01-16 Fedora Core 56 Comments

Fedora Core 5 Test 2 has been released. "The Fedora Project announces the second release of the Fedora Core 5 development cycle, available for the i386, x86_64, and PPC/PPC64 architectures." Release notes are here, downloads here. MadPenguin has a first look. Update: Screenshots.