OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

‘Ten Things I Hate About Mac OS X’

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-08 macOS 132 Comments

"Familiarity breeds contempt, right? So it stands to reason that anyone who uses a product extensively can find fault with it. I'm no exception - my work requires me to use Mac OS X every day, all day long, and although I am generally thrilled with its capabilities and reliability, some things about it really drive me up the wall."

Submitted by Lazarus 2006-01-08 BSD & Darwin 8 Comments

DragonFly BSD 1.4 has been released. "The two biggest user-visible changes in this release are a major revamping of libc, ctype, and wchar support, as well as changes made in the kernel which require us to bump the major rev for all of our shared libraries, and the introduction of PKGSRC to manage third party applications. DragonFly no longer supports the FreeBSD PORTS system." Get it here.

Submitted by carlosdf 2006-01-08 Hardware 48 Comments

The CES ends today, yet we have heard nothing from the Atom Chip corporation-- the company who's claims generated a lot of disbelief six months ago. They promised to show their exceptional technology at CES-- yet no news has surfaced. Is it now safe to call their claims outright lies and deceit? Update: More, including photos, here.

Ubuntu File, Print Server For Windows Workgroups

Submitted by Falko Timme 2006-01-08 Ubuntu 21 Comments

"This is a detailed tutorial about the steps to set up a Ubuntu based server (Ubuntu 5.10 - Breezy Badger) to act as file- and print server for Windows workstations in small workgroups. This howto uses the tdb backend for Samba to store passwords and account information. This is suitable for workgroups for up to 250 users and is easier to setup than an LDAP backend."

Poll: Speculate About Apple’s Tuesday Announcements

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-08 Apple 39 Comments

Speculations are very strong just a few days before the Tuesday Steve Jobs keynote. Take the poll and choose from some of the most talked-about rumors around, or leave a comment if you have another opinion as to what Apple has in store for us.

Microsoft to Ship all OS Optional Parts with Every Version of Vista

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-08 Windows 102 Comments

Microsoft plans to market several versions of Vista but will distribute all of the OS bits with every product shipped so users can easily unlock and step up to more full-featured versions using electronic keys, sources said.

Apple Walks Tightrope with Budget iBook Strategy

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-07 Apple 76 Comments

"An Intel-based iBook has been widely trailed to be unveiled next week. If you're anticipating speeds and feeds ahead of next week's keynote, we'll have to disappoint you. But sources close to Apple suggest that the many in the rumor mill have failed to illuminate the bigger picture - a strategy to makeover the iBook as a cut-price bait to lure switchers, with price points much lower than Apple has ever risked for a portable machine. In many ways, the strategy is risky, but with rival PC notebook laptop prices in freefall - Dell today offers a $499 notebook - Apple may not have any choice but to embrace it."

Microsoft Challenges Linux’s Legacy Claims

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-07 Rumors 141 Comments

The study described in the following article was done by Mirosoft, so run to the kitchen and get some grains of salt. "Microsoft's Linux and open-source lab on the Redmond campus has been running some interesting tests of late, one of which was looking at how well the latest Windows client software runs on legacy hardware in comparison to its Linux competitors. The tests, which found that Windows performed as well as Linux on legacy hardware when installed and run out-of-the-box, were done in part to give Microsoft the data it needed to effectively "put to rest the myth that Linux can run on anything." Do with the results as you please, but the topic is interesting nonetheless. What are your experiences?

Handheld PC Runs Two OSes on Two CPUs

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-07 Wireless 9 Comments

DualCor will ship its dual-CPU PDA-PC combo in March, the privately held start-up revealed at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas today. The company's cPC combines a Windows Mobile 5.0 system running on a 400MHz Intel PXA263 with Windows XP Tablet PC Edition running on a 1.5GHz VIA C7-M processor. Both processors take separate partitions of the machine's 1GB of DDR 2 SDRAM and 1GB of NAND Flash but share the 40GB hard drive, allowing documents created by one OS to be accessed by the other.

Building Binary Packages for PC-BSD; MS Office on FreeBSD

Submitted by BSD_User 2006-01-07 PC-BSD 10 Comments

"PBIs have the advantage of being entirely self-contained. That means casual users won't inadvertently overwrite existing libraries or files by installing and uninstalling applications. This article shows how to create your own PBI, using Digikam as an example of a rather complex package with many library dependencies. While most PBIs will be easier to generate, I want to demonstrate most of the gotchas you may run across when generating your own PBIs." In addition, here is an article explaining how to get MS Office running via WINE on FreeBSD.

Submitted by Adurbe 2006-01-07 Google 16 Comments

As expected, Google on Friday announced several new products. "Google Pack, a bundle of software from Google and other companies that was announced by the Web giant on Friday, is aimed squarely at consumers. But Google's goal is to be the front end for everything people do on a computer, and enterprise use is not far off, analysts and solution providers said." Google also enters the video-on-demand business: "Google announced a service Friday that will let people rent or buy downloadable videos online, including classic and contemporary CBS television shows and NBA basketball games."

Input / Output Redirection Made Simple in Linux

Submitted by Bjorn 2006-01-07 Linux 8 Comments

"Linux follows the philosophy that every thing is a file. For example, a keyboard, monitor, mouse, printer... You name it and it is classified as a file in Linux. Each of these pieces of hardware have got unique file descriptors associated with it. Now this nomenclature has got its own advantages. The main one being you can use all the common command line tools you have in Linux to send, receive or manipulate data with these devices."

Red Hat Disputes CERT Vulnerability Figures

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-06 Privacy, Security 125 Comments

Open source experts have hit back at a study published by the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team that said more vulnerabilities were found in Linux/Unix than in Windows in 2005, labelling the report misleading and confusing. The report has attracted criticism from the open source community. Linux vendor Red Hat said the vulnerabilities had been miscategorised, and so could not be used to compare the relative security of Windows and Linux/Unix platforms.

Highlights: EuroBSDCon 2005

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-06 BSD & Darwin 1 Comment

"The EuroBSDCon Conference is the largest BSD event in Europe, attracting more than 220 attendees from 27 different countries. November's 2005 conference, the fourth EuroBSDCon, took place in the University of Basel, Switzerland. Here are some highlights."

Portable Version of OpenOffice.org Unveiled

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-06 Office 26 Comments

The latest version of Portable OpenOffice.org, an edition of the open source office suite that fits on a USB stick, includes a number of updates such as full support for Windows 2000 and launchers for each OpenOffice.org application. Portable OpenOffice.org 2.0.1 includes all the applications included in OpenOffice.org 2.0.1 and takes up only 144MB of storage space, compared to the 300MB of disk space required by the full version of the office suite. But 144MB is still too big, considering that many USB sticks only store 256MB, according to Gary Barnett, a research director at analyst firm Ovum.

Submitted by letsrock 2006-01-06 Linux 31 Comments

"Linux is not Windows, and although there are some similarities, you must realize that there may be a few 'new ways of doing things' to learn before you can be comfortable in Linux. Linux is an open-source clone of UNIX, a secure operating system that predates DOS and Windows and is designed for multiple users. The items in the following list generally apply to any UNIX-based *nix system, such as Linux and the various BSD's. For the purposes of this article, assume that it's all Linux."

Mass. Replaces CIO in OpenDocument Fray

Submitted by Andy Updegrove 2006-01-06 Office 11 Comments

Massachusetts has named an acting chief information officer, and the state is 'on track' to use OpenDocument-based desktop software next year, a spokesman for the commonwealth's governor said Thursday. Bethann Pepoli has been appointed acting CIO of the state's Information Technology Division by Thomas Trimarco, the state's secretary of administration and finance, according to Eric Fehrnstrom, communications director at Gov. Mitt Romney's office.

The Vision and History of Notes and Domino

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-06 IBM 10 Comments

"As you might expect of such complex and successful software, Lotus Notes and Domino share a long and rich history. In some respects, this history mirrors the evolution of the computing industry itself-the development and widespread adoption of PCs, networks, graphical user interfaces, communication and collaboration software, and the Web. Notes and Domino have been there nearly every step of the way, influencing (and being influenced by) all these critical developments. This article briefly retraces the history of Notes and Domino, starting with the earliest conceptual and development stages and continuing through major feature releases."

GNOME 2.13.4 Released

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-06 Gnome 45 Comments

GNOME 2.13.4 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. Release notes: platform, desktop, and bindings; downloads: platform, desktop, and bindings.

Microsoft: We’re in ‘Fighting Shape’

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-06 Microsoft 55 Comments

"Microsoft has some catching up to do. It's not a phrase you hear every day. But whether it's Apple Computer's iTunes-iPod combo or Google's advertising engine, the software maker's top executives readily admit that they are coming from behind. In a rare joint interview ahead of the CES, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer outlined their plans to catch their rivals and discussed why it's Sony that will have to play catch-up in the video console wars."