OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Windows Vista In-depth Preview – Part II, Performance

Submitted by Andrew Bragdon 2005-10-30 Windows 34 Comments

BentUser has Part II of an in depth preview of Windows Vista, which includes a look at some more Vista features as well as some analysis of overall performance, including a numerical comparison with Windows XP. Also takes a look at the new error reporting/self healing features and the cross-computer syncing features.

.NET Compact Framework 2.0 Final Released

Eugenia Loli 2005-10-29 .NET 20 Comments

The Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 2.0 Redistributable includes everything you need to run applications built for both .NET Compact Framework v1 and v2, including the Common Language Runtime and the .NET Compact Framework class library.

GPL 3 a Step Closer

Eugenia Loli 2005-10-29 Open Source 30 Comments

The Free Software Foundation is just weeks away from announcing the roadmap and process that will govern the release of the first draft of the rewritten GNU General Public License.

Submitted by NicolasRoard 2005-10-29 OpenStep, GNUstep 23 Comments

Gregory John Casamento just announced the release of Gorm 1.0 on the gnustep mailing lists. Gorm is the GNUstep graphical interface builder which let you easily create GUI applications.

SVN This Month: KOffice Development News

Submitted by Ali Akcaagac 2005-10-29 KDE 45 Comments

Jes Hall, credible supporter of the KDE community has set up this months new SVN report which primarily targets the mature KOffice suite for KDE.

New official AmigaOS 4.0 Website Unveiled

Submitted by Duke 2005-10-29 Amiga & AROS 108 Comments

Hyperion Entertainment, creator of various Linux game ports and currently working on the next generation Amiga OS, has now unveiled their new dedicated Amiga OS 4.0 website. It showcases important features and is targeted to current and new users as well as potential OEM clients.

Submitted by carbon-12 2005-10-29 Gnome 62 Comments

According to some, one of the adoption problems of the Gnome development platform is the lack of good documentation for new developers. And so the GNOME Foundation has hired Shaun McCance as a contractor to write such documentation. Elsewhere, the Gnome developers discuss about which new apps should be included in the upcoming Gnome 2.14 release.

Oracle: Free Express Edition Database Released in Beta

Submitted by Robert Pang 2005-10-29 Databases 31 Comments

Oracle has just released the beta version of its free Express Edition database. This Oracle 10g Express Edition features a small download size, Windows and Linux native installers, and easy-to-use HTML DB interface to the database.

More Information on the Microsoft Research OS Singularity

Submitted by Anonymous Coward 2005-10-29 Microsoft 61 Comments

Singularity is a research project in Microsoft Research that started with the question: what would a software platform look like if it was designed from scratch with the primary goal of dependability? Singularity is working to answer this question by building on advances in programming languages and tools to develop a new system architecture and operating system (named Singularity), with the aim of producing a more robust and dependable software platform.

Open Source Java Desktop System Released

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-28 Solaris 31 Comments

The OpenSolaris desktop community released an opensource version of the Java Desktop System. "The Java Desktop System is a secure and comprehensive enterprise desktop software solution that combines the best of open source innovation. Java Desktop System is a major component of the Solaris 10 Operating System, x86 and SPARC architecure editions, and an earlier release is also available with a Linux OS."

Submitted by Valour 2005-10-28 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 14 Comments

"It's not often that you see a desktop operating system aimed at power users. Usually an experienced user is expected to build the operating system from the command line ala FreeBSD, Gentoo, Debian, Slackware, or Linux From Scratch. Either of those options can take hours of research, config file hacking, and software downloading and installing. Mandriva Linux PowerPack Edition is quite a departure from both of those scenarios."

Submitted by Vai777 2005-10-28 Windows 77 Comments

Microsoft on Thursday said that an investigation by Korea's antitrust watchdog could lead to the withdrawal of Windows from the country, or to delays in introducing new versions of the OS there.

Pixel Ported to SkyOS

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-28 SkyOS 19 Comments

Pixel, the image editor that works on just about every platform imaginable (not my TI-83 though, and where's that Zaurus port?), has been ported to SkyOS, and will be available in the next alpha of the beta or beta of the beta release of SkyOS v5 beta. You can view a screenshot here. This port was possible because of the recent port of the Freepascal compiler 2.0.0 to SkyOS.

Avahi Now API/ABI Compatible with Howl/Bonjour

Eugenia Loli 2005-10-28 Internet 4 Comments

Avahi on its SVN repository now sports a compatibility layer for the HOWL API/ABI and a second one for the Bonjour API/ABI. Hence users could be able to run nearly all Zeroconf-enabled software for Unix on top of Avahi.

Sun Freezes Hell, Gets IBM To Sell Solaris on Blades

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-28 Solaris 49 Comments

Yet again hell freezes over. As if Apple's switch to Intel wasn't enough, Sun has announced that IBM is going to sell Solaris on its blade servers. "IBM has agreed to sell Sun's operating system with its BladeCenter servers in "the coming months," according to an IBM spokesman. This is quite the surprise given IBM's contentious relationship with Sun. IBM's services organization, however, does do a large amount of business selling Sun servers and Solaris, which may have helped seal the deal." Jonathan Schwartz announced it in his blog as well.

Microsoft Earnings Present a Mixed Bag

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-28 Microsoft 29 Comments

Microsoft on Thursday reported first quarter earnings just ahead of Wall Street estimates, though the company's sales and current quarter forecast fell short of expectations.

How To Speed up OpenOffice

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-28 Office 57 Comments

"Since we wrote a yarn about how opening OpenOffice was slower than a Lada full of elephants going uphill, we have had a few tips from our readers as to how to speed it up. The changes are not difficult and do seem to have an effect. We can't be certain how much this will affect the functionality but we pass these ideas on."

Microsoft Warns Software Industry Is Ill-Prepared for Multicore

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-28 Hardware 59 Comments

Herb Sutter, a software architect from Microsoft, gave a speech yesterday at In-Stat/MDR's Fall Processor Forum. Addressing a crowd mostly consisting of hardware engineers, he talked about how the software world was ill-prepared to make use of the new multicore CPUs coming from Intel and AMD.

Why Do People Switch to Linux?

Submitted by LinuxFanBoy 2005-10-28 Linux 115 Comments

"During the last month, we conducted a survey of readers who use Linux. We asked them why they switched to Linux and received a plethora of answers. Surprisingly, anti-Microsoft sentiment had less to do with the choice than one might imagine. Linux stands on its own as a user preference."

MySQL CEO: Partnerships Will Propel OSS Into Mainstream

Submitted by Mark Brunelli 2005-10-28 Databases 6 Comments

In the business IT shop of the near future, open source software will gain equality with proprietary software, but it won't get there on its own power, said Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL AB. "From the beginning, we have never been religious about open source. We think it's the most effective way to produce software, but we've always realized that there are vendors that will stay with closed source products. Our users live in the real world where both open source and closed source software have to work together."