OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Microsoft Service Pack 2 Release Frenzy

Thom Holwerda 2005-09-27 Microsoft 7 Comments

Microsft has released service packs for a number of its productivity applications: OneNote 2003 Service Pack 2, Visio 2003 Service Pack 2, Project 2003 Service Pack 2, Project Server 2003 Service Pack 2, and Office 2003 Service Pack 2. That's a whole lot of Service Pack 2s, and here's for hoping all the links are correct.

Submitted by Eugenia Loli 2005-09-27 General Development 4 Comments

Unfortunately, in the real world you will never see a project perfectly follow any of the development models. You will never be given a thoroughly detailed specification that perfectly meets the customer’s needs and you will never have enough time to do all the testing you need to do. It just doesn’t happen. This chapter will help you understand that software testing doesn't alway go perfectly, and help you prepare for that eventuality.

Submitted by Eugenia Loli 2005-09-27 Java 16 Comments

Developers continue to debate the question of memory management solutions. Which is best? Although Objective-C's retain/release runs smoother and faster than Java's garbage collection, it places a much larger burden on the developer and introduces a much larger risk of memory leaks.

KDE 4 Promises Radical Changes

Thom Holwerda 2005-09-27 KDE 92 Comments

"As the dust settles from aKademy 2005, the annual KDE conference, it's a good time to take a look at what the KDE developers are working on. Though KDE 3.5 isn't even out yet, developers are already working on KDE 4. Plenty of work has already gone into porting existing code to Qt4, the GUI toolkit upon which KDE is based, and KDE developers are working on projects that could radically change how works."

Torvalds Concerned About Linux Dev Processes

Thom Holwerda 2005-09-27 Linux 35 Comments

Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux and the maintainer of the development kernel, expressed concerns that the kernel development process may need to be changed to make sure that Morton is not overworked. "One issue is that I actually worry that Andrew will at some point be where I was a couple of years ago - overworked and stressed out by just tons and tons of patches," said Torvalds. "If Andrew burns out, we'll all suffer hugely."

Genesi To Develop Dual PPC970MP Server; Dual-Core G4 Delayed

Submitted by Martin 2005-09-27 Hardware 27 Comments

Two interesting newsbits from the PPC world. Firstly, Genesi has announced that it will develop a dual 970MP (dual-core G5) server, named Open Server Workstation, following their Open Desktop Workstation. Secondly, Freescale has said that their dual-core G4 processors have been delayed until the second half of 2006. Update: "Libfreevec is a free (LGPL) library with hand-optimized replacement routines for GLIBC, such as memcpy(), strlen(), etc. These routines have been written specifically to take advantage of the AltiVec, and will only work on processors that include this unit."

Interview: Iyer Venkatesan, StarOffice Product Manager

Adam Scheinberg 2005-09-26 Original OSNews Interviews 37 Comments

Today, I had the opportunity to speak with Iyer Venkatesan, Product line manager for StarOffice at Sun Microsystems. He spoke to me at length about StarOffice 8, which will be released tomorrow. Read on for a summary of the interview, and be sure to check out the review at Newsforge as well.

Treo 700w with Windows Mobile Announced

Thom Holwerda 2005-09-26 Wireless 46 Comments

As expected, Palm has announced the Treo 700w, a Windows Mobile powered smartphone with a square 240x240 resolution. Top brass from Palm, Microsoft (including Bill Gates) and Verizon Wireless gathered in San Fransisco this morning to launch the device. Palm noted that this project has been in the works for, "a couple of years" and that it was one of the worst kept secrets in the industry. In addition, here (.pdf) are some Windows Mobile UI design tips and tricks. Update: Here is the official press release.

Ubuntu: Derivative or Fork?

Submitted by anonymous 2005-09-26 Ubuntu 139 Comments

"Ubuntu never positioned itself as a Debian derivative, like Xandros, Mepis, or Knoppix. Ubuntu publicly acknowledges its relationship with Debian, and Canonical, through its recently founded Ubuntu foundation, hires some Debian developers. All this should be good news; but for some it's not. Whether on Distrowatch or on forums, voices whisper that Ubuntu has a dirty secret you may not want to hear: they don't keep the compatibility with Debian, and they want to fork away from their mother distribution."

Submitted by kellym 2005-09-26 Office 59 Comments

"I have noticed these days that the computer market is either falling into some sort of dictatorship or some other power of influence that is forcing the computer market into a no choice market where the choice is handpicked by either some monopoly or by a misperception made by the wrong decision makers in today's computer industry. The computer market of today as we know it is being prefabricated by influence while hypnotizing the public of that influence."

Sun: PCs Are Outmoded

Thom Holwerda 2005-09-26 Oracle and SUN 54 Comments

Jonathan Schwartz keeps singing Sun's favourite tune - that Web services, not desktop apps, are the future. "The majority of the applications that will drive the next wave of innovation will be services, not applications that run on the desktop. The real innovation is occurring in the network and the network services," Schwartz said.

Amanith Ported to Windows XP 64 and Linux x86_64

Submitted by Matteo 2005-09-26 General Development 3 Comments

Amanith Framework is a cross-platform (Linux, Win32, Mac OX X, FreeBSD, Linux and IRIX) open source C++ framework for 2D and 3D vector graphics. The new 0.1.1 release adds support for 64bit. New supported environments are Linux x86_64 (with gcc) and Windows XP 64 (with Visual Studio .Net 2005).

Novell’s Meeks on OpenOffice.org Startup Time, Cairo

Submitted by Malahide 2005-09-26 Novell and Ximian 40 Comments

"We chat to Gnome and OpenOffice.org coder Michael Meeks about all things Linux. Here's a few of the questions we asked the Novell employee."

Open Source Needs Backing To Succeed

Submitted by Jan 2005-09-26 Open Source 17 Comments

Open-source databases will not succeed without commercial support, says Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle. "One of the myths of open-source is that it's built by a bunch of guys who work at RadioShack."

EconomicTimes: Unix is Dead, Linux is the Future

Eugenia Loli 2005-09-26 Unix 70 Comments

The end of the world is near. At last that of the Unix world. That's the prediction of Donald Feinberg, vice-president of Gartner. "Linux is coming, Unix is dead." But there's no need to panic. Not just yet. The end is not going to come overnight or even in next week or year, but it is certain, or as he puts it, "an absolute".

NetBSD 2.1 RC5 Released

Eugenia Loli 2005-09-26 NetBSD 10 Comments

A new release candidate of NetBSD 2.1 is now available for testing, 2.1-RC5.

Submitted by CPUGuy 2005-09-26 Windows 87 Comments

Jim Allchin, a senior Microsoft Corp. executive, walked into Bill Gates's office here one day in July last year to deliver a bombshell about the next generation of Microsoft Windows. "It's not going to work," Mr. Allchin says he told the Microsoft chairman. The new version, code-named Longhorn, was so complex its writers would never be able to make it run properly.

PC-BSD 0.8.2 Released

Thom Holwerda 2005-09-25 PC-BSD 27 Comments

"Version 0.8.2 is now available, with some important bugfixes and changes. This update adds SMP support to the system, for our multi-processor friends, as well as fixing an issue with "mountroot", after performing an installation. Please see the changelog for a full description of the changes. People running 0.8.1 need not download the full ISO again, since the update to 0.8.2 is available as on Online Update, through the PC-BSD update manager." Read the release notes, and download here.

Aaron Seigo on the Upcoming OSDW in San Diego

Submitted by Wade Olson 2005-09-25 KDE 41 Comments

"Earlier in the week, I conducted a lengthy phone interview with Aaron Seigo about the Open Source Desktop Workshop being held in San Diego on October 13th and 14th. Fast approaching, we discuss the workshop's inception, target audience and expectations."

Windows OneCare Live Preview

Submitted by Andrew Bragdon 2005-09-25 Privacy, Security 21 Comments

To respond to the somewhat alarmingly real threat of spyware, malware, and to a lesser extent viruses on the Windows platform, Microsoft used its recently-acquired security technology combined with its own in-house work to build Windows OneCare Live (codenamed Atlanta). Read here for a preview. Please note that the 'next' button is placed underneath the Google ads, almost invisible.