OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing - Page 1162

New Hopes From Sun’s Idea Factory

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-17 Oracle and SUN 48 Comments

While it's way too soon to say Sun is back on track, the return of Bechtolsheim, aggressive improvements in products and a healthy dose of humility among Sun's executives mean the troubled company and its investors have more cause for optimism than they've had in years.

Using an A3010 As Central Heating Controller

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-17 OS News 6 Comments

Many people rely on RISC OS and its software to look after their email and browse their favourite websites. But could you trust RISC OS to make sure you wake up to a warm shower every morning? Electronic engineer Dave Higton describes his RISC OS powered central heating system.

OSDL To Push Linux for Mobiles

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-17 Linux 10 Comments

The Open Source Development Labs, an industry consortium devoted to improving Linux, plans to launch an initiative on Monday to bring the open source operating system to mobile phones. OSDL's Mobile Linux Initiative is intended to improve Linux for the small, but increasingly powerful, devices.

NetBSD Summer of Code Summary

Submitted by Jan Schaumann 2005-10-17 NetBSD 7 Comments

The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce the results of its participation in Google's "Summer of Code". After Google announced this program to introduce students to the world of open source software development at the beginning of June, the NetBSD Project was happy to join the approximately 40 other open source groups as a mentoring organization and compiled a list of suggested projects.

HP Recalls 135 000 Battery Packs

Submitted by Ian 2005-10-17 Hardware 3 Comments

Hewlett-Packard on Friday recalled 135 000 battery packs sold with its notebook computers shipped globally from March 2004 to May 2005. The product is being recalled following 16 reports of batteries overheating due to an internal short circuit, the company said.

GPRS Calls Through Infrared Under Linux

Eugenia Loli 2005-10-16 Internet 15 Comments

A few days ago I wrote a tutorial on how to connect your Mac to a GPRS service via Bluetooth and a Bluetooth-enabled phone. However, not everyone owns a Mac or a higher-end phone. And so here is a quick tutorial on how to connect your Linux laptop to a GPRS service using an infrared-enabled phone. For this article we used a Sony Ericsson K700i phone, a Sony Vaio N505VX laptop (which has an onboard IrDA) running the latest Arch Linux and Cingular's GPRS. In the following weeks I will also be publishing two more tutorials showing how to do the same thing under Linux but via Bluetooth and the USB port.

Microsoft Says ‘Maybe’ to OpenDocument

Submitted by dylansmrjones 2005-10-16 Office 77 Comments

According to Andy Updegrove, Microsoft seems to be reconsidering support for OpenDocument. A quote from the blog: "So there is no line drawn in the sand, nor (to put it another way) has Microsoft painted itself into a corner. If OpenDocument picks up steam, a back door for support is ajar."

The Ubuntu Juggernaut

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-16 Ubuntu 150 Comments

"Various reviews I've seen about Ubuntu have attacked the release names (Hoary Hedgehog, Breezy Badger and upcoming Dapper Drake), or the 'ugly' brown GNOME screen background (which is easily changed). I consider such "flaws" to be trivial. When push comes to shove, I want my operating system to 'just work', and in this department Ubuntu delivers."

XP SP3 Preview Package a Fake

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-16 Windows 56 Comments

A few weeks ago an "unofficial" preview release of windows XP SP3 hit the web. Now, Microsoft has responded and warned users of this preview package. "You would be well advised to stay clear of this FAKE SP3 package. It is NOT suitable for testing as it is NOT SP3."

Mockup 0.2.0 Alpha 1 Released

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-16 Linux 45 Comments

Mockup 0.2.0 alpha1 has been released. Just like v0.1.0, this release is focused on the underlying foundation, "this means that it's useful only for developers and it's not easy to install."

OpenOffice.org Releases Third RC of Its 2.0 Suite

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-16 Office 28 Comments

OpenOffice.org made available for free download a third release candidate of Version 2.0 of its popular open-source office suite Friday. The release includes bug fixes only and no new features.

Automated Backups with rdiff-backup

Submitted by Falko Timme 2005-10-16 General Development 14 Comments

This tutorial describes how to do automated server backups with the tool rdiff-backup. rdiff-backup lets you make backups over a network using SSH so that the data transfer is encrypted. The use of SSH makes rdiff-backup very secure because noone can read the data that is being transferred. rdiff-backup makes incremental backups, thus saving bandwidth.

A Comparison of Solaris, Linux and FreeBSD Kernels

Submitted by tpenta 2005-10-16 Rumors 105 Comments

Max Brunning has posted a brief comparison of how these three Operating Systems approach a number of basic kernel tasks. He has a brief look at: Scheduling and Schedulers, Memory Management and Paging, and File Systems. Max is an Instructor who spends his time teaching Solaris internals, device drivers, and kernel crash dump analysis and debugging.

Besides YAST: Yum on SUSE Linux 10.0

Submitted by Roland Wolters 2005-10-16 SuSE, openSUSE 36 Comments

This blog-entry is a short tutorial how to set up Fedora Core's yum on a SUSE Linux 10.0 system, which is officially supported from 10.0 on. The article shows a short comparison of yum and yast as well as the problems yum still has because some servers still do not have yum support.

Zeta 1.1 (SP1) Released; VideoEditor Integrated Into Zeta Deluxe

Submitted by jeanmarc 2005-10-15 Zeta 33 Comments

YellowTAB has released a service pack for its Zeta operating system, bumping the version number to 1.1. This .pdf (in German, English version not (yet) available) describes the changes in a detailed fashion. In addition, "due to the unexpected amount of interest in yellowTAB's VideoEditor, we have decided not to release a stand-alone ProVersion. Instead, the ProVersion and its many anxiously awaited features will be integrated into our Zeta DeluxeEdition release."

Should RISC OS Be OpenSourced?

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-15 RISC OS 45 Comments

The debate over whether or not RISC OS should be open sourced took another turn this week when Peter Naulls argued that "certain parts" of the OS could be released under an open source licence. The State-side coder behind various ports including Firefox said this would ideally include "crucial parts that affect all users, even if they don't realise it, parts that can be created from scratch and made much better than the Acorn original, and parts which can managed by specific developers who already understand them well."

Microsoft’s Media Center Strikes Back at Apple

Thom Holwerda 2005-10-15 Windows 59 Comments

"Today just so happens to mark the third birthday of Microsoft's Media Center Edition of Windows XP, which is likely why the company is rolling out a major update to the MCE product. Dubbed Rollup 2, the update is available to current WMC customers via Windows Update. Will you want it?"

Clean up Your Web Aplications with SOAP and AJAX

Submitted by anonymous 2005-10-15 General Development 14 Comments

Popularized through its use in a number of well-known Web application services like GMail, Google Maps, Flickr, and Odeo.com, AJAX provides Web developers with a way of expanding the value and function of their Web applications by using asynchronous XML messaging. This article shows you how to implement a Web browser-based SOAP Web services client using the Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) design pattern.

Critical Windows Patch May Wreak PC Havoc

Submitted by analog warrior 2005-10-15 Privacy, Security 65 Comments

A Microsoft patch meant to fix critical security flaws in Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 is causing trouble for some users, the company said Friday.

Linux Calling: Are Cell Phones Ready?

Eugenia Loli 2005-10-14 Linux 42 Comments

The Open Source Development Labs, an industry consortium devoted to improving Linux, plans to launch an initiative Monday to bring the open-source operating system to mobile phones.