OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

(K)Ubuntu Breezy Badger Preview Released

Thom Holwerda 2005-09-09 Ubuntu 72 Comments

"The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the Preview Release of Ubuntu 5.10. The Preview Release includes both Install CDs and bootable Live CDs for three architectures." Download it here. Simultaniously, Kubuntu Breezy Preview has also been released. Download it here.

Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 Available for Download

Submitted by Francis 2005-09-09 Mozilla, Gecko 84 Comments

"Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 is now available for download. This is the first Beta release of our next generation Firefox browser, to be released later this year, and it is being made available to our developer and testing community for compatibility testing and to solicit feedback." Read the release notes, and download.

The Many Faces of OS X

Submitted by Jonathan Hohle 2005-09-09 macOS 58 Comments

"Until yesterday, there were 4 different variations of the Aqua theme used by Apple for OS X: the standard Aqua theme, the new Platinum theme, the much distained Brushed Metal theme, and the funky Woody theme. Commentators have pointed out on more then one occasion that while Apple's Human Interface Guidelines has guidelines for which theme to use where, even Apple disregards those rules and uses whatever theme some unknown source in the company chooses."

Submitted by jayson.knight 2005-09-09 Microsoft 23 Comments

From Channel 9: "Visit Bill in his office for a few minutes to talk about where he sees the future going. This is a fun interview (WMV), prepares you for the PDC that's coming next week." Also, here is an interview (WMV) with Microsoft's first employee.

Submitted by wakeupneo 2005-09-09 In the News 20 Comments

Engadget posted a batch of old BBS entries from 1985. Some quotes: "We still think this Macintosh thing is an overrated, underpowered poor stepchild to the Lisa." On Microsoft: "We don’t really know how they think they can take on the Macintosh user interface, though, so don’t be surprised if the little Arizona startup that could, well, can’t."

PalmSource Gets Acquired by Mobile Browser Vendor

Submitted by anonymous 2005-09-09 Wireless 25 Comments

Mobile browser-maker Access announced Friday that it will acquire Palm OS developer PalmSource in an all-cash transaction for approximately $324 million. The acquisition adds operating system platform expertise and Linux development resources to Access's existing "content delivery and Internet access software" for mobile devices, the companies said.

Submitted by Matthew Smith 2005-09-09 Qt No Comments

"Welcome to A Qt Blog. This is a blog I intend to feature announcements on developments in the Qt world: Qt itself, applications, publications, devices, as well as KDE, KDE-centred operating systems (particularly Linux distributions), and Trolltech affairs. I'd also like to have the occasional review and feature article on development and other topics."

GNUStep’s StepTalk 0.10.0 Released

Submitted by ajam 2005-09-09 OpenStep, GNUstep 3 Comments

The latest version of GNUStep's StepTalk was recently posted. StepTalk is a language independent scripting framework providing access to GNUStep's functionality, including the ability to dynamically load modules, utilize various programming languages, and other good stuff. This version contains a few additions and subtractions from the previous one.

Gnome 2.12: On the Road of Evolution

Eugenia Loli 2005-09-08 Gnome 136 Comments

The Gnome Project released version 2.12 yesterday. We had a quick look at it by using the latest Gnome Live CD (1.12-pre) and Foresight 0.9.0 (2.12 final) and here are our thoughts over 2.12 and Gnome's status in general.

SCO Continues To Lose Money

Eugenia Loli 2005-09-08 SCO 50 Comments

SCO, the company best known for Linux litigation and its Unix operating systems, reported results for its fiscal third quarter ended July 31, 2005, on Wednesday. The news wasn't good.

Mandriva Linux 2006 RC1 Released

Eugenia Loli 2005-09-08 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 34 Comments

The Mandriva developers have released the first (and maybe final) release candidate of Mandriva 2006.

Microsoft Business Summit 2005: Gates, Ballmer Keynotes

Thom Holwerda 2005-09-08 Microsoft 10 Comments

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer delivered keynote addresses from the Microsoft Redmond Conference Center that were broadcast via satellite to customer events being held simultaneously throughout the USA and at major Microsoft subsidiaries around the world. You can find links to the webcasts here.

OpenSUSE Linux 10.0 RC1 Released

Submitted by dimlev 2005-09-08 SuSE, openSUSE 27 Comments

The first release candidate of OpenSUSE has been released. Product highlights can be found here. Please note that the final version is expected to be available October 6th.

Interview: Jon Tetzchner, CEO of Opera

Thom Holwerda 2005-09-08 Opera 39 Comments

Here is an interview with the CEO of Opera. "There are obviously some users who go between Opera and Mozilla. They have Opera one week, Mozilla the next week, and back to Opera... But we have a shared common goal: we would actually like to see open standards prevail."

FreeBSD Announces 6.0-BETA4

Submitted by Anon_Coward 2005-09-08 FreeBSD 27 Comments

"The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.0-BETA4. ISO images are available for i386, amd64, pc98, alpha, powerpc, and ia64. Sparc64 is still in the process of being built and will be uploaded as soon as it is ready."

Solaris’ DTrace To Be Ported to FreeBSD

Submitted by george 2005-09-08 FreeBSD 34 Comments

One of the most useful tidbits from the basket of code released into the public domain this year by Sun Microsystems is likely to make it to the FreeBSD platform. DTrace is currently being ported to FreeBSD by Devon O'Dell, a FreeBSD developer working for OffMyServer, a US-based vendor which sells servers running BSD and Linux variants.

IBM Updates Lotus Notes and Domino

Submitted by ajam 2005-09-08 IBM 39 Comments

IBM has unveiled a major upgrade to its flagship platform with the launch of Lotus Notes and Domino 7. Lotus D7 includes new collaboration features and tools designed to improve productivity for IT administrators and corporate developers, as well as new productivity enhancements to help Lotus Notes users work more efficiently. They are available for multiple platforms including AIX, Solaris and Linux.

Tutorials on Linux Fundamentals

Submitted by anonymous 2005-09-08 Linux 8 Comments

Here's a brand new series of tutorials (free reg. req.) to help you learn Linux fundamentals and prepare for system administrator certification exam 201, however they are of use to anyone willing to learn the fundamentals of Linux. These eight tutorials cover the Linux kernel, file and service sharing, system customization and automation, and more.

Validating Java for Safety-Critical Applications

Submitted by Jean-Marie Dautelle 2005-09-08 Java 14 Comments

"With the real-time extensions, Java can now be used for safety critical systems. It is therefore primordial to be able to guarantee that virtual machine implementations not only conform to the Real-Time Specification for Java (RTSJ) but also that efficiency and predictability is up to a certain standard. With these objectives in mind, we developed and maintained a test suite (.pdf) which addresses conformance as well as performance."

GNOME 2.12 Released

Thom Holwerda 2005-09-07 Gnome 110 Comments

"Today, the GNOME Project celebrates the release of GNOME 2.12, the latest version of the popular, multi-platform free desktop environment." Important changes include, but are not limited to: Clearlooks set to default theme, improved file manager (Nautilus), new document viewer (Evince), and much more. The release notes are here, download information can be found here.