Visopsys 0.57 Released

Version 0.57 of Visopsys is now available for download. This is a bugfix and maintenance release. There are various GUI touch-ups, the Disk Manager (a.k.a. Partition Logic) now updates disk geometry information in FAT partitions after disk copy operations, the window 'list' component has been reimplemented, and a number of kernel improvements have been back-ported from the 0.6 development branch. As always, the ISO image is an installable live demo. Downloads here, changelog here, and Freshmeat announcement here.

Google Makes IM/VoIP Play, Releases Google Talk

Google has launched an instant-messaging (IM) program that allows text chat and computer-to-computer voice connections, a move that highlights the search giant's increasing competition with Yahoo, Microsoft and America Online. You can download Google Talk here. Google also makes it very clear that you do not need Google Talk to use their service, and they provide detailed instructions on using other IM clients to connect to Google Talk. Update: Micheal Robertson announces partnership with Google to promote the use of open standards in VoIP/IM.

Word Processors Compared: OOo Writer, AbiWord, and KWord

OpenOffice.org receives most of the attention among FOSS office suites, but users shouldn't forget that free software includes at least two other word processors: AbiWord, and KWord, part of the KOffice suite. From their inception, both have been playing catch-up with OpenOffice.org's Writer. But now, after several years of development, AbiWord and KWord are both reaching early maturity. How do Writer, AbiWord, and KWord compare?

Intel Tools on the Way for Mac Coders

Intel said that it plans later this year to offer test versions of software tools aimed at allowing Mac developers to improve the performance of programs that run on its chips. The software maker said that later this year it will offer beta versions of both its compiler and its performance libraries, which contain code optimised for both digital media and scientific computing tasks.

Optimize for SSE

Vector programming doesn't stop with PowerPC. Learn how to do SIMD vector programming for MacOS X for Intel. This page provides an overview of the hardware and programming interfaces involved, and provides detailed translation help information for leveraging your investment in AltiVec forward to the SSE world.

Discussion: Which is Your Favorite Browser Extension?

The last few years have seen the introduction of the concept of "extensions" in most popular web browsers. While Mozilla natively supports extensions, Opera and Safari come feature-packed and can be easily hacked via config files, and a market has cropped up around the IE engine which supports adding new functionality to your browser. In the interest of sharing a good thing, which are your favorite browser extensions?

Interview: With Tuomo Valkonen

This week in Arch Linux's news letter there was an interview with Ion's creator Tuomo Valkonen. Ion is a complete desktop environment built on the tiling windowmanager PWM. It uses Lua as an embedded interpreter which handles all of the configuration. It mainly uses the keyboard to access the functions but also supports the mouse for some things.

Linux-on-Mac Seller Aims to Fill Void

When Apple Computer announced in June that it planned to move to Intel chips, one of the companies left in the lurch was Terra Soft Solutions. This week, Terra Soft is announcing it has filled some of the void created by Apple's move. Under a new deal, Terra Soft will resell PowerPC-based servers from Mercury Computer Systems. Mercury's XR9 systems use the same G5 chip as Xserve, but at 2.4GHz, the chips are slightly faster than those used in Apple's servers.

Getting Started with launchd

In Tiger, Apple introduced a new system startup program called launchd. The launchd daemon takes over many tasks from cron, xinetd, mach_init, and init, which are UNIX programs that traditionally have handled system initialization and prepared the system for the user. These venerable programs are widely used by system adminstrators, open source developers, managers of web services, even consumers who want to use cron to manage iCal scheduling, and they can still be called with launchd.

One-Stop Security

Confusion, fear, procrastination; these are words often associated with making decisions about IT security and as threats become more sophisticated it is easy to see why. The increasing popularity for workforce mobility have made detecting and eliminating threats purely from within the corporate network alone an inadequate approach to network security.