OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

US State Finalises Its Microsoft Snub

Submitted by Sansta 2005-09-30 In the News 100 Comments

The commonwealth of Massachusetts has finalised its decision to standardise desktop applications on OpenDocument, a format not supported by Microsoft Office. State agencies in the executive branch are now supposed to migrate to OpenDocument-compliant applications by 1 January, 2007, a change that will affect about 50 000 desktop PCs. The reference model also confirms that Adobe's PDF format is considered an "open format".

Apple Making Inroads in Enterprise Market

Submitted by Hakime Seddik 2005-09-30 Apple 9 Comments

A recent report by market research firm IDC gives Apple high marks for its efforts in the Enterprise storage and server markets. While Apple is best known for its iPod and Macintosh product lines, IDC analysts say the competition is taking interest in what Apple is doing in the Enterprise market, as well.

Installing Debian

Submitted by CatNap 2005-09-30 Debian 24 Comments

"The experience of installing Debian can vary widely depending on your hardware and requirements. There simply isn't room here to provide a comprehensive installation guide. Instead, you'll find an outline of the major points of the installation process, and plenty of information about where to go and what to do when things don't work as expected." In related news, work is under way to provide a gtk+ front-end to the Debian installer.

Release of Open Dylan 1.0 Beta 1

Submitted by Magnum 2005-09-30 General Development 41 Comments

"Dylan is an advanced, object-oriented, dynamic language which supports the rapid development of programs. When needed, the programmer can later optimize programs for more efficient execution by supplying type information to the compiler. Nearly all entities in Dylan (including functions, classes, and basic data types such as integers) are first class objects. Additionally Dylan supports multiple inheritance, polymorphism, multiple dispatch, and many other advanced features."

Take Charge of Processor Affinity

Thom Holwerda 2005-09-30 Linux 2 Comments

Knowing a little bit about how the Linux 2.6 scheduler treats CPU affinity can help you design better userspace applications. Soft affinity means that processes do not frequently migrate between processors, whereas hard affinity means that processes run on processors you specify.

Microsoft Woos Symbian, PalmOS Developers

Eugenia Loli 2005-09-30 Wireless 30 Comments

Microsoft has released three papers designed to help mobile application developers from other platforms migrate their applications to Windows Mobile. The first and second papers involve migrating developers and applications from Symbian OS and the third paper is a guide for developers moving from Palm OS.

GCC 4.0.2 Released

Eugenia Loli 2005-09-30 General Development 54 Comments

Mark Mitchell announced the availability of GCC 4.0.2. He explains, "this release is a minor release, containing primarily fixes for regressions in GCC 4.0.1 relative to previous releases."

Motorola CEO: Apple ‘Going To Build a Smart Phone’

Thom Holwerda 2005-09-29 Apple 36 Comments

Motorola's CEO Ed Zander added fuel to persistent speculation about Apple's interest in producing its own phone. "And we know that they are going to build a smart phone - it's only a matter of time."

First Development Version of Glade 3 Available

Eugenia Loli 2005-09-29 GTK+ 51 Comments

This version of Glade (Glade-3) is a complete rewrite of the original Glade codebase. One of the main differences from glade-2 is that C code generation has been removed from glade-3; the preferred way to use glade files is with libglade. Another main difference is that glade-3 was designed to make maximal use of GObject introspection, thus easing the integration of external toolkits and handling widgets, signals and properties genericly. It has a few useful new features such as stacked Undo/Redo and Multiple Project support and respects the same XML format as glade-2.

ReactOS 0.3 SVN Shows Promise

Submitted by David Nordenberg 2005-09-29 ReactOS 66 Comments

The ReactOS website has been completely redesigned. That in itself won't get your panties in a twist, however, the screenshots section might. They show just how far ReactOS has come: OpenOffice.org 1.1.4, MS Office 2003's setup, Unreal Tournament, Deus Ex, Flash Player, and much more. Note that some of those apps will only run in the latest SVN version.

Submitted by BryanFeeney 2005-09-29 Java 36 Comments

Sun has released a beta edition of the upcoming version 5 of NetBeans. The most notable feature in this new release is the Matisse GUI Builder (demo) which makes it significantly easier to develop Swing GUIs. Other improvements include more refactoring tools, better CVS integration, support for more application servers, better support for web-development, and small tweaks to the editor.

SUSE 10.1 Alpha 1 Released

Thom Holwerda 2005-09-29 SuSE, openSUSE 43 Comments

SUSE's 10.0 release announcmeent has barely hit all four corners of the globe, but development for 10.1 is already underway, and alpha 1 is now available. The biggest changes since 10.0 are a new kernel (2.6.13.2) and KDE 3.5 Beta 1. Download locations can be found in the release announcement.

What Is Darwin (and How it Powers Mac OS X)

Thom Holwerda 2005-09-29 BSD & Darwin 28 Comments

"Darwin is the Unix-derived core that provides the underlying foundation for Mac OS X. At Darwin's heart is the XNU kernel; a Mach 3.0-based microkernel that has been modified to include portions of FreeBSD for performance reasons. Let's take a trip down into the core of OS X to learn more about the foundation that gives us one of the best user experiences in computing."

First Beta Linux with Debian Core Arrives

Thom Holwerda 2005-09-29 Debian 23 Comments

MEPIS recently released the latest beta of its lightweight Linux distribution MEPISLite 3.3.2-test01, thus making it the first vendor to release a Linux based on the Debian Common Core.

Using FreeBSD’s ACLs

Submitted by Nix_User 2005-09-29 FreeBSD 8 Comments

"The standard Unix permissions scheme works fine if you have simple needs, but juggling groups and users can grow unwieldy very quickly. FreeBSD's Access Control Lists give you more control over who can access files and directories. Dru Lavigne explains how to understand and use them."

Cheap $100 Laptop Unveiled

Thom Holwerda 2005-09-29 Hardware 60 Comments

The $100 (E 83,-) laptop computers that Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers want to get into the hands of the world's children would be durable, flexible and self-reliant. Among the key specs: A 500-megahertz processor by AMD and flash memory instead of a hard drive with moving parts. To save on software costs, the laptops would run the freely available Linux operating system instead of Windows.

Out SMART Your Hard Drive

Submitted by Matty 2005-09-29 BSD & Darwin 7 Comments

"If you have used disk drives during your career, I am sure you are well aware of the issues that arise when a device unexpectedly dies. This short article describes how to use smartmontools to view S.M.A.R.T status information, which can be used to predict if and when a device may fail."

Gates and Ballmer: A Look at the Future

Eugenia Loli 2005-09-28 Microsoft 57 Comments

Despite some high-profile departures to Google and other rivals, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer say Microsoft Corp. is still in a position to attract the top talent needed to ensure the company's strength as it enters its fourth decade.

StarOffice 8 Is MS Office’s Toughest Rival Yet

Thom Holwerda 2005-09-28 Oracle and SUN 46 Comments

"StarOffice 8, the latest version of Sun's inexpensive, cross-platform office productivity suite, stands up better than ever next to Microsoft's market-leading Office in terms of features, extensibility and compatibility. In eWeek's tests of StarOffice 8, we were pleased with the suite's word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and database functions. In addition, we experienced generally good results opening and creating Microsoft Office-formatted documents with StarOffice."

MorphOS Free PowerUP Edition for Classic Amigas Updated

Submitted by Raffaele 2005-09-28 Morphos 13 Comments

The MorphOS Development Team would like to inform that a new version of the MorphOS Free Edition for PowerUP accelerator boards is immediately available for download. The download is available at the PowerUp MorphOS site.