OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Bash Terminal runs under Haiku

Submitted by Prognathous 2005-03-28 Haiku 17 Comments

Michael Lotz has updated his Haiku blog with his latest progress. He got a Bash terminal to run, and he has the proof to show it. Read more.

NetBSD branches pkgsrc-2005Q1

Submitted by Jan Schaumann 2005-03-28 NetBSD 2 Comments

NetBSD's Alistair Crooks has announced the availability of the new stable branch pkgsrc-2005Q1 of the NetBSD Packages Collection (aka pkgsrc). This branch includes all the updates to the thousands of existing and additions of hundreds of new applications since the hereby obsoleted pkgsrc-2004Q4 branch.Some noteworthy infrastructure changes applicable to all 13 operating systems for which pkgsrc is available include the support for multiple digests to check the integrity of the distribution files as found on the Internet (triggered by the recently-found problems with the SHA-1 algorithm) and the so-called alternates framework.

GNOME removed from Slackware

Submitted by Mark Hill 2005-03-28 Slackware, Slax 40 Comments

After long consideration, Pat Volkerding has removed GNOME from Slackware. Pat mentions in the -current ChangeLog that GNOME takes a lot of time to package and this move should allow more time to be spent on the rest of Slackware.

IBM’s BlueGene Hits Warp Speed

Submitted by Hakime 2005-03-27 Benchmarks 37 Comments

The IBM BlueGene/L supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory just got a fresh dose of steroids. Its number-crunching speed has been pumped up to a phenomenal 183.5 trillion calculations every second. That's 183.5 teraflops in geek-speak -- double the 92 teraflops world record that BlueGene set just six months ago.

PSP Released in US, but not to Clamoring Throngs UPDATED

David Adams 2005-03-27 Games 81 Comments

The release of the Sony PlayStation Portable in the US has not been a rousing success so far, with many retailers only selling a few of their small allotment. It's be very successful in Japan. Is it just too early to judge? UPDATE by ELQ: OSNews now supports the PSP web browser and serves its mobile page automatically. We would appreciate it if someone could send us a picture of it.

How Sun moved into Open Source

Submitted by TJector 2005-03-27 Oracle and SUN 48 Comments

From a very personal and revealing interview with ex-Sun executive Danese Cooper: "The prevailing open source wisdom is that Linux is going to win, and anything you do that doesn't directly influence Linux in a positive way is not a good thing. We spoke to Linus Torvalds about this once, the OpenSolaris team, and he expressed interest in the project as a way for him to be able to get the Open Source community around Linux to move to a higher level, you know, to match some of the advantages that are in Solaris. We were talking about a virtuous cycle where Solaris gets better because of the places where Linux is better than Solaris now. Like especially for one and two processor performance, and Linux gets better because of the places where Solaris does better now. The beneficiary is the consumer."

RISC OS on TV

Submitted by Ian Chamberlain 2005-03-27 RISC OS 9 Comments

A German RISC OS dealer managed to get some local TV coverage. It's not often you'll see mainstream TV coverage of any alternative operating system.

Novell Brainshare Keynote Online

David Adams 2005-03-27 Novell and Ximian 24 Comments

If you weren't able to attend Brainshare but are interested in seeing what the big N is up to, the keynote speech is online. Some topics discussed: Linux solving high performance problems, virtualization technologies via Xen, capabilities of the Linux desktop including transparency, graphics and animation effects and demos of mono applications doing amazing feats.

Is Microsoft Toast?

David Adams 2005-03-25 Microsoft 116 Comments

Thomas Hazlett, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, looks at the various competitive pressures (Apple, Firefox) facing Microsoft and wonders whether its era of dominance might be on the wane in an editorial at the Financial Times.

Mandrakelinux 10.2-RC2 for x86, 10.2-RC1 for x86-64 Releasd

Submitted by AdamWill3 2005-03-25 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 49 Comments

The RC2 for x86-32 is available with mostly bugfixes. The RC1 for x86-64 is merged with 10.2 for i586, integrated graphics on i915-based motherboards are now supported. Packages fixes and additions: kdevelop, nut, pinentry, ripole, rosegarden4, xdelta2, ypserv.

Virtual Memory Optimization Guide Rev. 4.1

Eugenia Loli 2005-03-25 Windows 30 Comments

Although the hard disk is much slower than RAM, it is also much cheaper and users always have a lot more hard disk space than RAM. So, Windows and other OSes are designed to create this pseudo-RAM or in Microsoft's terms - Virtual Memory, to make up for the shortfall in RAM when running memory-intensive programs.

Easy Screen-scraping with XQuery

Eugenia Loli 2005-03-25 Java 7 Comments

While XQuery was designed for querying large document bases, it serves as a fine tool for transforming simple documents as well. Whether simplifying complex pages for display on small screens, or extracting elements from multiple pages to aggregate them together on a home-grown portal, or simply extracting data from Web pages because there's no other programmatic way to get the data. This article shows how XQuery offers a fast and easy way to scrape HTML pages for the data you need.

Microsoft funding of security report decried

Eugenia Loli 2005-03-25 Microsoft 96 Comments

Two researchers surprised the audience at a computer-security convention last month with their finding that a version of Microsoft Windows was more secure than a competing Linux operating system. This week, the researchers released their finished report, and it included another surprise: Microsoft was funding the project all along.

Avalon Preview Download, .NET Discussions

Eugenia Loli 2005-03-25 .NET 21 Comments

Microsoft has provided a version of the March 2005 Indigo and Avalon Community Technology Previews for the general public. .NET luminaries discuss themselves, their technology expertise, and whatever else comes to mind, released twice a month.

BrainGate plugs brains into computers

Eugenia Loli 2005-03-25 Geek stuff 50 Comments

A Foxborough, Mass., company has developed technology that plugs a human brain into a desktop computer, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Deploying Novell’s Linux Server in a Windows Domain Environment

Submitted by FlexBeta 2005-03-25 Novell and Ximian 31 Comments

This article will try to show you how easy it is to setup Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server as a Window Domain Controller (WPDC) - all by just pointing an clicking - no text editor is required. After implementing these instructions, you will have a fully featured WPDC that includes setting up an LDAP user/machine database as well as utilizing Dynamic DHCP and DNS Servers.

Cell Phone Viruses: Real Risk or Heavy on Hype?

Eugenia Loli 2005-03-25 Bugs & Viruses 25 Comments

Virus and Trojan warnings have been coming fast and furious from anti-virus researchers, but some say the market for cell phone anti-virus software does not yet exist.

Multi-core and multi-threaded gaming – Part 2

Eugenia Loli 2005-03-25 Games 14 Comments

AnandTech investigates the advantages and disadvantages of the new market trend: multi-core CPUs. Will dual core enhance your gaming experience? Tim Sweeney, the leading developer behind the Unreal 3 engine, was kind to answer their questions about multi-threaded development with concise answers.

Free Software Foundation denies GPLv3 forking risk

Eugenia Loli 2005-03-24 Open Source 45 Comments

Some developers are concerned that the introduction of the third version of the GNU General Public License could split the free software world - but the FSF is confident these fears are unfounded.

A Google OS by 2010?

Guest post by Kris Shaffer 2005-03-24 Editorial 64 Comments

Wishful thinking? Yes, but let's consider the possibilities. The last couple years have seen significant advances in hardware production and design. One of the more interesting (and potentially revolutionary) developments to take place this past year is the announcement of a new CPU, the STI (Sony, Toshiba, IBM) Cell processor.