OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

initng – or how to boot Linux faster

Submitted by Andre Eisenbach 2005-05-05 Linux 72 Comments

Jimmy Wennlund has been doing to Linux what Apple has done to Tiger: Make it boot faster. Jimmy wrote initng, a replacement for the Sys-V style "init" application. It allows for better service dependency checking and will start services in a highly parallel fashion, dramatically speeding up the Linux boot process.

A history of the GUI

Submitted by MegaTux 2005-05-05 Graphics 49 Comments

Why did computers come to adopt the GUI as their primary mode of interaction, and how did the GUI evolve to be the way it is today?

The Man Who Brewed Up Java

Eugenia Loli 2005-05-04 Java 36 Comments

James Gosling sees new uses for the programming language he created 10 years ago, such as making his home-entertainment system work right.

Debian on Steroids III: Libranet 3.0

Eugenia Loli 2005-05-04 Debian 50 Comments

Libranet Debian Linux is back in the ring, this time as a heavyweight desktop contender.

One day at Ubuntu Down Under

Guest post by Michael Salcher 2005-05-04 Ubuntu 40 Comments

Ubuntu Down Under (UDU) was the third Ubuntu conference and was held in Sydney, Australia. The first was held in Oxford, United Kingdom and the second one in Barcelona, Spain. The conference went for a whole week, starting on Monday 25th of April.

Apple patches a batch of Mac OS X security flaws

Eugenia Loli 2005-05-04 macOS 81 Comments

Apple Computer released 20 patches for its OS X operating system designed to fix flaws that could catch users off-guard. The vulnerabilities apply to Mac OS X v10.3.9 and Mac OS X Server 10.3.9, according to Apple's advisory. The advisory also falls just days after Apple's much ballyhooed release of the latest version of its operating system, Mac OS X 10.4, widely known as Tiger.

Bluetooth Future is UWB

David Adams 2005-05-04 Wireless 1 Comment

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group - the body that controls the wireless connectivity standard - has formally chosen ultrawideband as the foundation for future versions of the technology. UWB, traditionally seen as a potential competitor to Bluetooth, seems to now be bluetooth's ticket to future relevance. Meanwhile, Bluetooth's current popularity assures that UWB adoption won't spark yet another Beta vs VHS standards war.

A Java Developer Talks About MONO

Submitted by Adrian 2005-05-04 Mono 97 Comments

A developer who's spent five years working on Java/J2EE applications for the enterprise takes Mono for a spin. He's a self-described Java lover, and isn't afraid to say it. What does he think of Mono?

Mobile Security: Data Goes Walkabout

Submitted by Danny 2005-05-04 Privacy, Security 4 Comments

Mobile security is a hot issue, but who is listening? The mere word 'security' sends most people running. Investing in preventative IT security has never been a very popular topic. It often needs a competitor or an organisation itself to become a victim of crime before senior executives sit up and listen. read more

Hardware 3D on BeOS a reality

Submitted by Kian Duffy 2005-05-04 Haiku 56 Comments

According to HaikuNews, new open source nVidia 3D drivers are now ready for BeOS. Included are screenshots of Be's 1999 era Quake II port running unmodified and 3D accelerated.

DarwinPorts: 2500+ OSS Titles for Darwin/Mac OS X

David Adams 2005-05-04 BSD & Darwin 15 Comments

After more than two years in the making, DarwinPorts 1.0 is now available in binary and in source form. The DarwinPorts Project's main goal is to provide an easy way to install various open-source software products on the Darwin OS family (OpenDarwin, Mac OS X and Darwin).

GPL Under “Price Fixing” Legal Attack

Submitted by Tyrone Miles 2005-05-04 Legal 89 Comments

The suit claims that the "Free Software Foundation has entered into contracts and otherwise conspired and agreed with individual software authors and commercial distributors of commodity software products such as Red Hat Inc. and Novell Inc. to artificially fix the prices charged for computer software programs through the promotion and use of an adhesion contract that was created, used and promoted since at least the year 1991 by the Free Software Foundation" Update: A Groklaw article casts some serious doubt on the validity of the suit and sheds some light on serious inaccuracies in the Linux Business News article linked above.

NetBSD release timelines

Submitted by Jan Schaumann 2005-05-04 NetBSD 7 Comments

James Chacon of the NetBSD release engineering team has published the prospective timelines for the upcoming NetBSD releases.

Darwin 8.0.1 Installer CD Available

Eugenia Loli 2005-05-03 BSD & Darwin 72 Comments

The Darwin 8.0.1 Installer CD is available and corresponds to the open source core of Mac OS X 10.4.

Ada 2006 Draft ISO Standard available

Submitted by Anonymous 2005-05-03 General Development 38 Comments

Ada - a modern programming language designed for large, long-lived applications - and embedded systems in particular - is set to get some extensions in its next incarnation Ada 2006. There is a talk here, highlighting the most important changes (eg. cyclic type structures, Java-like interfaces, standardization of the Ravenscar tasking profile, container libraries, etc.). Updated drafts of the standard are available here. For general information about Ada there is a Wikibook Programming:Ada.

Selecting a mid-market database

Guest post by Paul N Richter 2005-05-03 Databases 53 Comments

The mid-market is hot. It is forecasted to be the main growth segment in the IT market for the next few years. As such, it is fiercely contested by the major software makers. The BBC recently even called it a 60 billion dollar software battle. What exactly constitutes the mid-market is a bit vague, but some define it as businesses ranging from 50 to 1,000 employees.

Revisited: HD h.264 Support on the PC Side

Eugenia Loli 2005-05-03 Multimedia, AV 102 Comments

A few days ago I wrote on my blog about the "sorry state of proper h.264 support on the PC". The bottomline was that if you need some good HD h.264 support for HD videos the solution is Apple's G5 with Qt 7 PRO, or QuickTime 7 PRO for Windows (whenever this is going to be released). The existing PC solutions (Win or Linux) were ranging from bad to terrible with all-time-worse being mplayer's support (about 0.3 fps on the 1080p Serenity trailer on a 2.8 GHz P4) and 'best' the Elecard Moonlight player that could barely do about 10 fps on a brand new 3 GHz P4-630. However...

The Future of Windows’ Graphics Technology

Eugenia Loli 2005-05-03 Windows 133 Comments

Underlying Longhorn is the Windows Graphics Foundation, or WGF. The first version, prosaically dubbed "WGF 1.0" will incorporate DirectX 9.0c as its primary interface. Longhorn will also have the next-generation 3D API also built in at release. You can think of it as "Direct3D 10," but it's currently called WGF 2.0.

SuSE Linux Professional 9.3 Review; FTP install available

Submitted by Matthias Toth 2005-05-03 SuSE, openSUSE 31 Comments

Novell's SuSE Linux Professional 9.3 is a solid, comprehensive Linux distribution that provides access to the latest technologies the open-source software world has to offer—with a level of polish that's superior to most other general-purpose distributions. SuSE Linux Professional 9.3 fits well as a desktop or notebook distribution, particularly for developers and system administrators new to Linux, says eWeek. Also, this does seem to be the boot ISO for the FTP install.

The .NET Show: The Future of the Platform

Eugenia Loli 2005-05-03 Microsoft 2 Comments

In this special 50th episode of the .NET Show, Rick Rashid, Brad Abrams, John Shewchuk, and Michael Wallent discuss where the Microsoft platform technologies can, should, and will be going in the future. This show also features a special interview with Bill Gates.