Speeding up Xorg’s RENDER

Wayland 27 Comments
Some Trolltech programmers are doing some optimization work in the x.org RENDER extension. RENDER has been used with COMPOSITE to make "transparency" and "shadow" effects, and its slowness has stopped it from being widely adopted. Hopefully, this optimization work will make things better, although it's not clear in the email if this addresses the "XAA sucks, someone needs to take KAA to x.org" problem which is often said to be the real problem of render slowness. RENDER is also often used to do more things, like AA fonts, so this will be good for X desktop in general.
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Mandriva (ex Mandrake) Linux LE 2005 hits FTP mirrors

  Submitted by Ulteam Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 11 Comments
A test version of Mandriva Linux, Limited Edition 2005 is now available as a full FTP installation tree which can be downloaded on a number of FTP mirrors. This new release includes up to date flagship software such as GNOME 2.8.2, Gimp 2.2, OpenOffice.org 1.1.4 and many others: more than 10,000 applications are provided (main + contribs + jpackages), for both x86-32 and x86-64 processors.
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DVD-Jon plans mobile phone revolution?

Wireless 18 Comments
Linuxlookup.com is reporting on famous Norwegian hacker "DVD-Jon" wants to turn the mobile phone world upside down. In an article in Norwegian daily "Dagens Næringsliv" Jon's father Per Johan Johansen says "It's simply a new way to use the net. With the new software we have developed, your mobile phone will be able to do all new things. Telenor and Netcom will hate this. They will panic, as this will give a whole new pricing system on services."
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USENIX 2005: Unix in Southern California (day two)

Unix 8 Comments
This is a report on the second day of USENIX 2005. You might want to start with my report on day one. Day two started off a bit slowly. Oh wait, actually I started off a bit slowly. That could have been from the margaritas last night at La Casa Garcia, a Mexican restaurant a few blocks down the street from the Anaheim Marriott. Good Mexican food is one of the things I miss the most since I moved from California to New York two years ago. Luckily, the food at La Casa Garcia was excellent.
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DESKWORK – The Sci-fi in DOS

OS News 41 Comments
I just want to show you a great add-on for DOS, called DESKWORK. It's an operating system build upon DOS, just like older Windows versions were build upon DOS. It has been written by Konstantin Koll for several years now, who founded a small company called Mystic Bytes to produce DESKWORK.
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Inotify replaces Dnotify in the 2.6 Kernel

Linux 24 Comments
Inotify is a file system event-monitoring mechanism slated for inclusion in upcoming Linux™ kernels that is designed to serve as an effective replacement for dnotify, which was the de facto file-monitoring mechanism supported in older kernels. Inotify is a powerful, fine-grained, asynchronous mechanism ideally suited for a variety of file-monitoring needs including, but not limited to, security and performance.
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SP2 And The Damage Done

  Submitted by Geoff Floding Windows 44 Comments
Many users and IT administrators had a lot to say about Microsoft's removal of the "blocker" mechanism this week, which had temporarily disabled the delivery of WinXP SP2. THG contacted members of the IT community and spoke with often-cited security experts, who discussed their concerns about the damage SP2 may cause and some cases where the download might really be necessary.
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Tenor: Beyond Search and into the Contextual for KDE

  Submitted by David KDE 18 Comments
There's been quite a lot of buzz around so-called 'search' tools lately, from the on/off WinFS, to Beagle and Apple's Spotlight. Tenor is KDE's proposed 'framework' for taking this even further. Kurt Pfeifle, along with insights from Scott Wheeler (one of Tenor's authors and primary designers), sat down to talk about the current problems, Tenor itself, how the thinking is different and how KDE's flexible technology provides a solid basis for making it happen.
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USENIX 2005: Unix in Southern California

Unix 18 Comments
This is the 30th anniversary of USENIX, the Advanced Computer Association. USENIX was started in 1975 as 'The Unix Users Group' and has been holding regular conferences ever since (along with many other activities, of course). USENIX focuses on the Unix world, including unix-like OSes like Linux. The USENIX conference is the place to go if you want to find out about topics such as advanced system administration or the latest filesystem research projects. USENIX is a blend of academic presentations and socialization. If you want to ask Andy Tanenbaum what he thinks of Linux, you can do it at USENIX.
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