OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

A Preview of Windows Mobile 2005; Opie 1.2 is Out

Eugenia Loli 2005-03-28 Wireless 18 Comments

A beta version of Magneto leaked out: This version of the OS, which is expected to be called Windows Mobile 2005, will have a number of significant changes from the current one. Elsewhere, the Opie Project is pleased to announce the availability of version 1.2 with many new features.

Perspectives on the Shared Source Initiative

Eugenia Loli 2005-03-28 Microsoft 11 Comments

Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative seems like an odd mix for the company when it works openly and a clever shot across the bow of open source when it works selfishly. How can the rest of us reconcile both positions? Microsoft ex-employee Stephen Walli shares his perspectives on the Shared Source Initiative from within and without the company.

Adelstein: Red Hat Desktop Goes to the Head of the Class

Submitted by Sam Hiser 2005-03-28 Red Hat 20 Comments

Tom Adelstein, distinguished analyst at Hiser + Adelstein in New York, says in his review today on Linux Journal that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) destkop (not Fedora)--this is the one selling in units of 10 for $2,500--"meets and exceeds" the criteria established by the Open Source Maturity Model and most surely the standards established by the legacy desktop system many organizations are finding to be unacceptably compromised and overbought.

Mandrakelinux Corporate Server 3.0

Eugenia Loli 2005-03-28 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 9 Comments

Mandrakesoft's MCS 3.0 ships with a typical range of open-source server software and a set of configuration tools that we found unusually approachable. However, MCS 3.0 faces stiff competition not only from its most direct rivals—RHEL and SLES—but also from less costly alternatives such as Debian and slicker-looking options such as Mac OS X Server. As such, MCS 3.0 will fit best at sites with a pre-existing Mandrake presence, sats eWeek.

Microsoft to rename media player-less Windows

Eugenia Loli 2005-03-28 Windows 34 Comments

Microsoft will rename a product it was ordered by the European Commission to offer--a version of Windows with its media player removed.

Java fallout: OpenOffice.org 2.0 and the FOSS community

Eugenia Loli 2005-03-28 Open Source 84 Comments

Several new features of the recently released OpenOffice.org 2.0 beta require a Java Runtime Environment (JRE). Since Java's license is neither free nor open source, a small but vocal minority has responded both strongly and negatively.

One Million Solaris 10 Licenses Distributed in First Two Months

Eugenia Loli 2005-03-28 Solaris 42 Comments

Sun today announced that it has distributed more than one million registered licenses for the Solaris 10 OS since Jan. 31, when the software became available on Sun's Web site. Sun also announced that the Solaris 10 OS has set fourteen world-record benchmarks in this same timeframe and demonstrated application performance improvements greater than 50 times that of previous versions of Solaris.

New Haiku Newsletter

Submitted by Kevin Field 2005-03-28 Haiku 20 Comments

The folks at Haiku have put out another newsletter, with two more articles from the series on coding Replicants, and another editorial from the quotable MJP.

Fedora Core x86-64 Hints ‘n’ Tips

Guest post by Anton Andreev 2005-03-28 Fedora Core 36 Comments

The following article summarizes my experience with AMD64 and Fedora Core x86-64 in desktop systems. In a few years all new computers will be 64 bit. Microsoft and Intel are positive about the 64 bit direction, and Linux seems to be ahead of Wintel for now.

Take the Gnome Desktop Survey

Eugenia Loli 2005-03-28 Gnome 42 Comments

HASE is investigating parts of the usability of GNOME. You can participate on the survey here.

Gentoo 2005.0 released

Submitted by Gene Resnik 2005-03-28 Gentoo 50 Comments

Gentoo Linux is proud to bring you the long awaited Gentoo Linux 2005.0 release.

MorphOS 1.4.4 released

Submitted by Joël EHRET 2005-03-28 Morphos 21 Comments

Celebrating the 6th anniversary of MorphOS, version 1.4.4 is now available. This is the last bugfix update before the next full release, and solves many bugs and problems with the previous releases. The update is currently only available to users who have registered themselves. Fixes in the 1.4.4 release include support for large harddrives, ability to read DVDs in their entirety, important bug fixes to SFS, audio, 68k emulation, network card drivers and many other things. See releasenotes for more information.

Autopackage 1.0 Released

Eugenia Loli 2005-03-28 General Development 33 Comments

With Autopackage officially declared stable, there is now an easy way for developers to create up to date, easy installable packages. Expect an Autopackage article later this week at OSNews.

SkyOS Beta 8.4 Released

Submitted by J@F 2005-03-28 SkyOS 28 Comments

From Expert-Zone: "SkyOS Beta 8.4 has been released to the beta team today. Important changes inlcude GI3D, screensaver support, drastically improved Ati Radeon performance, improved networking, a (hopefully) fixed RealTek driver, and much, much more. Beta team members will know where to go."

IBM Performance Simulator for Linux on POWER

Eugenia Loli 2005-03-28 IBM 5 Comments

The IBM Performance Simulator for Linux on POWER is a suite of performance models based on IBM's POWER series of processors. Users of Linux on POWER will be able to examine how their code executes on various IBM POWER processors so that they can identify and avoid common performance hazards on these processors.

Interview with mach_inject creator for OS X/Darwin

Submitted by Bill Hong 2005-03-28 BSD & Darwin 4 Comments

There's an interview up with the creator of mach_inject, the OSS libraries that lets many apps override functions in any running process to change its behavior. It is very long, and touches on everything from compilers on the PowerPC to Apple's difficulties in breaking into the business market and why WebObjects is dying.

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.