Keep OSNews alive by becoming a Patreon, by donating through Ko-Fi, or by buying merch!

Microsoft To Offer Anti-Spyware Tool

Within 30 days, Microsoft will have a tool available to remove spyware from Windows PCs. The tool comes from a small company called Giant Company Software that Microsoft recently acquired. The anti-spyware tool will initially be free, but Microsoft has stated that it may eventually charge for the program. Update: It seems that another company has co-ownership of the code that Microsoft bought in this acquisition.

Rethinking the OS

Every hard-core OS aficionado has done it: Laid out a grand scheme for creating the perfect OS. Taking all the best features and attributes from the OSes we love, and making sure to assiduously avoid the pitfalls of the OSes we don't. Maybe our goals were modest, and we just wanted a slightly tweaked version of an existing OS. But sometimes we're feeling ambitious, and we have large, creative ideas for revolutionizing computing. Long-time OSNews reader and contributor J. Scott Edwards just couldn't help himself, and he has set about to not only plan, but to try to build his dream OS.

Recent HP-Intel Announcements About Itanium

Bob Gezelter writes: On December 16th, an article was posted on OSNews that stated, in effect, that HP was "Exiting Itanium". A careful review of the facts suggests that this press report was based upon an incomplete understanding of the HP-Intel arrangememnts. I have just published an article on OpenVMS.org, based directly on public published information, containing a more complete reprise of this week's announcements. Update: HP will be investing $3 billion on its Itanium-based server line.

Implementing Hardware RAID on FreeBSD

RAID has been around for over 15 years. Why use RAID? For me, the reasons are redundancy and reliability. I don't like disk failures. By running RAID, a disk failure will not take down my system; it still runs after a disk fails. When a disk does fail, I still have my system, and I can find another drive, add it to the system, and be ready for the next failure. Read More at ONLamp.

A Second Opinion on a Sun Reality Check

Some time back, I promised to double-check Sun executive Larry Singer’s “Reality Check” missives on HP. A week ago, Mr. Singer penned a Reality Check that, in light of HP’s decision to cancel its TruCluster integration effort, does in fact reflect more reality than rhetoric. It also reflects Mr. Singer’s opinions, some of which differ from mine. Presented herewith is Larry’s write-up, laced with a few comments of my own.

Embed Perl Scripting in C applications

You get the benefits of an established language to expand the functionality of your application in a flexible way without users having to rebuild the application to use it. In this tutorial, you'll learn a process for embedding a scripting language into an application. You'll see how to build the application and how to provide wrapper functions that support full argument and return value support.

The Five Gifts of Christmas

With just a short time before Christmas, you may be wondering what little stocking stuffer you can get for your technically obsessed co-worker, computer savvy boss or geeky family member. It is not too late to pick out a gift that will stay out of the closet of useless gifts after the party's over. Timothy R. Butler looks at five gift ideas at OfB.biz.

Linspire Seeks Dutch Contract

Linspire chief executive Michael Robertson and president Kevin Carmony are trying to earn the right to pitch Linspire desktops to the Dutch government. Microsoft's proposal, they say, is about 150 million euros more for a product that is very similar functionally. More here and, of course, from Linspire.

InfoWorld Thinks Apple Will Use IBM’s Power5 Sometime in 2005

In a special report on IBM's Power5 Processor family, the bigger, badder cousin of the G5 PowerPC processor Apple uses in Power Mac and iMac models, InfoWorld predicts that some form of the Power5 will make its way to a Mac soon."PowerPC and Power form a continuum of compatible, and now open, processor designs," writes reported Tom Yaeger, "and our guess is that the Power5 design will arrive in some form in an Apple machine in 2005.

Apple Releases X 10.3.7

Apple has released OS X 10.3.7 via Software Update. Improvements include improved AFP support for saving documents with long file names, improved OpenGL technology and updated ATI and NVIDIA graphics drivers, improved FireWire device compatibility, updated Preview application, improved compatibility for third party applications, and previous standalone security updates. Read more here.

Xandros Desktop OS Version 3.0 – Deluxe Edition Review

"Xandros Desktop OS Version 3.0 is billed as "an intuitive graphical environment that works right out of the box and offers unrivaled compatibility with Microsoft Windows". So it's pretty clear what the market of the product is - all the millions of Windows users that are fed up with an unstable operating system, want something for email and web browsing, and be able to create, edit and send the boss their Word, Excel and Visio files." Read the rest at linuxlinks.com.

Fedora Projects Opens up CVS Access

It has been a while since Redhat announced the merger with Fedora.us and the formation of a community oriented and supported Fedora project. The process of opening up CVS access to the community is one of the major steps towards that and that has finally happened, according to Red Hat. The build infrastructure internally used by Redhat should open up soon and formation of fedora extras and policies would complete the process.