Linux Looms Larger Than Thought

The overall Linux market is far larger than previous estimates show, a new study says. In an analysis of the Linux market released late Tuesday, market research firm IDC estimated that the Linux market -- including servers, PCs and packaged software -- is expected to register a 26% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over five years, reaching a whopping $35.7 billion by 2008.

OpenCVS Under Development, to be Released Soon

The OpenBSD project will soon release OpenCVS, a GNU CVS compatible, BSD licensed alternative. "The OpenCVS project was started after discussions regarding the latest GNU CVS vulnerabilities that came out. Although CVS is widely used, its development has been mostly stagnant in the last years and many security issues have popped up, both in the implementation and in the mechanisms."

Sun’s New “Read-Only” License

Sun has put its TestingComatiblityKit (TCK) for Java under a "Read-Only-License". This means that you are allowed to look at the source-code but you are not allowed to modify or compile it. For more information, a couple of Sun people's blogs address the subject here and here. For a perspective from outside Sun, see here and here. Read the license here. And retrieve the source code of the TCK here.

Automate the process of documenting your code

We all understand the need to comprehensively document our class libraries and to keep it up to date with the code base. And still, documentation is an ongoing pain for all of us. The Visual Studio .NET IDE takes a first big step in easing that pain. It allows to document your code in a way that the compiler can create an XML document describing your classes, methods, properties, etc. This article explains how to use this feature and then create a basic help file out of it.

Linux has fewer bugs than rivals

Standford University research team has found that Linux has fewer bugs than the competition using Coverity, a static source code analysis tool. Andrew Morton, one of the core developers says that the major bugs detected using this tool have already been fixed. It might be of interest that Linus Trovalds has developed a similar tool called sparse specifically for the Linux kernel which has proved itself to be pretty useful.

Run a Windows X Server From a CD

XLiveCD is an X Server that runs off of a Live CD for Windows. Put the CD in the drive and the X server and an Xterm both autostart, allowing you to ssh into a machine and run X-forwarded applications. This is great for use in public labs where you may want to run those remote Linux apps and don't have an X server installed. Built with Cygwin and a few other packages. See the home page for downloads, or just grab the torrent here.

FreeBSD: ULE Scheduler Status

Since the decision to demote ULE in favor of the 4BSD scheduler as the default for FreeBSD's 5.3-Release, many improvements to both schedulers have been committed. At the time it was marked broken, ULE was especially needy in light of the status of its maintainership, performance issues, and its unreliable nature in conjunction with threading and kernel preemption. Having resolved these problems, Jeff Roberson announces to -current that the ULE code is now in working order, kerneltrap reports.

Australian Police Given Power to Use Spyware

Federal and state police now have the power to use computer spyware to gather evidence in a broad range of investigations after legal changes last week. The Surveillance Devices Act allows police to obtain a warrant to use software surveillance technologies, including systems that track and log keystrokes on a computer keyboard. The law applies to the Australian Federal Police and to state police investigating Commonwealth offences. Read More ("smhguy/pass" to access)

New Thin Client Software from Sun

Sun Microsystems' new Sun Ray Server 3.0 might actually bring thin clients into the ready for prime-time category. The big breakthrough is the bandwidth management software that allows these clients to run across standard high speed internet connections. Though they're still targeting large organizations, this new version opens up the home market, via internet providers. A company like AOL could market a totally managed thin client with a monthly service fee.

GnomeMeeting 1.2 Released

GnomeMeeting, the VoIP and IP telephony application for Linux systems, just released version 1.2. It will be the last release to support only H.323, as next release will also support SIP. The new version sports integration with Novell Evolution 2.00, PC-To-Phone calls with no additional hardware and free codecs, and Rendez-Vous support. See http://www.gnomemeeting.org for more info.

Xfce 4.2RC2 Available

The Xfce project finally finished the second release candidate for the upcoming Xfce Desktop Environment 4.2. This second release candidate is expected to be the last release candidate before the final release, which is planned to happen in about 2 or 3 weeks. This RC2 includes several bugfixes, esp. the window manager has seen quite a few important fixes, and it is the first release in the 4.2 branch that builds and runs on Solaris out of the box. As usual, prebuilt packages for several plattforms are already available (as a highlight: Debian/amd64 packages) and the graphical installers have been update to 4.2RC2. Please check the Xfce website for further details.

Review: Xandros Desktop 3 Deluxe

There's always a lot of excitement when a major Linux distribution has a new release - there's the clamour for the release notes and changelog, as well as the insatiable urge for screenshots and the search for the torrent for the ISOs. The release of Xandros Desktop 3.0 last week was no exception, with OS fanatics everywhere curious just what was in store. Read on for details.