OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Gcc 3.4.3 Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-06 General Development 20 Comments

The GNU Compiler Collection is a suite of compilers that compile C, C++, Objective C, Fortran, Java, and CHILL for a wide variety of architectures. Version 3.4.3 was released recently.

Xen 2.0 Released

Submitted by Mark Williamson 2004-11-06 OS News 24 Comments

The Xen team announced the release of Xen 2.0, the open-source Virtual Machine Monitor.

October Syllable Newsletter Out; SkyOS Gets Firefox

Submitted by M Saunders 2004-11-06 Syllable, AtheOS 23 Comments

The latest Syllable Development Newsletter is available, covering work in October. Highlights include driver updates, kernel improvements and a Quake 2 port. Elsewhere, after almost a month of daily work, Mozilla Firefox has been successfully ported to SkyOS (still in beta). This native port will bring a much-needed professional web browser to SkyOS.

Java 5 source code is available

Submitted by aaa 2004-11-06 Java 26 Comments

J2SE 5.0 sources are now available under the Java Research License.This is a much more relaxed licence than previous SCSL license.

Mac OS X 10.3.6 released

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-05 macOS 23 Comments

Apple today released Mac OS X 10.3.6 via the Software Update preference pane. According to the release notes, the update delivers enhanced functionality and improved reliability for Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) and is recommended for all users.

RISC OS 5.08 Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-05 RISC OS 6 Comments

Castle today released a slight update to its RISC OS 5 for Iyonix machines, version 5.08. This is a bug fix release, addressing issues seen by a few users.

Interview with Richard Stallman

Submitted by W. da Rocha Lima 2004-11-05 Open Source 132 Comments

I think it's not needed to introduce Richard Stallman, however: Richard Matthew Stallman, or just RMS, is the GNU project founder. It's a little difficult to interview someone like Stallman. I tried to make him talk about some technical issues, but he's extremely concerned about the ideology behind free software. Freedom is his slogan and he defends it as he defends his life." Read Interview.

Palm OS Cobalt 6.1 simulator available

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-05 Wireless 24 Comments

PalmSource has released a simulator for its latest Palm OS Cobalt 6.1 OS. The simulator allows software developers to test their programs without actually having a handheld running the new OS.

LinuxCertified LC2430 Laptop Review

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-05 Hardware 81 Comments

San Jose-based LinuxCertified.com sent us one of their best-selling laptops, the LC2430. We've used it for more than a month with four different distributions and here's what we think about it.

GNOME 2.9.1 Development Release Available

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-05 Gnome 71 Comments

The first test version of the upcoming Gnome 2.10 is now available. In the meantime, discussion about proposed modules to join 2.10 is under way.

Java licensing vs. Standards

Submitted by Anonymous 2004-11-05 Java 54 Comments

This article over at Javalobby on the problems with the current Java license, as well as some of the possible alternatives. It discusses the pros and cons of the Sun license, the GPL, and submitting Java to a standards body.

GNUstep 1.10.1 Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-04 OpenStep, GNUstep 22 Comments

GNUstep is a cross-platform, object oriented environment composed of frameworks, tools, and servers (daemons). In the new version, An NSXMLParser class was added. Runtime discovery of the library version is now possible. NSArrays makeObjectsPerformSelector now iterates in same order as Mac OS X. The designated initializers for NSArray, NSDictionary, NSSet, and NSString were changed for Mac OS X compatibility.

Apple seeds Tiger Server A8297, Mac OS X 10.3.6 7R28

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-04 macOS 23 Comments

Apple Computer last evening seeded its developers with Mac OS X 10.4 Server "Tiger" build A8297. The 1.6GB DVD image distribution marks the first time that Apple has offered Tiger. Elsewhere, With Apple Computer threatening to push his product aside, longtime Mac developer Arlo Rose has moved his Konfabulator over to Windows.

Mozilla Releases Firefox 1.0 RC2

Submitted by Tudy 2004-11-04 Mozilla, Gecko 43 Comments

The Mozilla Project released Firefox 1.0-RC2 for testing. Thunderbird 0.9 also available.

Optimize TCP/IP performance by a factor of four

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-04 Internet 18 Comments

One of the key components in the TCP/IP protocol stack is the checksum computation, which ensures the integrity of the transferred data. This computation can be greatly accelerated with the use of single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) units prevalent in state-of-the-art processors. This article analyzes a former vectorization effort, shows how it can be improved upon, and then enhances it further.

Yellowdog Linux ships

Guest post by de_board 2004-11-04 Linux 27 Comments

After a long delay, Yellow Dog Linux 4.0 is now shipping. Yellow Dog is a Fedora-based Linux distribution for PowerPC processors.

Processor Fabrication: How a CPU is Built

Submitted by Tudy 2004-11-04 Hardware 13 Comments

While it's nice to just look at the finished product itself, sometimes it's useful to go back and look at how it's made. Especially today in the silicon industry, where both major players in the x86 desktop market are having issues with their top end products. Another large member of the industry, IBM, is also finding the going at 90nanometer a lot harder than they predicted. Today on Sudhian, we'll take a look at just how a processor goes from essentially sand to a fully functioning integrated circuit, and all the steps in between.

Mono 1.0.4 Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-04 Mono 37 Comments

Novell released Mono 1.0.4 recently, along with testing version 1.1.2.

Poll: Vote for your Favorite Package Management Front-End

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-03 Rumors 113 Comments

Come in and vote for your favorite front-end of package management solutions (Javascript req). Update: The "Other" option was removed and all its votes deleted, as the last hour it got hammered by script kiddies and went from 5% to 39% unaturally fast. The poll is now closed.

Quick How-To: Booting FreeVMS under Bochs

Guest post by mariuz 2004-11-03 OS News 10 Comments

We assume Bochs is already installed. You can download an bootable Bochs disk image from here. Then uncompress it with "tar -jxvf disk1.tar.bz2" and modify Bochs' configuration (make the cd bootable) ~/.bochsrc: boot: disk ata0-master: type=disk, mode=flat, translation=auto, path="/freevms/freevms.dsk", cylinders=130, heads=16, spt=63, biosdetect=auto, model="Generic 1234". It should show you this boot prompt. More FreeVMS info here.