OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Casinos Merge Video Games and Gambling

David Adams 2004-11-08 Games 4 Comments

The latest generation of gamblers in Las Vegas don't like the high-profit-margin slot and video poker machines as much as the older crowd, so casinos are changing with the times. They're developing video game-like slot machines, and even machines that simulate table games with a virtual dealer. A Star Wars-based slot machine allows players to bet on a light saber duel between Vader and Obi-Wan.

Darwin 7.6 sources Available

Submitted by Andreas 2004-11-07 BSD & Darwin 16 Comments

As always after a minor OSX revision, Apple has posted updated sources for Darwin.

CrayCore version 0.3 released

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-07 OS News 9 Comments

CrayCore is a CRAY YMP-EL Emulator. Currently, CrayCore executes instructions one at a time, through a command line interface. Future plans are to slowly add features until CrayCore is fully able to run Unicos. CrayCore version .3 has been released, in two packages, a source.zip, and a win32 binary. New features include light memory support, vector support, and many more opcodes. Be sure to check OpcodesTwo.txt, included with both packages for status on which instructions are implemented, and how to use them.

Introducing BlueIllusion OS

Submitted by distantvoices 2004-11-07 OS News 35 Comments

The author of the hobby OS Blueillusion writes:

Running Linux on Windows

Submitted by Barney Matthews 2004-11-07 Linux 22 Comments

There are a couple of ways you can try Linux before installing it on your hard drive. One way is to use a live cd, another way is to run it on Windows. Damn Small Linux has a version designed to run directly from Windows. Read more.

FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE Available

Submitted by Bascule 2004-11-07 FreeBSD 102 Comments

FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE is now officially available. This release marks a milestone in the FreeBSD 5.x series and the beginning of the 5-STABLE branch of releases. New features from 4.x include massively upgraded SMP scalability including the new KSE M:N threading implementation, and the new ULE constant time scheduler (currently switched off per default). All in all these features bring scalability of kernel features on SMP systems (at least small to midrange systems) more or less on par with the Linux 2.6 kernel series with the NPTL threads library.

PDA Makers Won’t Commit on PalmOS 6.1

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-06 Wireless 37 Comments

"Nobody knows when we'll start the shift to Cobalt, OS 6, or on which devices. For now, we're saying that we've built the functionality we need into the Treo and the Tungsten T5 and there's no need to confuse developers by switching. I'm not even prepared to commit us to a change next year, or the year after, at this stage", said PalmONE president Ed Colligan. It is interesting to see how companies afraid to switch to new programming frameworks in fear that they will allienate their third party developers who are used to the "old way". Nobody likes big changes, it seems.

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Special

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-06 macOS 116 Comments

IT-Enquirer has a three-part special on Mac OS X 10.4: Part 1, 2 and 3. Update: I declare the comments section on this news item to be a disaster zone. It can't be saved. Just stay away.

PearPC .4pre released and speed comes along with it

Guest post by Patrick Weber 2004-11-06 macOS 28 Comments

Although it is not an official build, PearPC .4pre has been released on Richard Goodwin's site. You can pick it up here.

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.