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

Fink 0.7.1 Released

This release has 1650 binary packages available now. This includes binaries for KDE 3.1.4 and GNOME 2.4. The package manager has been improved and now includes a versatile system for handling variants. More documentation has been added featuring translations into Japanese, French, and Simpl. Chinese.

Novell Turns Up the Volume for Mono 2

"Novell has lifted the lid on enhancements integrated into the next major release of Mono, its development platform for enabling Microsoft .Net applications to run unchanged on Linux. The forthcoming version, due to ship next March, will implement a native Visual Basic (VB.Net) compiler and Windows Forms (WinForms)." Read more at vnunet.com.

Backing up your Linux Desktop with rsync

Rsync is a command line utility traditionally used in synchronizing files between two computers, but rsync can also be used as an effective backup tool. This article explain how to use rsync to backup your computer to a drive attached to your system. You can use a removable drive, such as an external USB hard drive, so that you can store the backups in a safe place away from your working environment.

Preview: Fedora Core 3 Test 2

Fedora Core 3 Test2 was released today, and so here's a chance to preview the software. I've been eager to try out Gnome 2.8 and KDE 3.3, so I tried to install them on my Core 2 box, which resulted in a severe package dependency crisis, so since Test 2 was released today I figured I would just reformat and install it for kicks, and to get my KDE 3.3. Screenshots from FC3-T2 can be found here.

Sun Begins pay-as-you-go Supercomputing; Sun to buy MontaVista?

Sun Microsystems plans to announce a plan Tuesday to let customers rent supercomputing power from the company's data centers, paying for exactly as much muscle as they need. Also, Sun is in talks to purchase a profitable Linux distributor, sources have told internetnews.com. Sources close to the discussions said they expected that company to be embedded Linux player MontaVista, but cautioned that the deal wasn't finalized and talks could still break down.

“Sky Captain” Flies to Big Screen – With the Help of Macs

Among the many wonders of director Kerry Conran’s debut feature movie, “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow,” none is more remarkable than how he tried to make it — on a single desktop computer, in 1994, before desktop computers were ready to fully cooperate. Conran used a Mac IIsi and later a Mac Quadra 840AV which was point he realized that he needed hardware and special software to help him realize the dream, as the available resources back then were less than satisfiable.

Solaris 10 Shines in Early Testing

Sun is expected to unveil a collection of new products and services at its quarterly systems release event in New York. Sun executives will take the stage in New York this week to display Solaris 10, the next version of that operating environment; clarify the vision for the product; and define the rationale for moving it to open source. Elsewhere: "I get confused by a lot of Sun's technology advertising and marketing," writes Roger Strukhoff. But there are numerous reasons not to give up on Sun, he argues.

Firefox Preview Hits a Home Run

Some say the Browser Wars are over. They couldn't be more wrong. Microsoft won Round One, and Round Two is just beginning, with the impending release of Firefox 1.0. Who'll be the ultimate victor? Only time will tell. But ExtremeTech thinks that Firefox has a decent shot at taking the crown... especially since Microsoft seems to have taken its eye off the browser ball.

Longhorn Changes May Affect Microsoft’s Tools Strategy

Microsoft officials earlier this month announced the company is cutting some key features, such as the WinFS file system, from Longhorn, the next major version of Windows, to meet its late-2006 deadline. That time frame, however, is also putting in question two significant development efforts: "Orcas," a future version of the Visual Studio tool set, and "Avalon," Longhorn's presentation-layer subsystem.

Desktop Linux thinks small

Linux is expected to make steady gains over the next few years on the desktop PCs of small businesses, according to a new report. The report, released Monday by The Yankee Group, says Linux has minimal presence among business with 500 employees or fewer, with not even 1 percent of such companies currently using Linux on desktop PCs. That will change, however, as companies replace aging equipment running outdated software.

SkyOS Internal Beta 7.9: (A Very Short) Overview

"Yesterday eXpert Zone announced the release of the internal 7.9 beta of SkyOS to a limited amount of "insiders", just to make sure that when beta 8 is released later on to the beta team, the largest bugs would've been squashed. Now, I happened to be one of them lucky few, so here is a quick overview of beta 7.9." Read on for the rest of this overview here.