OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Linux: Debating The Merits Of Kernel Preemption

Eugenia Loli 2004-10-07 Linux 19 Comments

In response to a recent bug report on the lkml, Jeff Garzik, the maintainer of the Serial ATA subsystem and network device drivers, had some harsh words for kernel preemption. In the bug report it was mention that kernel preemption was enabled to which Jeff replied, "I strongly recommend disabling kernel preemption. It is a hack that hides bugs". The comment lead into an interesting discussion.

NetBSD 2.0RC1 timings

Submitted by John Finigan 2004-10-07 NetBSD 22 Comments

John Finigan has made a few timing benchmarks of a kernel compile on NetBSD 2.0RC1 on single, dual, and quad SPARC configurations.

Crypto-loops on Linux

Submitted by David 2004-10-07 Linux 12 Comments

Modern operating systems give you the possibility to encrypt filesystems. Or virtual filesystem as the loopback ones. This article discuss two ways of getting an encrypted loopback on linux.

Who can beat down Microsoft in the embedded systems market?

Guest post by Robert kao 2004-10-07 Editorial 31 Comments

I believe that many IT CEOs want to beat down Microsoft in the new embedded systems market, but they always encounter numerous obstacles.

Haiku Closer and Closer; ICO a Zeta Distributor

Eugenia Loli 2004-10-07 Zeta 48 Comments

In this screenshot you can see an updated /lib folder serving BeOS. In the folder, every library present, with the exception of libbe, libroot (and libGL which it comes from the MESA project) are Haiku libs. Hopefully, soon Haiku will be able to replace and extend on the original BeOS. On related news, IsComputerOn is now the distributors of YellowTAB's Zeta in North America.

Novell/SUSE’s Chris Schlaeger talks about KDE

Submitted by Daniel Molkentin 2004-10-07 Novell and Ximian 91 Comments

In this interview, Chris Schlaeger, Vice President R&D for SUSE/Novell and long time KDE contributer, talks about Novells desktop plans, OpenOffice.org Integration, Groupwise support in KDE's instant messanger Kopete, the Kontact groupware client as well as the integration of the Gecko rendering engine into Konqueror. He also shares interesting opinions and ideas for the future of KDE.

R 2.0.0 Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-10-06 General Development 6 Comments

R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics. Many things have changed since 1.0. The R language has acquired namespaces, exception handling constructs, formal methods and classes, much improved garbage collection, generalized I/O via connection objects, and considerable improvements in the graphics area. The user workspace has been reorganized, and so has the set of packages that ship with R. Several "recommended packages" deemed indispensable in a statistical system are bundled.

Using .NET generics for fast numerical calculations

Guest post by Rüdiger Klaehn 2004-10-06 .NET 30 Comments

The current implementation of generics in .NET 2.0 does a very good job to make typed collections faster and more easy to use. But as many people have noticed, it leaves much to be desired when you want to do calculations with generic types.

SuSE Linux 9.2 Announced; Novell’s SuSE woos Linux ‘newcomers’

Submitted by TyrNight 2004-10-06 SuSE, openSUSE 39 Comments

Novell has claimed that its forthcoming SuSE Linux Professional 9.2 distribution will appeal to "Linux newcomers" as well as technical enthusiasts. Also, Novell's Nat Friedman, vice-president of its desktop technology group, said open source vendors work off a modular, flexible development model that allows them to deliver new features to customers more regularly than Microsoft. Novell has also said Microsoft's Longhorn delay will give it more time to push iFolder, which, like WinFS, stores data in a user's real file system and tracks metadata in a separate location.

Mandrakesoft finds new roots; Mandrakesoft Move Released

Submitted by Chris Mind 2004-10-06 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 6 Comments

The past few years have been a roller coaster ride for Paris-based Mandrakesoft, which filed for bankruptcy protection in January 2003, emerged in March 2004 with a nine-month plan to repay its creditors, thanks in part to the company's first profitable quarter in the Q4 2003. Read the interview here. Elsewhere, a new version of the Mandrakelinux live CD, "Move", has been released.

McNealy: Microsoft needs Sun to beat IBM and Red Hat

Submitted by spank_da_monkey 2004-10-06 Oracle and SUN 183 Comments

Whatever pleasantries once existed between Sun and Red Hat have vanished. This won't come as a shock to many of you. The companies have been jawing in the press for some time. The extent, however, of Sun's loathing for Red Hat is more profound than many imagine, with Sun's CEO Scott McNealy largely confirming a shared attack with Microsoft against the Linux vendor.

Turbolinux Announces Release of Turbolinux 10 Server

Eugenia Loli 2004-10-06 Linux 3 Comments

Turbolinux today announced the anticipated release of Turbolinux 10 Server (10S). Turbolinux 10S significantly expands on the high performance capabilities of its first-generation predecessor, Turbolinux 8 Server, released in October of 2002.

McOS Re 0.4.1 Released

Submitted by Paul McLauren 2004-10-06 OS News 32 Comments

The first bootable release of McOS Re 0.4.1 is available. McOS Re is a project dedicated to the re-creation of the Traditional Mac OS. The first goal is to be source- and binary-compatible with native PowerPC code for Mac OS.

Open Source Software: Customers Define the Field We Play On

Guest post by Dave Richards 2004-10-06 Open Source 34 Comments

We're a small, Open Source software vendor that's been offering a variant of an Open Source CRM since 2000. We have some large corporate clients with significant installations and hundreds and hundreds of users with smaller ones. Our product is called Centric CRM though until recently it was known as Dark Horse CRM.

What would happen to Java if Sun…

Submitted by Anonymous 2004-10-06 Java 57 Comments

This article discusses a topic that is often discussed among Java developers, and raised as a problem with Java's license by GPL advocates. What would happen to Java if Sun were to go out of business or be aquired by another company? Unfortunately, the article really doesn't give any answers. It only raises more questions and leaves room for lots of discussion.

Microsoft prepares to kill Linux with different Windows flavours

Eugenia Loli 2004-10-06 Windows 56 Comments

Microsoft is developing versions of Windows with only a subset of its code base, designed for specific server tasks. The intention is to reduce maintenance costs and create products that are less vulnerable to attack, and so tackle head-on the threat posed by Linux.

PatchBurn 3.0 for Mac OS X Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-10-05 macOS 16 Comments

PatchBurn is a tool to patch existing CD/DVD-drivers (under Mac-OS X 10.2.x) or to generate and install new device profiles (under Mac-OS 10.3.x and later). It allows many, otherwise unsupported burners to be used directly with Mac OS X, iTunes and DiscBurner. It has given life to my (otherwise unsupported) external SONY DVD-/+RW drive and so it comes recommended. PatchBurn is harmless, as all it does is create a new description profile for the drive so OSX knows how to deal with it.

NetBSDs Quarterly Status Report published

Submitted by Karsten Kruse 2004-10-05 NetBSD 13 Comments

Jan Schaumann published the NetBSD Foundation's third quarterly status report, covering the months July through September of 2004.

A quick guide for repairing your kernel from a live CD

Guest post by Ben Hughes 2004-10-05 Linux 31 Comments

GNU/Linux, and all other operating systems, are based around a kernel which controls hardware access and maximizes CPU and RAM efficiency by controlling when and how much programs get to use. The difference between Linux and most other operating systems (closed source ones at least BSD and other open source OS's you can do this with) is that you can compile the kernel to meet your needs.

Latest Apple interface spotted in new Tiger builds

Submitted by Ron Johnson 2004-10-05 macOS 38 Comments

Brushed aluminum swept aside as Apple's Mail 2.0 will reportedly sport an updated theme.