OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Longhorn Changes May Affect Microsoft’s Tools Strategy

Submitted by Tudy 2004-09-20 Microsoft 16 Comments

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

Submitted by spank_da_monkey 2004-09-20 Linux 7 Comments

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 That will change, however, as companies replace aging equipment running outdated software.

RSS Advances Make Enterprise Headlines

Eugenia Loli 2004-09-20 Internet 1 Comment

Cuting throught the hype: RSS feeds can improve a range of corporate communications. But for many, it's a technology in need of a vendor.

OpenZaurus 3.5.1 Released

Submitted by Eduardo Tongson 2004-09-20 Wireless 18 Comments

This release marks an important milestone in the history of OpenZaurus, since it has been created from scratch using the OpenEmbedded build system. More information about the overall project status can be found in the next edition of the official newsletter. Editor's question: Anyone knows if the WiFi hardware works with OpenZaurus and what web browsers are used when you install GPE or Opie?

SkyOS Internal Beta 7.9: (A Very Short) Overview

Submitted by Thom Holwerda 2004-09-20 SkyOS 16 Comments

"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.

Combining User-Defined Inserters, Extractors, and Manipulators in C++

Eugenia Loli 2004-09-20 General Development 2 Comments

Cameron and Tracey Hughes explore how to use object streaming with the STL containers by combining inserters, extractors, and manipulators with stream iterators. Two more programming articles follow:

Fedora Core 3 Test 2 Available

Submitted by zed 2004-09-20 Fedora Core 37 Comments

From the Fedora site: "The second test release of Fedora Core 3 is now available from Red Hat and at distinguished mirror sites near you, and is also available in the torrent. This test release is available for both x86-64 and i386. Please file bugs via Bugzilla, Product Fedora Core, Version fc3test2, so that they are noticed and appropriately classified. Discuss this test release on fedora-test-list."

OpenBSD’s Theo de Raadt talks software security

Eugenia Loli 2004-09-20 OpenBSD 27 Comments

With security the focus of this year’s Australian Unix Users Group (AUUG) conference, OpenBSD founder and project lead Theo de Raadt was invited to speak on exploit mitigation techniques. In an exclusive interview with Computerworld's Rodney Gedda, the man behind an operating system that lays claim to only one remote exploit in the default install in seven years, reveals where we are headed – and how far we have to go – in the search for more secure software

Update for Windows XP Service Pack 2; Windows Script 5.6

Eugenia Loli 2004-09-20 Windows 13 Comments

This update helps resolve an issue on computers running Windows XP Service Pack 2. Programs that connect to IP addresses in the loopback address range may not work as expected and you may receive an error message indicating you cannot establish a connection. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer. Elsewhere, this download installs Microsoft Windows Script containing Visual Basic Script Edition (VBScript.) Version 5.6, JScript Version 5.6, Windows Script Components, Windows Script Host 5.6, and Windows Script Runtime Version 5.6.

X11R6.8.1 Release of the X Window System

Eugenia Loli 2004-09-20 Wayland 27 Comments

The X.Org Foundation announced the release of an update for the X Window System, which addresses the possible security vulnerability announced on September 15, 2004. This bug affects all known versions and releases of the X Window System shipping versions of libXpm, whether from X.Org or other vendors. Slackware upgraded to it today.

FreeBSD 5.3-Beta5 Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-09-20 FreeBSD 19 Comments

The fifth beta of FreeBSD 5.3 is now available for testing: "updated floppy device driver; fix for panics on certain hardware during boot if no media in the CD-ROM drive; change to pf logging format to handle 64-bit time; many more scheduler fixes, we encourage testers to turn PREEMPTION on..." and more.

Microsoft lets governments into Office Source Code

Eugenia Loli 2004-09-20 Microsoft 22 Comments

The software maker plans to announce in Paris on Monday that Office 2003 will be added to its Government Security Program (GSP), launched in early 2003 to address growing security concerns. The program gives government agencies secure access to source code for key Microsoft programs--initially, the current versions of the Windows operating system.

Mandrake Linux 10.1-Community Edition Review

Eugenia Loli 2004-09-19 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 34 Comments

"Mandrake 10.1 Community, released in Sept. 16 is an incremental upgrade to Mandrake 10. The new features make it a worthy upgrade for home users but the bugs that remain are certainly not what a business desktop should upgrade to until later when the Official version is released." Read the review at SpiderTools.

GTK+ 2.4.10 Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-09-19 GTK+ 52 Comments

Along with the stable bug fix release of GTK+ 2.4.10, the unstable feature releases of GLib-2.5.3 and GTK+ 2.5.3 were also made available.

KOffice 1.3.3 Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-09-19 Office 10 Comments

The KOffice team released the third bugfix package that builds upon the previous 1.3.x versions, with many fixes, mainly in the core libraries and in some filters.

A glance at Darwin 8.0b1 new software

Submitted by corinne 2004-09-19 BSD & Darwin 5 Comments

Apple computer posted on the open-source section of its site a list of softwares included in the next version of Darwin, 8.0 (currently in beta). Here a glance at the new software included.

VectorLinux 4.3 released.

Submitted by UKBill 2004-09-19 Slackware, Slax 17 Comments

The Vector Linux team is proud to announce the release of VectorLinux 4.3. This small 326 MB download provides you a complete and fast desktop solution, even suitable for older hardware.

NetFront: The Fast GTK+ Browser you Never Knew Existed

Eugenia Loli 2004-09-19 Internet 45 Comments

A few days ago we read about the Deli Linux, which aims to fill-in the gap of Linux distros in the 486/586 machine range by running lightweight/older applications. The disto comes with Dillo and Links as its browsers, but I bet there aren't many people who know that there is yet another very lightweight browser for GTK+ 1.2.x and it is more powerful and more memory-optimized than Dillo: Access' NetFront. Check for info and screenshots inside.

Programming With Potent XMLBeans

Eugenia Loli 2004-09-19 Java 3 Comments

On the XML and Java technology frontier, where numerous technologies jostle for space, XMLBeans is making a mark for itself in a very short time. This article introduces the technology with a simple example, takes you through the step-by-step process of compilation and binding, and discusses advanced features like XML cursors, tokens, and XQuery expressions. It also discusses how XMLBeans is more powerful than other XML-Java technology data binding techniques.

Linux C and C++ Compilers

Eugenia Loli 2004-09-19 Benchmarks 31 Comments

An ongoing series of articles that track the quality of programming tools for Linux, including Opteron and Pentium 4 tests for the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and Intel C++.