OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Athene 2004 reviewed

Submitted by Jem Matzan 2004-09-02 OS News 19 Comments

Rocklyte Systems' Athene operating environment is at once fascinating and frustrating. It's a custom GNU/Linux distribution optimized for i686 machines that employs a proprietary graphics toolkit and video drivers, which means it's visually impressive and extremely speedy. Athene is by far the most unique and technologically advanced GNU/Linux derivative to date, but it needs some better administrative features and it doesn't come with much software. Linux.com has the full review.

Overview: Where Does SkyOS Fit?

Submitted by Thom Holwerda 2004-09-02 SkyOS 122 Comments

"SkyOS is aimed at the desktop user, the SkyOS team has always stated that SkyOS 5.0 is aimed at the desktop user, but what is a desktop user? In my opinion a desktop user is someone who doesn’t know how the kernel interacts with the graphical interface or how the kernel loads modules. The average desktop user is just that... Average." Read the rest of this editoral here.

Red Hat Enterprise 3 Update 3 Released to RHN

Submitted by cranch 2004-09-02 Red Hat 9 Comments

Redhat Network Account users appear to now have access to the Enterprise 3 Update 3 release. Updates appear to only be available through the up2date feature. ISO's are not listed on the RHN Download site at this time.

Why you Shouldn’t Write your Own Kernel Anymore

Guest post by Emmanuel Marty 2004-09-02 OS News 125 Comments

As a programmer and manager of embedded software products for a living, I think that operating system programming is so much fun that it will eventually be outlawed. I've previously published two articles on OSNews, So, you want to write an operating system and Climbing the kernel mountain, and tried to summarize my experience in designing operating system kernels as well as technical traps that can be easily avoided.

Java J2SE 5.0 Release Candidate

Submitted by Cetixx 2004-09-02 Java 32 Comments

Sun released Java J2SE 5.0 Release Candidate 1, while NetBeans was releasing v4.0b today.

The Mandrake Mystery

Submitted by NewsFactor 2004-09-02 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 47 Comments

Purchasing decisions today are "based upon business metrics -- not how good the technology is," says Dan Kusnetzky of IDC. "If the business decision maker is unaware of a company or its products, the products won't be considered. If the products aren't considered, they certainly won't be selected." So, if Mandrakelinux is so user-friendly and powerful, why is it not a household word -- even compared to other Linux flavors? In a word: marketing. There is a widespread, if not universally shared, perception that Mandrakesoft's marketing efforts are far less sophisticated then its technical attributes.

Kerberos Flaws Ripe for Serious Exploits

Eugenia Loli 2004-09-02 Privacy, Security 7 Comments

Managers, mind your patches and VPNs! While none has yet been reported, exploits of the Kerberos vulnerabilities uncovered by MIT researchers could wreak havoc on a network.

OS Development: Opening Streams

Guest post by Will \'Varfar\' 2004-09-01 OS News 17 Comments

This article offers feature suggestions to budding OS developers looking for that neat edge. This osnews mini-series is a series to give people developing hobby operating systems - for fun - ideas that take their OS from a kernel to a 'system'.

GNOME 2.8 Release Candidate 1 (2.7.92) Released

Submitted by Philipp Esselbach 2004-09-01 Gnome 67 Comments

Release Candidate 1 marks the start of the Hard Code Freeze, on the way towards the final GNOME 2.8 release in a couple of weeks.

New Syllable Newsletter; Screenshot Slideshow

Submitted by Michael Saunders 2004-09-01 Syllable, AtheOS 32 Comments

The August edition of the Syllable Development Newsletter is now available, nutshellising the OS' progress over the last month. Highlights include a website redesign, driver updates and VMware images. Additionally, LinuxBeta.com has assembled a superb slideshow running through Syllable's new desktop and apps.

Longhorn’s Delays according to de Icaza

Eugenia Loli 2004-09-01 Windows 38 Comments

"Last week's announcement of the changes in Longhorn were interesting: the backporting of Avalon and the removal of WinFS from the mix. It was clear that the only way to get Avalon adopted was by backporting it in some capacity to older OSes." Read Miguel's take on Longhorn's delays here.

Phil Schiller, analysts discuss the iMac G5

Eugenia Loli 2004-09-01 Apple 117 Comments

Apple Computer Inc.'s Senior Vice President of Hardware Product Marketing, Phil Schiller, officially kicked off Apple Expo Paris this week introducing the iMac G5 during his keynote address. Analysts are unanimous in their support for the new consumer machine and the strategic ties Apple has drawn between the iMac and the iPod in marketing the computer. Read the interview here.

Filling in the gaps among Linux clusters, part 2

Eugenia Loli 2004-09-01 Linux 3 Comments

While Linux clusters can handle the demands of high performance computing, they're still lacking in some key features, said Eric Pitcher, vice president of technical marketing for Linux Networx, a cluster systems provider in Bluffdale, Utah. In part one of this interview, he championed Linux clusters, citing their productivity and scalability. In part two, he discusses pricing and points out Linux clusters' current shortcomings.

From OS/2 to Linux: Part 3. Timer and DLL calls

Eugenia Loli 2004-09-01 OS/2 5 Comments

Linux is evolving as the predominant operating system of the new millennium, and legacy operating systems such as OS/2 are being gradually phased out. This series of articles helps the developers involved in the tedious process of migrating/porting the OS/2 system drivers and applications to Linux. In this last of three installments, the authors focus on how to do timer calls and DLL calls in OS/2 and Linux, with a view to mapping between the two systems.

Valgrind 2.2.0 Released

Guest post by Julian Seward 2004-09-01 General Development 10 Comments

We are pleased to announce a new stable release of Valgrind, version 2.2.0.

Increase Denial of Service Resilience on FreeBSD

Submitted by Avleen Vig 2004-09-01 FreeBSD 8 Comments

This paper on how to tune FreeBSD to better withstand DoS attacks was at OnLamp a few months ago. It is now up on Silverwraith.com, along with several other FreeBSD tuning papers by the author.

New L4Env and DDE release

Submitted by Ronald Aigner 2004-09-01 OS News 2 Comments

The TU Dresden OS tream is happy to announce the release of a new version of L4Env, the L4 development environment, and DDE, the Device Driver Environment for L4. It contains improved support for building L4 applications and running them on almost all of the L4 microkernels.

MyXaml Vserion 1.00 Is Released

Submitted by Marc Clifton 2004-09-01 .NET 13 Comments

MyXaml is proud to announce the release of version 1.0 of its declarative parser. MyXaml allows the programmer to write declarative programming instructions in XML to construct complex object graphs and property initialization for the .NET/ASP.NET framework and third party classes.

Mandrakelinux 10.1 Alpha for PPC

Eugenia Loli 2004-08-31 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 26 Comments

DistroWatch reports that a new development version of Mandrakelinux 10.1, PPC edition, is now available. Highlights: Linux kernel 2.6.8rc2; NPTL support; X11R6.7.0, GNOME 2.6, KDE 3.2.3, etc.

Where are the Good Open Source Games?

Guest post by Adam Geitgey 2004-08-31 Games 188 Comments

Despite the impressive list of achievements of open source software, it can be argued that there have not been any world-class games created under the open source banner. Sure, several old games like Doom and Quake have been gifted to the open source community, but there are no comparable original creations in this area. One should not expect this situation to change anytime soon, because the open source development model does not make sense for game development.