OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Review: White Box fills niche between Fedora and RHEL

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-09 Linux 24 Comments

White Box Enterprise Linux (WBEL) is an attempt to fill the void left by Red Hat's decision to become a purely commercial product. It's not without problems, but but it does a bridge the functionality gap between the Fedora Project and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

IT Morale is in the Dumps

David Adams 2004-11-09 In the News 98 Comments

A recent survey found that 3/4 of IT managers surveyed reported having morale problems among their staffs. Layoffs, uncertainty, high stress, and incompetent management all contribute to a feeling of malaise among tech workers today. Layoffs have left firms understaffed, and workers feel growing resentment towards their bosses, the survey suggests. How are you feeling about your job?

Migrating from AppleShare IP to OS X Server

Submitted by Esther Schindler 2004-11-09 Apple 12 Comments

Tony Williams shares the joys and frustrations from a recent Macintosh migration from AppleShare IP (ASIP) under OS 9 to OS X Server 10.3. Although Apple tried to make this process as painless as possible, there are still some problems.

Windows XP Embedded with Service Pack 2 Evaluation Edition

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-09 Windows 14 Comments

The Evaluation Edition software enables you to build Windows XP Embedded with Service Pack 2-based operating systems for 120 days from the day of installation.

Advanced Linux Installations and Upgrades with Kickstart

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-09 Red Hat 5 Comments

This article is a collection of techniques that may interest people who want to do more with Kickstart. It covers Kickstart customization, scalability, and security.

Mozilla readies Firefox 1.0 release

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-09 Mozilla, Gecko 137 Comments

After 19 months of development, two name changes and more than 8 million downloads of its preview release, the Firefox browser is finally turning 1.0. Firefox is scheduled to be available for free download at 1 a.m. PDT Tuesday. Our Take: Sky's the limit. After Thunderbird (and third-party NVU & Mozilla-Calendar), I would love to see the Mozilla Project build a multi-IM application (ICQ, AIM/iChat, MSN, Y!, Jabber, etc) with the same design/usability goals as Firefox, coupled with good voice and video support (support which lacks on all third party multi-protocol IM solutions today). UPDATE: It's out.

Red Hat Announces Second Beta of Redhat Enterprise 4

Submitted by Rahul 2004-11-09 Red Hat 22 Comments

The second beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, code name "Nahant" is available for download and testing. Announcement, release notes, download location or from a mirror.

Interview with Mr. Alan Nugent, Novell’s CTO

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-08 Novell and Ximian 14 Comments

In this interview by Preston St. Pierre, Alan Nugent, Novell's CTO, speaks on behalf of Novell on their Linux strategy. Innovation is on the way at Novell, with a next-generation desktop in the plans. Internally, the Linux migration is on schedule, and the staff are wholly in favor of moving away from Windows.

Konfabulator, DesktopX and the widget wars

Guest post by Brad Wardell 2004-11-08 Graphics 26 Comments

Ideally someone else would write this article since I'm connected to DesktopX. But with all the enthusiasm over "widgets" lately and Konfabulator's release on Windows today, I've written up my best attempt at neutrality in looking at the pros of each program.

Opinion: Regarding Stallman’s Vision

Guest post by The Bit Land Prince 2004-11-08 Open Source 102 Comments

I've always had mixed feelings about the Open Source movement because while my feelings suggest that this is surely a great innovation in software development, there are other (many) things that I don't agree with. Nevertheless, I've been contributing to free software (or open source) since 1996 and I'm still doing it. Nothing famous or that you might have heard of, though. But enough that I feel I have some insight on the subject.

OpenBSD Graphical Ports System Frontend

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-08 OpenBSD 18 Comments

pbrowser (pbrowser = PortsBrowser) is a free implementation of a graphical frontend for the ports(7) system for OpenBSD. It allows for easy browsing through the ports(7) tree and offers search facilities to a certain extent. It is also possible to install and or delete ports and packages with pbrowser. You can rate the application here.

Mandrakelinux 10.1 PPC Edition Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-08 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 10 Comments

Mandrakelinux 10.1 for PowerPC systems has been released: 10.1/PPC has many new and updated programs, some new features, and probably also a few new bugs, so something interesting for everyone.

Is Microsoft Ready to Assert IP Rights over the Internet?

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-08 Microsoft 11 Comments

Has Microsoft been trying to retroactively claim IP (intellectual property) rights over many of the Internet's basic protocols? Larry J. Blunk, senior engineer for networking research and development at Merit Network Inc., believes that might be the case.

SWING starts working under JNode

Submitted by Valentin Chira 2004-11-08 OS News 18 Comments

The JNode project just reached a very important mileston. The SWING GUI starts to work. This is a very important milestone for the first almost pure java operating system.

What’s new in FreeBSD 5.3 at LWN

Submitted by TTF 2004-11-08 FreeBSD 39 Comments

The final release of FreeBSD 5.3 should be up on the mirrors within the next two weeks. In all likelihood, this will be the first "production release" of FreeBSD 5.x series, so perhaps this is a good time to take a look at the new features in this much anticipated release.

Imperfect C++: Functors and Ranges

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-08 General Development 9 Comments

In most cases, functors and ranges cause a minor issue of too many keystrokes, but in some cases, they can cause a serious impediment to maintainability. This chapter will teach you to deal with this problem while it's still a minor one.

Using Generics in Visual Basic 2005

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-08 General Development No Comments

Tired of writing the same class code over and over to meet specific datatype requirements? John Mueller recommends generics.

Wired: music production and composition software for Linux

Submitted by Colin Laplace 2004-11-08 Multimedia, AV 31 Comments

Wired aims to be a professional music production and composition software running on Linux.

Evaluating Eclipse vs. IntelliJ IDEA

Eugenia Loli 2004-11-08 Java 11 Comments

Both Eclipse 3.0 and IntelliJ IDEA 4 are feature-rich, Java IDEs that provide syntax checking, code assistance, and code generation for coding. In addition, they both provide support for refactoring, Ant, unit testing, and CVS. And soon, the Eclipse Visual Editor 1.0 for building GUIs using either AWT/Swing or SWT will be available. But some important differences exist between the two. This article briefly compares the features, ease of use, and stability of Eclipse and IDEA.

Perl 6 Grammars and Regular Expressions

Submitted by ibm 2004-11-08 General Development 3 Comments

Perl 6 is finally coming within reach. This article gives you a tour of the grammars and regular expressions of the Perl 6 language, comparing them with the currently available Parse::RecDescent module for Perl 5. Find out what will be new with Perl 6 regular expressions and how to make use of the new, powerful incarnation of the Perl scripting language.