OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Review of How Not to Program in C++

Guest post by Corey Holcomb-Hockin 2004-08-10 General Development 37 Comments

I first started programming C in high school. Most of what I learned was from a book I bought myself. The class itself wasn't very good. The book I had on C didn't teach me everything a beginning programmer needs to know.

OpenGL 2.0 launched with built-in shader language

Eugenia Loli 2004-08-10 3D 13 Comments

OpenGL 2.0 was formally launched today and with it the completion of the graphics API's Shading Language specification for vertex- and pixel-shader programming. OpenGL Shading Language was approved by the OpenGL Architecture Review Board (ARB) in June 2003 as an extension to OpenGL 1.4, which has since been updated to version 1.5.

Review: UnixWare 7.1.4 is suitable for basic server duty

Eugenia Loli 2004-08-10 SCO 27 Comments

UnixWare 7.1.4 is the latest in a long line of Unix releases from The SCO Group. It is a stable and mature Unix, with a variety of basic servers included, such as the Apache Web server and Squid, and is available in both single-user desktop-oriented versions and server versions. It has reasonable support for hardware, good documentation, and a nice integrated management utility that offers unified administration of the OS, hardware, and servers. Performance as a server platform is good, supporting a number of TCP sessions and Web server users, and file transfer performance is competitive with Linux and Windows platforms.

PostgreSQL 8.0.0 Officially Goes Beta

Submitted by Rick Morris 2004-08-10 Databases 36 Comments

With the Beta release of version 8, PostgreSQL has just taken three giant steps into Enterprise DBMS territory, with the addition of point-in-time recovery (PITR), transaction savepoints (the equivalent of nested transactions), and tablespaces, as well as various other improvements. Also, PostgreSQL will now run as a native Windows application, which should make it a more attractive choice for many medium and small businesses. LWN has more.

Microsoft sings a new tune on Linux

Submitted by JB 2004-08-10 Microsoft 19 Comments

Microsoft executive Martin Taylor's schedule is packed with meetings like the one in June when he met with representatives from French drugmaker Aventis in his Redmond, Wash. office. Aventis has tied together groups of computers running not Microsoft's operating system but the freely available Linux. These high-performance clusters can analyze proteins at blazing speeds. "That's great for Linux," Taylor said cheerily, at the time.

Slipstreaming Windows XP SP2 and Bootable CD Guide

Submitted by gogo 2004-08-10 Windows 14 Comments

This guide will describe the easiest way possible to slipstream (also known as 'Integrate') a Service Pack into Windows 2000, XP or 2003. To do this, we will only need one program - MSFN's very own popular nLite created by one of our members nuhi. While nLite is primarily aimed to remove components to slim down a Windows CD, it has the required tools to do just an automated Service Pack slipstream as well as create a CD image.Slipstreaming Windows XP SP2 and Bootable CD Guide

A look at DParser for Python

Eugenia Loli 2004-08-10 General Development 5 Comments

Get an introduction to DParser, a simple but powerful tool for parsing. Then learn about DParser for Python, which gives Python programmers a seamless interface to DParser, and see how it compares to other parsers covered in previous installments. In a manner similar to Spark or PLY, grammar rules are input to DParser using Python function documentation strings.

Book Mini-Review: A Practical Guide to Red Hat Linux

Eugenia Loli 2004-08-10 Red Hat 4 Comments

Mark G. Sobell wrote a lengthy book about Red Hat Linux and Fedora, A Practical Guide to Red Hat Linux, and we are taking a look at its draft copy (second edition released end of July).

PHP-GTK 1.0.1 released

Submitted by adel 2004-08-10 GTK+ 21 Comments

PHP-GTK 1.0.1 is seeing the light of day. Vote for it here. Check in for the changelog.

KDE 3.3 RC2 is Out

Eugenia Loli 2004-08-10 KDE 39 Comments

The second release candidate for KDE 3.3 is already available from the mirrors.

Basics for SUSE Linux

Eugenia Loli 2004-08-10 SuSE, openSUSE 14 Comments

This is a very basic guide to help configure and secure a SUSE Linux system.

Mac OS X 10.3.5 released; Apple releases new security update

Submitted by joey 2004-08-10 macOS 31 Comments

Apple today released Mac OS X 10.3.5 via the Software Update preference pane. In addition to Mac OS X 10.3.5, Apple today released Security Update 2004-08-09 via the Mac OS X Software Update preference pane. The update (recommended for all Mac users) delivers several security enhancements and includes an updated version of the libpng. Update: Apple seeds Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger build 8A171.

IBM provides RIB tool for Swing and Eclipse GUIs

Submitted by gham 2004-08-10 Java 22 Comments

The IBM Reflexive User Interface Builder (RIB) is an application that constructs and renders graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for Java Swing and Eclipse Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) based upon a descriptive XML document. Arranged in this way, RIB can create and render GUIs based solely upon the information in an XML document. See new developer article on RIB that shows you how to Build Java GUIs simply and quickly.

Review: Debian-Installer Release Candidate 1

Eugenia Loli 2004-08-09 Debian 48 Comments

After four years of development, the first release candidate of the new Debian installer is here. If you're familiar with other install programs, this one may surprise you. It introduces Debian's strengths right at the start, and it goes a long way toward burying Debian's reputation for being difficult to install.

An introduction to Linux sound systems and APIs

Eugenia Loli 2004-08-09 Multimedia, AV 36 Comments

Every operating system has different sound systems and APIs to access the sound card, so that no low-level coding is required to use the sound device. Programmers have many different choices concerning which system to use, especially under Linux -- and maybe that's the problem. This article illustrates free sound architectures on Linux, as well as the different interfaces a programmer can use.

Newbie’s Opinion: Suse 9.1 Professional vs. Fedora Core 2

Guest post by Zach Levin 2004-08-09 Rumors 66 Comments

Quite frankly, I got fed up with my Windows XP. Everything was wrong with it - security, stability, and price. So, I took a new step in my computer experience and tried going Linux. My only previous experience having been using and FTP Wizard to upload files to a web host, I could definitely be put into the "newbie" category.

DragonFlyBSD 1.0A: A strong start

Eugenia Loli 2004-08-09 BSD & Darwin 19 Comments

"Don't mistake DragonFlyBSD 1.0A for a complete, finished, polished operating system. At this stage of development, DragonFlyBSD isn't good for much, as it has problems with SMP on systems that use Hyper-Threading Technology, and the XFree86 port (among others) didn't compile properly for me despite using the special compatibility overrides." Read the review at NewsForge.

Bilinear, Trilinear, and MIP Mapping Technologies Explained

Eugenia Loli 2004-08-09 3D 16 Comments

Since the earliest games of Ping Pong and Pac man, graphics have evolved quite a bit. The technology in which to render them has also evolved into complex and speedy graphics processing units. From primitive software acceleration to the current hardware and software acceleration, graphics have become more efficient, more complex, and most importantly, more beautiful than ever before.

On Win XP Service Pack 2

Eugenia Loli 2004-08-09 Windows 47 Comments

Service Pack 2 for Windows XP has finally been released and is now available for people to download and install on their systems. The file, at just over 265 Megs, is a hefty download yet is packed with new updates well worth getting. Microsoft's new focus on security is paying off, but the company still has a long way to regain its customers' trust, according to the company's security program manager.

The OpenSTEP Story at Sun

Eugenia Loli 2004-08-09 OpenStep, GNUstep 13 Comments

Rich Burridge is shedding some light as to what happened around the time that Sun was supposed to use OpenSTEP as its next-gen API/GUI for SunOS/Solaris.