OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

FreeBSD Drops Alpha Port Status to Tier-2

Submitted by Nikos Ntarmos 2004-06-15 FreeBSD 19 Comments

After a (somewhat) long discussion in the FreeBSD 'current@' and 'hackers@' mailing lists concerning the status of KSE in -CURRENT, the FreeBSD Release Engineering Team have decided to drop tier-ness of the alpha port to Tier-2 before 5.3 hits the road. This means, among other things, that 4-STABLE will be the last FreeBSD -STABLE branch for the alpha platform.

Overall Best Skins/Icons Result Summary

Eugenia Loli 2004-06-15 Graphics 14 Comments

The major competition of visual skins for Windows, the GUI Olympics, has ended. The site has now an all-around article showing the best themes from the competition. "The Last Order" icons look sweet.

First Symbian OS Worm Detected

Eugenia Loli 2004-06-15 Bugs & Viruses 4 Comments

An Internet security firm claims to have found the first worm in the wild for Symbian OS, and it spreads via Bluetooth.

Can Sun Emulate Linux by Open-Sourcing Solaris?

Eugenia Loli 2004-06-15 Solaris 18 Comments

"While we can only speculate about Sun's motivations, it is fair to point out that emulation is a sign of respect. We emulate mentors, teachers or role models. Imitation, on the other hand, is a sign of flattery. We imitate rivals or competitors. Perhaps, in the long run, this distinction will provide all the insight we need into Sun's decision." Read the editorial at LinuxInsider.

The Case for Gconf

Guest post by Dr. Janne Morén 2004-06-15 General Development 86 Comments

There has been a lot of commentary recently about Gnome, and a common source of confusion seems to be Gconf - what is it, how does it work, and so on. Some people even seem to confuse Gconf with the registry database in Windows. I will attempt to clear some of this confusion and give an overview of Gconf, and why it looks the way it does.

ChoX11 and Porting

Eugenia Loli 2004-06-15 OS News 10 Comments

"Ever seen some Linux application and thought: "the source is available, why can't we have that on RISC OS?" And indeed, because of the efforts that have been made on the GCC port for RISC OS and its C library, Unixlib, this is possible for a large number of Unix applications." Read the article at Drobe.

DotGNU Ported to SkyOS

Submitted by Kelly 2004-06-15 SkyOS 44 Comments

DotGNU has been ported to SkyOS. With help from the developers of DotGNU, the CLI is now available for SkyOS. Compilers, runtimes, and various tools are already fully-functional. Launching C# programs compiled in SkyOS, Windows, or Linux works. DotGNU will be tightly integrated into the system. In progress now: porting of all remaining classes of the mscorlib.

Use of Linux Grows in Public Sector

Submitted by LOFT 2004-06-15 Linux 20 Comments

Public-sector deployments of Linux are continuing to grow at the expense of Unix and Windows. The latest Linux win is the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AOUSC), in Washington, which provides administrative support, program management and policy development services to U.S. federal courts.

QNX 6.3: 30 Day Evaluation Available Now

Submitted by samab 2004-06-14 QNX 10 Comments

The recently released QNX 6.3 is now available for a test run by developers. It doesn't seem to be a fully free for no commercial purposes no-IDE version of QNX RtP anymore.

Windows XP SP2 RC2 Available to Testers

Submitted by Gsurface 2004-06-14 Windows 20 Comments

Windows XP SP2 RC2 is now available for download from BetaPlace. The build number is 2149 and there is currently a network install only, no express. More at Flexbeta.

GNOME Development Release 2.7.2

Submitted by Philipp Esselbach 2004-06-14 Gnome 45 Comments

GNOME Development Release 2.7.2 has been released for testing.

Quick Review: Mandrake 10.0 Official

Guest post by Jeremy LaCroix 2004-06-14 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 31 Comments

There already exists a good deal of reviews of Mandrake 10 already. Instead of doing the typical review, I'm going to do things a bit differently. You see, there are a few things my OS needs to do perfectly, to warrant it a chance to stay on my PC longer than an hour or so. If any one of these necesseties fail, I may end up not liking the OS altogether. My OS needs to support good hardware acceleration, it must be able to play MP3's, I absolutely need Zsnes, and it has to be fast and stable.

More on AmigaOS 4.0

Eugenia Loli 2004-06-14 Amiga & AROS 25 Comments

Philippe 'Elwood' Ferrucci has written an article about AmigaOS4 and its differences with AmigaOS 3.9.

SMP is now in OpenBSD’s HEAD

Eugenia Loli 2004-06-14 OpenBSD 14 Comments

According to this SMP support is now in OpenBSD-current.

Apple Makes Its Case for Security

Eugenia Loli 2004-06-14 Apple 23 Comments

Apple is a famously secretive company. Its hush-hush culture makes it impossible for employees to talk about their work, even with spouses or family members. Today's the Day. This may help keep new products a surprise, but it has a downside: In the past few weeks widely publicized security holes in OS X were discussed everywhere and by everyone, except Apple, says Wired.

Linux Lite: Cobind and the Simpler Life

Guest post by James LaRue 2004-06-14 Linux 39 Comments

Recently, I got my hands on version 0.2 of Cobind, a Linux lite desktop, based on Red Hat/Fedora Core 1, from a software company in Pittsburgh. Not yet in general release, Cobind is a one disc wonder.

Open source: Supply and demand

Eugenia Loli 2004-06-14 Open Source 44 Comments

In the final part of this series of articles in response to Eric Raymond, an examination of whether a hybrid model is the way forward.

Debian AMD x86_64 Port Ready

Eugenia Loli 2004-06-14 Debian 12 Comments

The Debian Project announced their AMD64 port is ready for inclusion in Sid. The port is currently at 97% compiled with most of the remaining packages having FTBFS RC bugs filed for unrelated reasons.

Microsoft’s SP1 for Server 2003 Packs a Security Punch

Eugenia Loli 2004-06-14 Windows 10 Comments

Microsoft says its set of upgrades for Windows Server 2003, due to be included in Service Pack 1, will make its products more secure by default and give enterprises more options for locking down servers.

A Splintering Linux Community

Eugenia Loli 2004-06-14 Linux 74 Comments

"We now have two distinct classes of Linux users whose interests are not the same, and perhaps we have more than that if we want to talk about people who think of software in political rather than pragmatic terms. Can these factions work together, or will tensions between them eventually kill the free software and open source movements?" Read the editorial at NewsForge.