OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Automating Windows Patch Management (Part I, II and III)

Submitted by TTF 2004-05-11 Windows 7 Comments

Patch management could easily be called the bane of every administrator's existence, the pain in the rear of system management, or that never ceasing headache that pounds at CIOs everywhere. Here are three articles on the topic, Part 1, 2 and 3.

Gnome 2.6: Living Down to a Low Standard

Submitted by Rahul 2004-05-11 Gnome 147 Comments

Well-known tech journalist Nicholas Petreley tried Gnome 2.6 but he got baffled by the default Nautilus 2.6 behavior to open each folder on a new window and also from the inability to change colors on a GTK+ theme through a UI. On a positive note, Gnome's Tim Ney informed us about the Guadec 5 event.

Source-based Linux Distributions from a Beginner’s Perspective

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-10 Linux 16 Comments

Arvan Reese wrote a guide for beginners explaining all about source-based Linux distros.

OmniWeb 5.0b Preview at MacCritic

Submitted by Silas Warren 2004-05-10 Internet 14 Comments

"This browser sports a tag-line stating, 'The web browser that puts you in control.' I haven't been much of an Omniweb fan in the past, so reviewing this browser was a leap of faith for me. I’m in love with Omnigraffle but that is another review in itself, so my past grievances with Omniweb weren’t directed toward the company, but rather the browser itself." Read the rest of the review at MacCritic.

Giving XFce4 a Spin

Guest post by Rahul Gaitonde 2004-05-10 Xfce 62 Comments

Before we begin, here's what XFce's website has to say about itself: XFce is a lightweight desktop environment for unix-like operating systems. It aims to be fast and lightweight, while still being visually appealing and easy to use. It's based on the GTK+ toolkit version 2.

Benchmarking Filesystems: JFS, XFS, ReiserFS, ext3

Submitted by anonymous 2004-05-10 Benchmarks 49 Comments

"The conclusion is obvious by the "Total Time For All Benchmarks Test." The best journaling file system to choose based upon these results would be: JFS, ReiserFS or XFS depending on your needs and what types of files you are dealing with. I was quite surprised how slow ext3 was overall, as many distributions use this file system as their default file system. Overall, one should choose the best file system based upon the properties of the files they are dealing with for the best performance possible!" Read the whole article at the LinuxGazette.

SuSE Linux 9.1 Personal Edition Review

Guest post by Jem Matzan 2004-05-10 SuSE, openSUSE 33 Comments

Here's a review of the recently released SuSE 9.1 Personal Edition, at the JemReport.

Zeta Developer Articles: Localizing Replicants

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-10 Zeta 8 Comments

Replicants are classes unarchived from an add-on. They live in the address space of the application which is hosting the replicant, and would therefore only have the translation strings available to the host application by default. Read the article here. Update: OpenBeOS also published their newsletter with another article about replicants.

Desktop Linux To-Do List

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-10 Linux 53 Comments

Distributors must solve setup and licensing issues for Linux to be a success on the desktop. For Linux to become a real competitor to Windows on the desktop, Linux distributors must refine their software installation and management systems. There are some loose ends that need to be tied up and some tricky legal knots to unravel, says eWeek.

Allchin Syncs Longhorn

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-10 Windows 4 Comments

Microsoft Corp. is driving toward its goal of shipping the next client and server versions of Windows in tandem. But the effort will come at the expense of a few wish-list server features, according to high-ranking company officials.

SEC Filing Reveals Lindows Sued Xandros

Submitted by ealm 2004-05-10 Legal 7 Comments

Buried in recently published financial documents is the news that Lindows, Inc., has been engaged in a lawsuit with rival and one-time partner Xandros, Inc. since the middle of December 2002. Lindows claims that Xandros failed to repay a $750,000 loan, and that the company and other defendants engaged in fraud & criminal misrepresentation during the negotiations leading up to Lindows' investment in Xandros.

Mandrake, SuSE Offer New Linux Features

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-10 Linux 2 Comments

MandrakeSoft S.A. and Novell Inc.'s SuSE Linux division, recently shipped new versions of their respective mainstream Linux distributions, both based on the new Linux 2.6 kernel. eWEEK Labs tested Mandrakelinux 10 PowerPack+ and SuSE Linux 9.1 Professional—which each began shipping last month—and we were impressed with their ease of use and with the broadness of their capabilities.

OSX Emulation on x86? PearPC

Submitted by Claudio 2004-05-10 OS News 62 Comments

This is the first official release of PearPC, 0.1, and there are still unimplemented instructions, mysterious bugs and missing features. The application allows you to run PowerPC OSes under emulation on a x86 machine.

The first automatic driver installation system for Linux

Submitted by Andrew Luecke 2004-05-10 Linux 20 Comments

Driver On demand is a driver management system designed for Linux, designed to automatically install drivers by using a httpd server. Its other intention is to create a universal driver standard for Linux, allowing drivers to be installed easier.

Batch anywhere and Independent Concurrent Batch

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-10 General Development No Comments

This article shows how to grid enable applications using the first two of the six strategies so the applications can run as single or multiple instance batch jobs that are location independent. It explains the characteristics of applications using these strategies and details what the application developer must, should, and can optionally do to implement these strategies. A major objective when using Strategy 1 and Strategy 2 is to ensure that the application is as flexible as possible regarding middleware products.

Miguel de Icaza: Rest of the World to Eventually Force US Into Linux

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-10 Novell and Ximian 136 Comments

Last Thursday OSNews had the opportunity to meet Miguel de Icaza, founder of Gnome, Ximian and among other things leader of the much discussed, Mono project. Miguel is a talented and versatile developer but he is also a very intelligent businessman able to understand the industry on many different levels. Talking to Miguel guarantees that you are very quickly taken away by his enthusiasm and optimism and his thoughtful strategies and vision on how OSS will take over the world.

Linux Kernel 2.6.6 Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-10 Linux 35 Comments

Linus Torvalds announced the release of the 2.6.6 stable kernel. A number of notable additions found their way into the mainline 2.6 kernel during this development cycle, including Jens Axboe's laptop mode and the completely fair queueing (CFQ) I/O scheduler, support for a non-executable stack on a number of architectures, several patches laying the groundwork for object-based reverse mapping, and 4KB kernel stacks for the i386 architecture reducing the kernel's per process overhead, KernelTrap reports.

Windows Media Center Continues Overseas March

Eugenia Loli 2004-05-10 Windows 13 Comments

Microsoft plans to announce on Monday that its Media Center OS is moving into new countries, even as the software maker works to make the entertainment software more ready for prime time.

Visual Basic.NET 2003 – for Free

Submitted by Hacktisvmo 2004-05-10 .NET 49 Comments

Microsoft is giving away copies of Visual Basic.NET in a promotion called VB at the movies. In exchange for watching five relatively short "movies" you get a "free" (not for resale) copy of Visual Basic.NET (IDE and all needed tools). The movies themselves are a showcase of features available in Visual Basic.NET. Note that only 2 of 7 movies are currently available.

Autopackage 0.5, “Deja vu” Released

Submitted by Alex 2004-05-10 General Development 21 Comments

Autopackage, the distro neutral packaging framework for Linux systems, got the release of 0.5 with major improvements in nearly every area have been made, including: