One of the greatest advantages that *BSD has over other Unix variants is the cvsup/make world process. The cvsup/make world process allows you to update your system at any time.
"I thought I had a pretty good handle on the differences between the open-source community and the traditional proprietary approach to software development. But watching a Microsoft spokesperson defend his company and its whole approach to business in front of a room full of Linux zealots last week helped crystallize the gulf between the two camps--not just in business strategy but in fundamental philosophy and political bent."Read the editorial at ZDNet.
The GNOME Foundation had a meeting with some representatives of the Mozilla Foundation about how they could collaborate a little closer in future. More info here about what was discussed.
The open-source operating must make key cosmetic adjustments, according to speakers at the Desktop Linux Summit. Elsewhere, the software giant ventured into hostile territory on Wednesday to argue its case during a live debate over the future of the Linux desktop.
Am I the only one amazed at the progress being made on SkyOS? Kelly writes in to tell us that SkyOS has just gotten sticky note support (screenshot). Read on for more.
The NetBSD Foundationannounced that it has registered the
'NetBSD' trademark...An official policy on the use of the NetBSD trademark is currently being drafted and will be made public soon.
The open source community has mastered many challenges and has been successful in numerous areas. However, there is one glaring weakness that needs to be remedied.
The purpose of this tutorial is to introduce a better solution to upgrading KDE, one that will allow a user to get his/her hands on a release the night it hits the mirrors, without having to overwrite the base OS install. Konstruct compiles KDE into a new desktop rather than using RPM or DEB.
In a small seminar room of the De La Salle University (DLSU)in the Philippines, Caslon Chua, chief software architect of SpecOps made a demonstration of the "bridge" software "David". More at inq7.net.
In Miguel de Icaza's latest blog entry the Mono project leader discusses the threat Longhorn's new technologies and frameworks pose to Linux and open source. He also directs uses to this recent USENET post about the goals of Mozilla, which is a very interesting read.
ISS (Integrated sound system) has been implemented into SkyOS. The ISS is a very well integrated sound system which makes it very easy to access the audio multimedia services of SkyOS, though providing a very powerful interface.
Majorgeeks.com has posted a link to an unofficial independent release of a Service Pack for Windows 98SE. While it does introduce some fixes and additional support, it is important to note that this is not official software.
"People tend to develop strong ties to a specific computer, even if it means waiting to use their favourite machine, say researchers. A team at Pennsylvania State University found that people were drawn to a PC because of their tendency to assign human attributes to machines." Read the article here.
This article introduces some of the basic data-access performance issues to consider while developing database applications using ADO.NET. It shows you how to analyze network load, load on the database server, un-optimized SQL, opening and closing a connection, fetching a result set, blob access, and metadata retrieval. It then provides suggestions for improving database application performance.
"The battle to create and own a proprietary industry standard generates rapid improvements in price and performance, at least until somebody emerges totally dominant. If fact, even after a monopolist emerges, there is still considerable pressure to innovate, because unless you can induce your installed base to upgrade frequently, you have a hard time continuing to grow." More at streamingmedia.com.
J2EE 1.4, Sun's new Java Specification, will undoubtedly be widely adopted by the makers of Java-based software, but though Sun's attempts to hype it have not been as successful as in the past. Aside from the fact that the software industry just isn't as exuberant as it once was, many vendors are already "ahead of the spec" and have implemented functionality that customers demanded without waiting for Sun and Java to blaze the trail.
TiVo finally launched its High Definition-capable unit. Designed by TiVo for DirecTV, it sports a 250 GB Hard drive and four tuners for $999. But neat new products aside, TiVo faces some daunting challenges. It has not made inroads with cable companies, many of whom have commissioned cheap TiVo knock-offs from companies like Scientific Atlanta. Many owner of these off-brand DVRs don't even know that they aren't TiVos, and, having never used the real thing, don't know the difference.
Continuing yesterday's Gnome story where we mentioned the webcam/voice project for Gaim, Tim Ringenbach wrote us in with more info and a preliminary screenshot from their project, gaim-vv.
SUSE LINUX 9.1 is now released and available in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. If you live elsewhere, you can get the first taste of the new SUSE by downloading the SUSE LiveCD (formerly known as SUSE Live-Eval). Read more at DistroWatch.
Jamie Clarkson released a screenshot of his work on a Mesa3d port to Syllable. In other news: Syllable 0.5.3 is slated to come out the 1st or 2nd in May. This release has many new features including: a updated Radeon driver, a VMWare driver, a new ATA driver, new Yamaha DS-XG drivers, new install scripts, and a whole lot more. This release also contains a humongus number of patches by the whole Syllable team for GCC 3.x. More info here.