OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

AbiWord and GIMP Ports for SkyOS Finalizing

Submitted by Robert Szeleney 2004-03-14 SkyOS 26 Comments

AbiWord 2.0.2 and GIMP 2.0-pre3 are available for SkyOS. SkyOS 5.0-beta4 will include AbiWord and GIMP as GTK ports as well as a few other GTK applications like a Calender, Notepad etc. In other news, a new binary PE handler (faster program loading/linking) has been implemented as well as SkyGI performance improvements.

InnoTek GCC for OS/2 Beta 4 Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-14 OS/2 4 Comments

InnoTek GCC for OS/2 is a commercial distribution of the GNU C/C++ compiler suite and associated utilities for the IBM OS/2 platform. InnoTek maintains an OS/2 platform port of the GNU C/C++ compiler suite and provides comprehensive support for the compiler environment to enterprise customers. Read more at eComStation's web site.

Why Good Ideas Fail, Part II

Submitted by Usman Latif 2004-03-14 Editorial 34 Comments

The software industry is very fearful of open source software, but this fear is irrational. The software industry can quite easily combat OSS as similar challenges have been met successfully in other industries. Part II of "Why Good Ideas Fail" discusses the future evolution of the software industry, and the implications of this evolution for innovative ideas.

MySQL Addresses Open-Source License Problem

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-14 Databases 37 Comments

MySQL has taken a step to mend a rift in the open-source world by updating a controversial licensing provision that had broken a close tie between the MySQL database and another software package.

Firefox Browser: Easy, Fun, Fast, Safe, Free

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-13 Mozilla, Gecko 75 Comments

Houston Chronicle reviews the Firefox browser and for the most part it gets a glorious review.

Technoids Issue 5 Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-13 Haiku 17 Comments

The PDF online magazine Technoids issued v5 with a number of articles including an interview with BeOS MAX 3.1 people, 20 years of Macintosh and a review of the latest Zeta (all in German).

Interview with Matthew Dillon of DragonFly BSD

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-13 Original OSNews Interviews 26 Comments

Today we feature a very interesting interview with well known *BSD hacker Matthew Dillon over his latest project, DragonFly BSD (also known for his Linux kernel contributions, Amiga C compiler hacking back in the day and the Backplane distributed database). Matthew discusses DragonFly's status, goals, the overall BSD platform, innovation, and more. Update: Added one more question at the end of the Q&A.

GNU Screen: an Introduction and Beginner’s Tutorial

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-13 Unix 39 Comments

Most modern Unix-based operating systems (e.g. Linux, MacOS X, and BSD) come with a little console-mode utility called GNU Screen. It's a powerful tool in the hands of the console warrior, a veritable Swiss Army knife of text-mode human-computer interaction.

Subversion 1.0.1 Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-13 General Development 5 Comments

This release of Subversion fixes about 25 small bugs discovered during the six-week code freeze for 1.0.

DotGNU Portable.NET 0.6.4 Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-13 .NET 9 Comments

DotGNU's Portable.Net is a portable suite of tools (including a C# compiler, assembler, and runtime engine). In this release, the C to IL bytecode compiler is now in good shape, and many bugs were fixed in System.Windows.Forms and System.Xml.

ekkoBSD 1.0 BETA 2 for Sparc-64 Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-13 BSD & Darwin 8 Comments

ekkoBSD.org has announced the latest beta release of the ekkoBSD Operating System to the public today.This release supports the Sparc 64bit Platform.

Sun should Open Source Unprofitable Parts of Java

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-13 Java 14 Comments

Even if Sun prefers to retain control over a stragic asset like Java, it should take a hard look at the components of Java that are related to platform-breadth and market-reach rather than to profitability, and slough these off to small, reactive Open Source efforts. javax.swing.text.html would be a good component to start the experiment with, says Rick Jelliffe. Check out the comments on that page too.

GNOME 2.6 Desktop & Developer Platform Beta-2 Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-12 Gnome 32 Comments

Download the second beta of Gnome 2.6, while you can read the announcement and changelog here.

An Analysis of Sun’s Linux and Opteron Strategy

Submitted by Bascule 2004-03-12 Oracle and SUN 17 Comments

If HP and IBM can't make money selling the same or lesser boxes for more, what reason is there to believe that Sun can? Scott McNealy used to describe x86 retailing as adding bruises to bananas, but now he's doing it. Read the article at LinuxInsider.

A Plea for Relief from Microsoft’s Escalating Anti-Competitive Tactics

Submitted by Dave 2004-03-12 Microsoft 90 Comments

David Mohring has written an open letter to antitrust, competition, consumer and trade practice monitoring agency officials worldwide, asking for relief from Microsoft's anti-competitive tactics.

NetBSD Packages Collection on Interix

Guest post by Jan Schaumann & Daniel de Kok 2004-03-12 NetBSD 5 Comments

Preliminary support for Interix, a UNIX-like environment for Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, and 2003, has been added to NetBSD's Packages Collection. The support is still new and incomplete, but it is now possible to bootstrap pkgsrc and install simple packages. Interix is part of Microsoft's Windows Services for UNIX package. See Todd Vierling's email to the tech-pkg mailing list for more information.

Homemade Embedded BSD Systems

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-12 OpenBSD 4 Comments

The OpenBSD Journal reports that Michael Lucas has written a new piece about OpenBSD on the OnLamp BSD site. This article, Homemade Embedded BSD Systems, covers installing OpenBSD on the Soekris system, but this could apply to any system which uses a CF device to boot. As usual, some great tips to get you started.

Mandrake Linux 10 Community Edition: The Potential is Now Obvious

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-12 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 180 Comments

I have completely skipped Mandrake Linux 9.2 because previous versions of Mandrake Linux were not exactly that "glamorous". However, I wanted to try out the new Linux kernel 2.6.x on my new Linare PC and so I decided to give Mandrake 10.0 Community Edition a spin. Here are some quick thoughts on it on how MandrakeSoft has earned back my trust with this release. Update: MadPenguin reviews it too. UPDATE 2: More bugs, more bugs. I have changed the rating of the software because as much as I keep using it, I find more and more and more bugs all over the place. MandrakeSoft should REALLY sit down and think hard about their QA department (I have already emailed them about it).

Will Mono Become the Preferred Platform for Linux Development?

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-12 Mono 100 Comments

The Mono project has a clear goal: to become the first-choice platform for Linux software development. Considering that Mono is an implementation of Microsoft's .NET framework, that goal might sound particularly audacious to many Linux fans, says Edd Dumbill. In the meantime it was announced today that the SPARC port of the Mono JIT engine has been completed.

My Linux Desktop Odyssey, 2004

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-12 Linux 17 Comments

Michael C. Barnes updates his in-depth review of Linux desktop operating systems. In this exclusive article at DesktopLinux.com, Barnes examines how far the Linux distributions have come over the past year, updating his popular first article and evaluating the current versions of leading Desktop Linux desktop options including Ark Linux, ELX Linux, Lycoris, MEPIS, Vector Linux, Xandros, as well as Live CDs including Puppy Linux and Flonix.