OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

The Future of Computing Part 6: Replacements

Guest post by Nicholas Blachford 2004-03-03 Editorial 27 Comments

If it's AI and robots you wanted from this series then this one is for you. Artificial Intelligence exists today, when this and other technologies merge the result will be more like Science Fiction than any PC. The technology will be fantastic, the possibilities endless. Get it wrong, the consequences dire.

Swapping Red Hat for a Fedora

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-03 Fedora Core 35 Comments

"When asked about Fedora, I’ve always offered the same response – it’s meant for those who want to stay on the bleeding edge of Linux development. I feel that Fedora is more a change of concept and mindset for Red Hat users and developers rather than being merely a Linux distribution." Read the review at Star-TechCentral.

Beyond XFree86, Searching for the Alternative

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-03 Wayland 48 Comments

"There's another schism going on in the Linux world. Just in case you've been under a rock in the last few months the XFree86 team has changed their license. There's an uproar from several of the largest Linux distributions where they're refusing include XFree86 4.4 in their new releases. This is bad news for a few but also in the middle of this conflict begs the question. What are the alternatives?" Read the editorial at Linux.Warcy.com.

Finder co-Designer Not Keen on Current User Interface

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-03 Graphics 69 Comments

Steve Capps, co-designer of the Finder and much of the Mac's graphical user interface (as well as one of the folks behind the Newton OS), doesn't find much to excite him about either the Mac or Windows user interfaces these days.

Knoppix Linux version 3.3 Review by THG

Submitted by Alan 2004-03-03 Linux 18 Comments

"Do you want to explore Linux without blasting your pc? Do you want to have some of the greatest hacking tools, all on one bootable cd? Then Knoppix Linux is for you! The price is right, because it's Free." Read the review at TomsHardware.

SCO sues AutoZone

Submitted by Ressev 2004-03-03 SCO 49 Comments

SCO Group Inc. Wednesday said it has filed a copyright suit against auto-parts company AutoZone Inc., alleging the chain runs versions of the freely distributed Linux operating system that contain code belonging to SCO.

Microsoft Readies Another Cut-Rate Windows Bundle

Submitted by Tudy Parghel 2004-03-03 Windows 24 Comments

Right after dropping hints that it is readying new initiatives to combat the growth and popularity of open-source software overseas, Microsoft acknowledged Tuesday that it is offering a low-priced Windows bundle to Malaysian users.

GTK+ 2.3.5 released

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-03 GTK+ 28 Comments

Development versions GTK 2.3.5, GLib 2.3.5 and Pango 1.3.5 were released for testing.

IBM: Give Linux wireless networking a try

Submitted by Frank 2004-03-03 Linux 27 Comments

These days you cannot talk about computers and networks without thinking of Linux and wireless networking. This article explains wireless networking with WLAN, Bluetooth, GPRS, GSM, and IrDA from a Linux perspective. It uses various wireless devices and the corresponding kernel layers and user space tools to demonstrate how they work with Linux. With this knowlege you can tinker with various wireless devices having different form factors, and develop Linux kernel code required to enable unsupported devices.

Preliminary Statistics from our Mobile Web Pages

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-02 Internet 47 Comments

Building simple cHTML sites for the less-capable Phone/PDA/textmode browsers seems to be my passion lately, and so I thought I share some statistics with you. As you might know, the new OSNews "mobile" pages went live last weekend and we got some preliminary results:

Linux on the Opteron, Part III

Guest post by Robert Minvielle 2004-03-02 Linux 17 Comments

Continuing with the Linux on the AMD64 series of articles, this installment is to be a summary of two new distributions, and the changes that have been made to Gentoo since the last installment. Here I review the installation of TurboLinux 8 (both with and without the update CD), the installation of Fedora Core for x86_64, and more news on Gentoo for the AMD64.

Interview: Martin Taylor, Microsoft’s Manager for Platform Strategies

Submitted by Rodrigo 2004-03-02 Microsoft 32 Comments

Microsoft's general manager of platform strategies describes plans to compete with Linux, including segmenting the market into small, medium and large businesses. Taylor also defends the security and innovation of the proprietary development process against open source critics.

Calmira XP 3.32; shell for Windows 3.11

Submitted by i386DX 2004-03-02 Windows 54 Comments

Do you still use the old Microsoft Windows 3.1(1 for Workgroups)? It still holds some value for some people, but the old Program Manager isn't all that great for today's standards, says ABZone. That's why Calmira exists, it's a shell for Windows 3.1 that gives you a Windows 95 look-and-feel. Calmira XP goes a step further; it has a Windows XP interface for Windows 3.11.

FreeSBIE 1.0 released (FreeBSD Live CD)

Submitted by HoBa 2004-03-02 FreeBSD 37 Comments

What is FreeSBIE? It is a live system on CD, or an operating system that is able to load directly from a bootable CD, without any installation process, without any hard disk. It's based on the FreeBSD OS.

Arch Linux Release 0.6; Get to Know Rubyx

Guest post by lukin1982 2004-03-02 Linux 18 Comments

Arch Linux 0.6 (Widget) was released yesterday. You can find out more at their website here. Elsewhere, Rubyx is a new linux distribution based on some interesting concepts like user-mode packages installation and a modern init system, and a rationalized services control. It is based on a new pkg managment system that features parallel build/make.

KDE Announces the Quality Team

Submitted by Carlos Woelz 2004-03-02 KDE 20 Comments

In an effort to attract more contributors, programmers or not, the Quality Team was lauched today. Read the announcement at The Dot, and an opinion piece on the benefits of the new project is at Newsforge.

NetBSD 1.6.2 Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-02 NetBSD 39 Comments

NetBSD 1.6.2 has been released, with binary distributions for 40 architectures. More information is available in the 1.6.2 release announcement.

SkyOS meets GTK

Submitted by Kelly Rush 2004-03-02 SkyOS 67 Comments

GTK (The GIMP Toolkit) has been ported to SkyOS. With this GTK port, major GTK applications like GIMP, Abiword, and Gaim can now be ported to SkyOS. A number of additional libraries were ported as well to make the GTK port possible. These libraries will be available in source and binary form when SkyOS 5.0 is publicly available (internally, SkyOS 5.0-beta4 will be the first beta to include this).

New IBM Software PowerPack Eval for Java and .Net Developers

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-02 IBM 13 Comments

Are you developing in Java, ANSI C++, Visual C++6, CORBA, IDL, MIDL, or XML, Or are you a .NET developer using Visual C#, Visual Basic, NET, ASP, .NET, or evaluating the .NET platform? Either way with the new PowerPack you’ll get a robust collection of resources that will enable you to evaluate IBM software development tools designed to help you with your specific developer needs. Go here and pick the resources you want and get it mailed to you at no cost.

Using Swing’s Pluggable Look and Feel

Eugenia Loli 2004-03-02 Java 33 Comments

This article discusses the Swing concept of a pluggable look and feel and offers some thoughts on how to use it in a way that is both convenient for the programmer and desirable for the user experience.