OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Dillo 0.8 Released; Opera Goes Public; New OSNews Mobile front-end

Submitted by Pasi Ruhanen 2004-02-09 Internet 39 Comments

The Dillo web browser is a very fast, extremely small Web browser that's completely written in C. The source and binary are less than 400 kilobytes each. It is a graphical browser built upon GTK+, and it renders a good subset of HTML, excluding frames, JavaScript, and JVM support. On version 0.8, the dpi framework was redesigned. Communications are now done with a daemon: dpid. Some new plugins are included: downloads, ftp, hello. On other browser news...

Comparing Clusters TCO Whitepaper: OpenVMS, Solaris and AIX

Submitted by Ken Farmer 2004-02-09 Unix No Comments

Total Cost of Ownership for Entry-Level and Mid-Range Clusters by Techwise Research. A detailed analysis of the total cost of ownership of three different RISC-based server clusters including HP OpenVMS, IBM AIX and Sun Solaris. Read the whitepaper here.

GUI Slackware Package Management? gTask Intro; UI Editorial

Submitted by R. Alsina & M. Henson 2004-02-09 Graphics 19 Comments

Mad Penguin put up an article with some mockups about a Slackware packager front-end. On other interface news, gTask is a daemon and client library that allows programs to communicate the progress of certain long running operations (e.g. downloading files, printing, etc) to the daemon. Various user interfaces can report on the progress of these tasks to the user. The project created after inspiration of an OSNews article. On yet another interface article, here is what Roberto Alsina wrote regarding the relationship between free software writers and UI designers.

Nokia Buys Control of Symbian

Eugenia Loli 2004-02-09 Wireless 12 Comments

Move raises the stakes in Nokia's rivalry with Microsoft as the two now control cell phone software. Top mobile phone maker Nokia moved Monday to take control of the world's leading cell phone software group, Symbian, drawing a line in the sand between the Finnish firm and rival Microsoft.

FireFox 0.8 Released

Submitted by mozilla.org 2004-02-09 Mozilla, Gecko 137 Comments

Mozilla Foundation renamed its next generation browser from Firebird to "Firefox" and has released version 0.8 (release notes). The new release features streamlined downloading, an installer for Windows users, a new Aqua theme for MacOS X users and numerous other improvements. On other XUL news, ThunderBird 0.5 was released and Lindows.com released the NVU 0.1 preview recently, a cross-platform WYSIWYG HTML editor powered by Mozilla's technologies.

Interview with the SkyOS Developers

Submitted by Andreas 2004-02-09 SkyOS 60 Comments

The developers of the SkyOS project sat down with TechIMO to answer a few questions about the promising alternative operating system.

The Future of Computing, Part 1

Guest post by Nicholas Blachford 2004-02-09 Editorial 59 Comments

The OSNews is accompanied by the by-line "Exploring the Future of Computing". In this series I've decided to do exactly that, to go beyond the daily stream of the latest updates and rumours and cast my eyes at the future. What will happen to Software, Hardware, the Companies and Technologies involved and how these are developed. I for one think there will be big changes to come, some for the better, some for the worse.

Sun’s Network Computing 04-Q1

David Adams 2004-02-09 Oracle and SUN No Comments

Sun Microsystems' quarterly online conference is this week, February 10th and 11th. It's a series of live videocasts and live chats to discuss Sun's latest technology initiatives. If you "attend," you'll get a Sun Java Desktop System evaluation CD, downloadable Sun BluePrints book and articles, and free Ringtones for your phone. The topic this quarter is 20 new innovations designed to cut cost and complexity. Sign up here.

Migrating to the Solaris OE from Tru64 UNIX

Eugenia Loli 2004-02-09 Solaris 9 Comments

This article presents a fictional case study that illustrates the methodology, tools, and best practices used to migrate a Tru64 environment to a Solaris environment.

Memory Hygiene in C and C++: Safe Programming with Risky Data

Eugenia Loli 2004-02-09 General Development 24 Comments

Memory management is scary. It should be: A lot can go wrong—often very wrong. But a moderately experienced C or C++ programmer can learn and understand memory hazards completely. Once you have that knowledge, you should feel only confidence, not fear. Read the article here.

Tuning ORACLE to Minimize Recovery Time: For Solaris on SPARC

Eugenia Loli 2004-02-09 Databases No Comments

This article provides recommendations for tuning ORACLE on SPARC processor-based systems running the Solaris Operating System to minimize recovery in the event of a system or database failure. This article is relevant for any audience level.

HyperTransport group ups data transfer speeds

Eugenia Loli 2004-02-09 Hardware 7 Comments

A new version of the HyperTransport specification comes out Monday that will, ideally, boost performance in PCs and communications equipment over the next year.

GDI+ Graphics Transformation

Eugenia Loli 2004-02-09 General Development 1 Comment

Learn the basics of transformation, coordinate systems, the role of coordinate systems in the transformation process, and transformation functionality using GDI+ with C#. Find out how to distinguish among global, local, and composite transformations, how to use the Graphics class transformations in applications, and how to translate, scale, shear, and rotate graphics objects.

Gtk# 0.16 Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-02-09 Mono 7 Comments

Gtk# is a .Net/Mono language binding for the Gtk+ toolkit and several GNOME platform and desktop libraries. The GNOME 2.2 platform is currently targeted. Recently, 0.16 of Gtk# was released, codenamed "Groundhog Stew." GtkSharpRSS was updated to take advantage of its new features.

Getting to Know Gnome

Eugenia Loli 2004-02-08 Gnome 28 Comments

Steven Garrity writes about his experiences with Linux and Gnome: "I've noticed a few little user interface niceties worth sharing", he says.

SCO Claim Reaches 5 Billion USD

Eugenia Loli 2004-02-08 SCO 58 Comments

Linux antagonist SCO Group is seeking to add $2 billion to its legal claim against computing giant IBM while changing the scope of the suit.

2.0.40 “Moss-covered Tortoise” Linux Kernel Released

Submitted by Jeremy Andrews 2004-02-08 Linux 19 Comments

KernelTrap reports that David Weinehall has released the 2.0.40 stable Linux kernel, calling it the "Moss-covered Tortoise". It earned this name by being released over 3 years after its predecessor, 2.0.39. Those still using the 2.0 kernel are recommended to upgrade for numerous reasons, including fixes to local exploits and remote information leaks. View the changelog and download the new kernel from a kernel.org mirror.

Nullsoft’s NSIS 2.0 Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-02-08 General Development 37 Comments

NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System) is a tool that allows programmers to create such installers for Windows. It is released under an open source license and is completely free for any use. After almost two years of development the NSIS 2 Team is happy to announce the release of NSIS 2.0.

Microsoft Building Integration, Management into Longhorn Server

Eugenia Loli 2004-02-08 Windows 22 Comments

Microsoft Corp. is hard at work to make "Longhorn," the next iteration of its Windows Server product, do more for less by integrating various server software systems. To do it, the company plans to extend .Net's capabilities even further with common execution environments and complete .Net Common Language Runtime support, said Valerie Olague, a Windows Server System director, in an interview.

IRIX 6.5.23 Released

Eugenia Loli 2004-02-08 SGI and IRIX 24 Comments

As of February 4, 2004 IRIX 6.5.23 is releasing with all new systems shipping from SGI worldwide manufacturing centers. The IRIX 6.5.23 release continues the focus on stability, reliability, security and compatibility required in the IRIX 6.5.xx quarterly release process.