OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Red Hat Announces Open Source Assurance to Safeguard Customers

Submitted by lday 2004-01-20 Red Hat 16 Comments

Red Hat's program features warranty to guarantee customers the right to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux without interruption. A key feature of the Open Source Assurance Program is an Intellectual Property Warranty. The warranty ensures, that in the event that an infringement issue is identified in Red Hat Enterprise Linux software code, Red Hat will replace the infringing code. Read more for the PR.

LinuxWorld Article Round-Up

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-20 Linux 17 Comments

Here is a quick Linux articles round up: "Analysis: Linux looks for new worlds to conquer" says ComputerWorld.au. "From back office to desktop, Linux is spreading" says ComputerWorld.au. "Novell at LinuxWorld: Ready To Rock" says Enterprise Linux IT. "Showtime for Linux" says LinuxWorld.au. "Big vendors lead leap to Linux" says ComputerWorld.au.

Mac OS X 10.3: Panther Uncaged

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-20 macOS 64 Comments

This major revamp of Mac OS X swaps eye-candy for speed and a compelling feature-set, says APCMag in their review.

Microsoft Gets Green Light to Punish OS-less PC Vendors

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-20 Legal 39 Comments

The Microsoft antitrust settlement is to be reviewed by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, this week. But lawyers at the Department of Justice and the settled States have already been indicated that they're not altogether happy with Microsoft's compliance to the arrangement they signed 14 months ago.

Bringing the CLI to Open Source

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-20 Mono 27 Comments

Those who like .NET may find themselves lamenting, "I still have to deploy applications on the Windows operating system. I am still locked to one vendor - Microsoft." If this sounds like you, Ximian's Mono project might be the answer. The Mono project was started in July 2001 by Miguel de Icaza, cofounder of Ximian, with the aim of bringing the Common Language Infrastructure platform to free systems.

What’s Wrong with the Open Source Community

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-20 Open Source 65 Comments

There's no question that the open source community has a lot going for it. Besides a staggering amount of developer power that can be turned against important problems, the open source movement also has a passion and commitment that the commercial software world often envies.

Cyberposium 2004: Open Source Future Debated

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-20 In the News 1 Comment

Software industry executives sparred at Harvard Business School this weekend over open source procurement policies being adopted by some governments that could leave Microsoft in the cold. These key open source advocates also pointed to databases, security and storage as the next big categories ripe for commoditization.

Guide to install NetBSD 1.6.1 on your iBook

Submitted by Jan Schaumann 2004-01-20 NetBSD 16 Comments

A detailed step-by-step HOWTO install NetBSD 1.6.1 on your iBook has been posted to the NetBSD port-macppc mailing list. More information about this port is available from the NetBSD/macppc website.

Review of Onebase 2004 Linux

Guest post by Andrew Fries 2004-01-19 Linux 48 Comments

Onebase is still a very new distribution - the first version appeared only in July 2003, and Onebase 2004 released in early January 2004 is a major rewrite and enhancement of the original concept. It started out as a source-based system, but with this release it embraced binary packages as well, becoming a hybrid. It is not based on any other major distro or package management system, instead it prides itself on doing things its own way. These are still the early days, but this is also what makes it an interesting distro, and the one to watch.

KDE 3.2-RC1 Tarballs Available

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-19 KDE 45 Comments

The source code of the first RC for the upcoming KDE 3.2 release is here.

Andrew Morton and the Linux Desktop

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-19 Linux 53 Comments

Andrew Morton, Linus Torvalds' right-hand man and the maintainer of the 2.6 kernel, will not be attending the LinuxWorld conference in New York this week, but he did speak with eWeek's Senior Editor Peter Galli about the recent 2.6 kernel release and his vision for Linux.

MacWorld San Francisco 2004 Report

Submitted by Kelly McNeill 2004-01-19 Apple 16 Comments

January's MacWorld Expo brought about several exciting hardware and software products from Apple worth getting excited about. Editorial contributor Mike Banks Valentine had the fortunate pleasure to be among those that attended the show and provided osViews with a detailed report about what was announced as well as a handful of other Apple-centric news events that occured around the same time.

Can Linux Save IT Jobs?

Submitted by Kelly McNeill 2004-01-19 Linux 43 Comments

In these difficult times, having a computer-related job is a precious commodity. Those that have managed to keep their jobs should be thankful but also concerned that it be lost in the name of offset income generated by its removal or transfer. osViews editorial contributor Doug Chick believes that one of the most valuable, yet underused tools within the computer professional's arsenal, is the advocacy of Linux on the desktop at your place of business as opposed to an expensive solution provided by Microsoft.

Editorial: Following the Consumer Software’s Market Status

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-19 Editorial 26 Comments

Computer users around the world while might be using different applications to do their paying job (e.g. a proprietary chemistry or biology app, or a high-end astronomy app etc) they all use the same "basic" applications in their daily lives: email clients, web browsers, IM, calculators, media players, image viewers, system utilities etc. Now these applications come for free with the operating system and there are plenty of completely free alternatives on the web too. But (especially younger) consumers should realize that once upon a time these "basic" free apps were costing real money. So, what happen to this software market of (basic today) applications?

Linux not ready to kill Unix — yet

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-19 Rumors 54 Comments

Despite the relentless march of Linux, major vendors believe commercial Unix releases aren't ready for the scrapheap yet. As Linux evolves from its single-processor roots into larger-scale applications, many market watchers have predicted that it will eventually replace the remaining commercial Unixes: Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX, Sun Microsystem's Solaris, IBM's AIX and SGI's Irix. "It costs between $150 million and $200 million a year to generate your own Unix system and you then have to say to yourself 'Am I going to see that amount of extra revenue if I put in these features?'" Linux International executive office Jon 'maddog' Hall told iTnews. However, Unix vendors argue that the needs of large-scale enterprise users haven't yet been met by Linux.

Flaky software could crash your car

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-19 Hardware 28 Comments

Oye Oyediran has taken his car to the repair shop three times for software upgrades since he bought it last year. This is the future of driving. Cars, planes, household appliances and myriad other machines are increasingly relying on software to work. Manufacturers want the flexibility and innovation that programming code can bring. But software can also make machines accidentally stop working, something computer manufacturers know all too well.

The Case for a RISC OS Package Manager

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-19 RISC OS 8 Comments

"The current state of play is that the package manager RiscPkg exists with a very basic set of features. There are a handful of packages with which the system can be tested, but initially these are just the package manager and its supporting libraries." Read the article at Drobe.co.uk.

LinuxWorld: Novell’s debutante ball

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-19 Novell and Ximian 11 Comments

New partnerships with server makers Dell and Egenera will be among the displays of Novell's newly bought Linux status at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo beginning Wednesday. Novell on Jan. 21 will ship its exteNd 5 suite for development of service-oriented Web applications, featuring boosts in security, productivity and Linux platform support.

The .NET System Namespace

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-19 .NET 16 Comments

The System namespace holds classes for simple common tasks, and a large number of sub-namespaces for slightly less common (but still important) tasks, including string manipulation, IO, and threading. Learn how .NET handles namespaces -- and how they can make your life easier.

MandrakeMove First Impressions: The Human Interface

Guest post by Daniel Allen 2004-01-18 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 41 Comments

I want to start off by saying that MandrakeMove is an incredible distribution and I am going to focus on some rather particular points in this review. My hope is to make the community aware of some of the outstanding issues with running MandrakeMove and not to discredit the countless hours Mandrake employees spent on making such a polished product. We all want Linux to succeed and that can only be accomplished by continuing to test, report and ask why or why not? The lifecycle of linux is like an organism, it has to keep breathing to stay alive.