OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Castle and Tematic merge

Submitted by Phil Mellor 2004-01-11 OS News No Comments

Castle Technology Ltd and Tematic Limited confirmed that Castle and Tematic merged in the fourth quarter of 2003. The combined business will trade under the Castle Technology Ltd name with a new "Tematic Division", focused on offering full design and engineering resources to customers wishing to licence RISC OS for use in their new products.

Leveraging your Oracle 9i Skills to Learn DB2

Submitted by David 2004-01-10 Databases 4 Comments

If you're a database specialist interested in growing your DB2 Universal Database skills, there's a good chance that you've already developed database skills with another relational database product somewhere along the way. This article shows you how to use your current knowledge of Oracle 9i to quickly gain skills in DB2 UDB for Linux, UNIX, and Windows Version 8.

Linux Gets Real (-time)

Submitted by Anonynous 2004-01-10 Linux 24 Comments

Metrowerks Senior Software Engineer and veteran real-time programmer Bernhard Kuhn has created a Linux kernel patch that he claims enables hard, real-time performance in the Linux kernel by adding priorities to interrupts and spinlocks. Kuhn believes his approach to be more "natural" and akin to traditional real-time operating systems (RTOSs) than the dual-kernel approach taken by real-time projects such as RTAI and RTLinux, and he is hopeful that his patch might one day win enough interest and support to become part of the official Linux kernel tree.

Who’s Patching Open Source?

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-10 Privacy, Security 29 Comments

The first place many companies look for Apache support is their main distribution provider, most commonly Red Hat or SuSE. As open source grows, the need for support grows, and this new need has led to the development of a new support option: third-party vendors who manage or patch software. Flaws raise red flag on Linux security but many users remain confident about the security of the open-source environment notices ComputerWorld.

BSD Vault interviews Rick Collette Interview

Submitted by *Nix User 2004-01-10 BSD & Darwin 29 Comments

Rick Collette discuss the projects' plans ahead and the roadmap for ekkoBSD.

Windows XP Handheld Due Later This Year

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-10 Windows 41 Comments

Devices will be size of a handheld, have a hard drive, Wi-Fi and VGA display, vendor claims. A new type of mobile device that is barely larger than a standard handheld but runs Windows XP on an i86 processor was unveiled this week at the CES. Vendors said the device, which they are dubbing the ultra-personal computer (UPC), will be available in the second half of this year. Development of the device is being encouraged by Transmeta, which has a line of i86-compatible processors that is small enough and has sufficient heat dissipation to be put into devices without cooling fans.

Linux for Asia: Asianux

Submitted by Shashdoter 2004-01-10 Linux 19 Comments

Two Linux distributors from China and Japan are building a common open-source platform for Asian companies. China's Red Flag Software and Japan's Miracle Linux aims to develop a common Linux platform to make it easier for Asian companies to switch to the open-source camp. The two Linux distributors said in a statement they will make use of Oracle's software development centre in Beijing to jointly create a new Linux-based server operating environment called "Asianux".

Review: SUSE 9.0: A Distro Worth Paying For

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-10 SuSE, openSUSE 34 Comments

"SUSE 9 offers a superb printed manual, a great installation interface, a modern KDE system in addition to the more standard, older GNOME interface, and a new kernel build. It's easy to see why Novell thought enough of the software to buy the company" says InternetWeek in their review.

Rapid Application Development using PyQt and Eric3

Submitted by Roberto Alsina 2004-01-10 General Development 31 Comments

Roberto Alsina writes: "Tired of long, carefully crafted tutorials trying to show you the quickest way to write a program? Here I take another approach. I just went and did a program (and the tutorial) while checking the clock." And so here you have it: the app, the tutorial, and the timeline.

The Future of Linux is Proprietary

Guest post by D.D. Chamberlain 2004-01-09 Editorial 66 Comments

Linux can be made profitable and it can be made so without going the enterprise route or by relying on the traditional services an support model-- as long as technology companies are willing to sell the operating system on their own highly optimized and performance enhanced proprietary hardware.

Linux Kernel 2.6.1 Released

Submitted by Hugo & Marcel 2004-01-09 Linux 29 Comments

Linus Torvalds released the final 2.6.1 Linux kernel. This release has a lot of changes since 2.6.0, many things have been merged from the -mm tree. This release includes a patch for the mremap() vulnerability.

Novell Would Eclipse Sun

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-09 Novell and Ximian 19 Comments

Here is part 2 and part 3 of the AlwaysOn interviews of Miguel and Nat from Ximian and Chris Stone, Novell CEO. To find out more about why Novell made such a sudden change in direction, and what their plans are for the future, IBM talked to Chris Stone.

Sun May Change Linux Desktop Platform

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-09 Oracle and SUN 39 Comments

Long-term strategy overhaul may alter SuSE relationship: "I guess we're a little bit disappointed with SuSE's performance in the marketplace," said Schwartz. Asked if Sun would revive its own Sun Linux distribution that it discontinued last year, Schwartz said, "That's an interesting question."

Windows 98 Support Shifts to CD

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-09 Windows 13 Comments

When Microsoft pulls the plug on Windows 98 support next Friday, it will offer a free CD designed to help users "make the most" of the aging operating system, without any further assistance from the software giant.

GNOME Platform Bindings 2.5.2 released

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-09 Gnome 4 Comments

Here is another scheduled release of the GNOME Platform Bindings, which provide a GNOME development platform for programming languages other than C, in the style of those languages.

The 20 Macs That Mattered Most

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-09 Apple 14 Comments

This month is the 20th anniversary of Apple Computer's Macintosh. To mark the occasion, Wired News is running several stories this week about the groundbreaking machine, the people who created it and the Mac's impact on computing and culture in general.

DragonFly Year-End summary for 2003

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-09 BSD & Darwin 11 Comments

DragonFly BSD was announced in July of this year, with Matt Dillon the originator and main weightlifter of this project. Development has been proceeding at a good clip, with a first release expected in 2004. Here's some data on the amount of activity in the DragonFly source, as of the end of December 2003.

Integrating KDE in GNOME Applications

Submitted by anonymous 2004-01-09 KDE 74 Comments

KDE project is planning on announcing QtGTK library which was written by one of its core developers. The library integrates Qt event loop with GNOME. Thanks to that whole KDE framework can be used from any GTK+ application just like it would be a native part of it. The library itself is already available here. There seems to be also a tutorial on how to use it here. Reportedly Gimp already works with it.

Nine Language Performance Round-up: Benchmarking Math & File I/O

Guest post by Christopher W. Cowell-Shah 2004-01-08 General Development 166 Comments

This article discusses a small-scale benchmark test run on nine modern computer languages or variants: Java 1.3.1, Java 1.4.2, C compiled with gcc 3.3.1, Python 2.3.2, Python compiled with Psyco 1.1.1, and the four languages supported by Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET 2003 development environment: Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++, and Visual J#. The benchmark tests arithmetic and trigonometric functions using a variety of data types, and also tests simple file I/O. All tests took place on a Pentium 4-based computer running Windows XP. Update: Delphi version of the benchmark here.

Open Magazine: Can Xandros simplify Linux use?

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-08 Oracle and SUN 35 Comments

Xandros does Linux sans Tux, but the big question remains: Does being fast, easy, and astonishingly elegant buy it success on a down and dirty desktop? Asks Open Magazine.