OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Book Review: Spidering Hacks

Guest post by Can Sar 2004-01-14 Office 5 Comments

"Spidering Hacks" by O'Reilly is targeted at everyone who wants to automate surfing the web and has a little bit of programming experience. Though each of the hacks in the book covers a particular topic, similar to books in the Cookbook series, there is also a lot of material that is generally applicable in each of them.

SkyOS: Review with Shots, Bochs, SDL, and More

Submitted by K. Rush & R. Richmond 2004-01-14 SkyOS 49 Comments

TechIMO has published the first preview of the next-generation SkyOS platform. With the new beta program gearing up, this article may provide some insight into what features one can expect when testing SkyOS 5. Many screenshots included. Ever busy with improvements, Robert and the SkyOS team have added the following to SkyOS 5:

BeOS/Zeta on VPC 2004, 1 GB RAM Hack, Opera for 10 USD

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-14 Zeta 36 Comments

ZetaNews.com posted some interesting all-around BeOS/Zeta news today: Opera 3.64 for BeOS now available for $10 USD, BeOSmax.org are explaining why the newest version is further delayed, an article about installing BeOS inside Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 and a hack effort to make BeOS believe that the machine has less RAM than it actually has in order to not hit its 1 GB RAM limitation and crash.

New Release of Minix?

Submitted by DanO 2004-01-14 OS News 27 Comments

On November 23 a new relase of Minix sneaked out. To make things a bit more interesting it looks like there may well be more releases to come: "Version 2.0.4 has been slapped together in a hurry to have a fixed point to start a new Minix project at. The code should be OK, but most new things haven't been tested. (So there's already a fix out.) The documentation is alas far behind all the changes." A Bochs image is also available (in the i386/DOSMINIX.ZIP, use the minix.bxrc to start Bochs).

Unix Firms Craft Plan Vs. Linux

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-14 Unix 33 Comments

For all the talk of Linux sidelining Windows in the server market, the upstart Linux operating system instead has stolen more glory from the older Unix as buyers flock to cheaper systems. But Unix vendors, even those that have embraced Linux, aren't giving up on the old workhorse. They're touting Unix as a complement, and in some cases a grown-up alternative, to Linux on low-cost machines.

Get to Know Xen

Submitted by Hans Henrik Happe 2004-01-14 OS News 12 Comments

Xen is a virtual machine monitor for x86 that supports execution of multiple guest operating systems with unprecedented levels of performance and resource isolation. A port of Linux 2.4 to run on the VMM works well, and *BSD and XP ports are in progress. Version 1.0 was released a few months ago.

Netcraft’s Top 10 of Hosting Companies OSes

Submitted by User 2004-01-14 Internet 12 Comments

Netcraft has published the second half of 2003's Top 10 hosting providers survey and list which Operating Systems they use for reliability. Seven providers use FreeBSD, one Windows and one Linux.

Gtk# 0.15 released

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-14 Mono 10 Comments

The GTK# toolkit 0.15 is out and Miguel de Icaza is providing news on Mono.

GStreamer – Where We Are and Where We Are Going

Guest post by Christian F.K. Schaller 2004-01-13 Multimedia, AV 49 Comments

About 3 years ago I was looking around for something to add multimedia capabilities to my GNOME desktop. At that point in time there wasn't really that much around. I think the most advanced video player for Linux in those days was XAnim, which was neither were moving quickly or could qualify as free software, except in the beer context. Projects like Xine and mplayer had either just started up or not come into existence yet.

Tablet PC XP 2004, codename “Lonestar” Beta Coming March

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-13 Windows 2 Comments

According to Tablet PC Talk Microsoft has announced at CES that they will release a beta copy of Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2004 (Lonestar) upgrade in March 2004.

Red Hat will give eCos Copyrights to the FSF

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-13 Red Hat 4 Comments

Red Hat today announced that it would assign all of its copyrights in the eCos open source operating system to the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The contribution will enable the Free Software Foundation to act as the sole copyright steward of the project and work directly with the eCos community and its maintainers on future development.

SciTech Software Announces Release of Open Watcom 1.2

Submitted by AndrewB 2004-01-13 General Development 30 Comments

SciTech Software, Inc. today announced that Open Watcom 1.2 has been released and is now available for download from its website. This release contains a large number of new features, product enhancements and several fixes designed to bring Open Watcom to a higher level of quality and compatibility. SciTech, the official maintainers of the Open Watcom project, have also announced the availability of an updated Open Watcom CD, complete with SciTech’s installer for DOS, OS/2, and windows. Support for the update will be handled exclusively through the Open Watcom website.

Court: No Microsoft claims via Lindows site

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-13 Linspire 14 Comments

A judge has ruled that the Web site Linux vendor Lindows set to aid California residents in processing claims against rival software maker Microsoft will not be tolerated.

Frenzy: LiveCD FreeBSD Portable System Administrator Toolkit

Submitted by Alexandr Kovalenko 2004-01-13 FreeBSD 8 Comments

Frenzy is a "portable system administrator toolkit", LiveCD based on FreeBSD. It generally contains software for hardware tests, file system check, security check and network setup and analysis. The system is oriented to Russian-speaking users, but this could change if project will get more popularity.

YellowTAB Zeta 1.0-RC2 Release Imminent

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-13 Zeta 105 Comments

YellowTAB informed us that their testing of Release Candidate 2 of Zeta 1.0 has finished. They sent us two screenshots of Zeta 1.0-RC2 and Bernd Korz replies to two of our questions regarding the RC-2.

Sun Java Desktop System Live CDs Coming Soon?

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-13 Oracle and SUN 20 Comments

Sun's Glynn Foster is reporting from the Linux conference in Australia that he was able to get some JDS Live CDs to give away. It might be safe to assume that Sun will be releasing these for free to the public for them to taste JDS first hand.

The MandrakeMove Experience

Guest post by Alex 2004-01-13 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 31 Comments

MandrakeMove is a Live CD distribution, or in other words, it does not need to be installed. It is an interesting concept, but not a new one, there are quite a few similar products, such as the famous Knoppix, SUSE Live, LindowsCD, Mempis, PCLinuxOS, Gnoppix and a few others.

Novell offers legal protection for Linux

Submitted by Ressev 2004-01-13 Novell and Ximian 14 Comments

Novell expects this week to begin offering SuSE Linux customers some legal protection for using the open-source operating system, the fourth legal umbrella to emerge from a computing industry grappling with legal threats brought by SCO Group.

MySQL Upgrades with Enterprise Features

Eugenia Loli 2004-01-13 Databases 13 Comments

It's not quite an Oracle or IBM database yet, but open source MySQL is catching up to the giants in terms of enterprise features. Version 5.0 was released Monday by developers MySQL AB of Sweden and includes for the first time stored procedures that simplify the development of enterprise applications.

Editorial: Can Linux Make It Mainstream?

Guest post by David Howe 2004-01-12 Linux 139 Comments

This is a commentary. From a Linux user who does tech support for Windows users and works in the real world of a corporate Windows network environment. 2004 has been touted by many as the year of the Linux desktop. Indeed with the backing of IBM, Sun and now Novell, the business world looks like getting a serious Linux desktop contender. But has Linux on the desktop really got what it takes?