OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

ActiveState announces Visual XSLT 2.0

Submitted by Melissa Wong 2003-10-28 General Development 4 Comments

ActiveState today announced the release of Visual XSLT 2.0 at the Microsoft PDC. Visual XSLT 2.0 addresses customer's demands for a flexible debugger and a Visual Schema Mapper. The Just-In-Time de-bugger doesn't need source code and automatically senses and debugs code; it is the first of its kind for XSLT. The solution also includes a Visual Schema Mapper that has "drag and drop" functionality.

The easy way to non-blocked sockets

Submitted by Shelli 2003-10-28 Internet 7 Comments

In this article, the author will cover both the client and server side as he describes how to create non-blocking secure connections using the Java Secure Socket Extensions (JSSE) and the Java NIO (new I/O) library, and he will explain the traditional approach to creating a non-blocking socket, as well as an alternative (and necessary) method if you want to use JSSE with NIO.

Microsoft PDC News; Longhorn Details Emerge

Submitted by Philip Alldredge 2003-10-28 Windows 106 Comments

At its Professional Developers Conference this week, Microsoft is taking the wraps off its Longhorn Windows, Yukon SQL Server and Whidbey tool suite. Check back here for news from the Los Angeles event. Articles here, here here, here (lots of good info about the new Longhorn features) and here. Longhorn SDK here, screenshots and video of Longhorn from today conference here, Longhorn Tweak Guide, special access to Longhorn/Whidbey PDC release code. Even more articles here, here and here.

Apple’s Mac OS X Panther Fries FW/USB-Combo External Drives?

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-28 macOS 47 Comments

Just a few days after the report that Mandrake 9.2 can fry some LG cdroms (workaround has being issued in the Linux kernel in the meantime), now users complain that Mac OS X Panther renders unusable/fried firewire hard drives, mostly some LaCie models and models that are both USB and FW. In the meantime, MacSlash has posted a collection of bugs found on Panther here and here, while backwards compatibility with Jaguar seems to not be great either. Hopefully 10.3.1 is not too far away!

Vector Linux 4.0 Review

Submitted by Chris Bergeron 2003-10-28 Linux 16 Comments

PCBurn.com has a review up on Vector Linux's latest release, 4.0. Find out what this slimmed-down Linux distribution has to offer.

Mac OS X 10.3 Panther Review

Guest post by Can Sar 2003-10-27 macOS 48 Comments

Here is a review of Mac OS X Panther 10.3, the new offering by Apple, only a few days after its release.

Cygwin/XFree86 Abandons XFree86.org

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-27 Wayland 51 Comments

Cygwin is latest contributor on XFree86.org that gets pushed away by the behavior of some of its founding members and the dysfunctionality of XFree86.org. Hopefully, Red Hat, SuSE, FreeBSD, Apple, Sun and others will create a fork (or join Xouvert, X2 or a more 'open' X11.org) in a way that allows truly open development and innovation in X in a faster pace than XFree86's maintainers have allowed so far.

Microsoft Steers Developers to Longhorn

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-27 Windows 20 Comments

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Monday plans to discuss the company's strategy to generate interest--and dollars--from an avalanche of Windows-oriented products over the next three years. Read the reports at News.com, eWEEK and Y!News.

SuSE Signs Up Key Software Partner

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-27 SuSE, openSUSE 8 Comments

SuSE Linux has enlisted the backing of server-software maker Veritas Software, an important step in supporting the needs of business computing and keeping up with top Linux seller Red Hat. In the meantime, Novell tried to buy SUSE, sources say.

Cray Forecasts Red Storm for Masses

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-27 Hardware 6 Comments

Supercomputer maker Cray said Monday that it is planning to release a line of products based on the Advanced Micro Devices-powered Red Storm machine it is building for the Department of Energy.

K-Meleon 0.8 Beta out; Galeon, Firebird, Epiphany Releases

Submitted by Yien Zheng 2003-10-27 Mozilla, Gecko 5 Comments

K-meleon's latest beta is built on Mozilla 1.5 code and incorporates all of the changes since 0.7. Additionally, Mozilla Firebird 0.7.1 was released for Macs, Epiphany released two versions, 1.0.4-stable and 1.1.0-test, and Galeon released 1.3.10.

CodeWeavers CrossOver Office 2.1.0 Released

Submitted by Jeremy Newman 2003-10-27 Office 20 Comments

This version supports all known versions of glibc, including the new Native Posix Thread Library (NPTL) interface. This represents a major technical advance for Wine, as glibc instability has been a problem throughout 2003. Support for the Dreamweaver MX Studio was added. Dynamic loading of OpenGL is provided, which allows a much greater range of unsupported applications to run, especially games such as Half-Life. Miscellaneous bugfixes were made for Microsoft Office, Quicken, Visio, and Lotus Notes.

Developer’s notebook: Tips from veteran Linux Programmer

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-27 General Development 19 Comments

The author is one of the top Linux developers around, and a long-time UNIX champion. Fellow Linux developers will benefit from the useful, common-practice shell scripting techniques that the author and his Codemonks Consulting partners employ on a daily basis in their Linux development and applications services work.

Libranet 2.8.1 Flagship Edition Review

Guest post by Will Senn 2003-10-27 Debian 46 Comments

I decided to review the Libranet Distribution because there just aren't many reviews available on it, and I am sure that there are plenty of people who would like to know what Libranet is and how it works.

Gates To Kick Off PDC With Longhorn Overview

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-27 Microsoft 23 Comments

Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates is slated to kick off the company's Professional Developers Conference here Monday with an overview of its latest pre-beta Windows operating system and how it advances the company's .NET platform strategies. Read the reports at InternetNews and at NYTimes (free reg. required).

SGI Announces Demo Challenge

Submitted by Greg Afinogenov 2003-10-27 3D 22 Comments

SGI recently announced a contest. The coder of the OpenGL API demo judged best by a panel of judges will receive a $40,000 Onyx4 UltimateVision visualization machine, running IRIX. The contest is open to US and Canadian residents.

Linux: Journaling Filesystem Shootout

Submitted by Wrawrat 2003-10-26 General Development 35 Comments

"Mike Benoit recently posted a link to results from his new and improved file system shootout, using better hardware and running more tests. Using two benchmarks that are designed to measure hard drive and file system performance, Bonnie++ and IOZone, he's compared a number journaling filesystems found in the 2.6 kernel." Read the report at KernelTrap and the actual benchmarks here.