OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

From Cars to Medicine, Nanotubes may be Miracle Material

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-20 Geek stuff 18 Comments

They are stronger than steel and as flexible as plastic, conduct energy better than almost any material ever discovered and can be made from unexotic raw materials such as methane gas. Read the story.

The Future of Storage is in the Data–the Metadata

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-20 General Development 1 Comment

"There's a significant shift afoot in storage fundamentals, and it's not storage area networks (SAN) or network attached storage (NAS)-- although both will have critical roles in these new fundamentals. The shift involves the facilitating role that metadata will play in abstracting the specifics about data and where it's stored from the applications, end users, and operating systems requiring access to it." Read the article at ZDNews.

Store objects using the JDK 1.4 Preferences API

Submitted by Frank 2003-10-20 Java 5 Comments

The Preferences API -- a lightweight, cross-platform persistence API introduced in JDK 1.4 -- is designed to store small amounts of data (string, simple byte arrays, and so on.) and was not intended to be an interface to a traditional database. It can, however, be effective as a storage device if your data can be expressed as simple objects. This article offers an introduction to the API, explains how objects are stored, demonstrates the process in action, and provides a code library to do the work.

Sun Versus Linux: The x86 Smack-down

Guest post by Tony Bourke 2003-10-20 Benchmarks 100 Comments

Sun has really shifted gears lately with regards to Solaris, SPARC, and x86. For many years, Sun seemed to relegate Solaris x86 to the status of red-headed stepchild, undeserving of attention, nurturing, and support. It furthered this perception when in January of 2002, Sun announced it would not release Solaris 9, the newest upcoming Solaris operating system, on the x86 platform. Solaris 9 was to be a (more lucrative) SPARC-only platform release.

KDE Celebrates Seven Years of Existence

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-20 KDE 49 Comments

In October 14th 1996, Matthias Ettrich announced and detailed a new project that was in search of contributers. The project was temporarily dubbed the 'Kool Desktop Environment', later to simply become the 'K Desktop Environment'. Of course, 7 years later and KDE is about to reach version 3.2, consist of 4.5 millions lines of code and represents the effort of nearly 1400 man-years.

Linux to Use Windows Drivers via Wrappers?

Submitted by Prakash Shetty 2003-10-19 Linux 66 Comments

"DriverLoader", created by Linuxant Inc, is a revolutionary "compatibility wrapper" allowing standard Windows NDIS 5.0 drivers (the network driver standard used by Windows and on an earlier spec revision by OS/2 too) as shipped by hardware vendors for windows users to be used as-is on Linux x86.

Linux vs. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD Scalability Compared

Submitted by Bascule 2003-10-19 Benchmarks 81 Comments

These benchmarks are the result of a scalable network programming research. The interest in this area is to see how scalable and fast network applications can be on standard PC hardware. Linux 2.4/2.6 is compared to BSDs. Read the accompanied PDF paper here.

Libranet to Ark Linux: An Experiment in Migration

Submitted by LPH 2003-10-19 Linux 13 Comments

Libranet to ArkLinux: 'An experiment in migrating from one distro to another' can be found at TuxReports.

24 bit PNG Icons Patch for Classic AmigaOS 3.5/3.9

Mike Bouma 2003-10-19 Amiga & AROS 20 Comments

Elena Novaretti has released a small patch for version 3.5 and 3.9 of AmigaOS adding transparent support for 24-bit PNG icons and alpha channel transparency. Comparison workbench screenshots: 256 color classic icons and 24-bit PNG icons with the patch installed.

Slackware 9.1: Rebuilding the Kernel

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-19 Slackware, Slax 13 Comments

This article covers the type of path you would take to get Slackware 9.1 running and customized for a special kernel build. It gives you an idea of things you will need to address, but is by no means an authorative tome on tweaking your Slackware installation. Read our review of the new Slackware here.

An Introduction to J2EE Security

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-19 Java 2 Comments

Java is designed for secure development and deployment. It is often said that security is incorporated in Java from the ground up and not added as an afterthought. This article is excerpted from the newly published book "J2EE Security for Servlets, EJB's, and Web Services".

FreeBSD 4.9-RC3 for i386, Alpha Now Available

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-18 FreeBSD 10 Comments

FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Murray Stokely says that a number of the issues brought up with FreeBSD 4.9 RC2 have been resolved, and the latest release candidate (RC3) is now available for i386.

Palm’s Nagel Risks SEC Wrath with OS Claims

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-18 Wireless 5 Comments

PalmSource's CEO David Nagel faces questions about his claims that the company is in talks to license PalmOS to SonyEricsson. The handset manufacturer has flatly denied any such talks are taking place. SonyEricsson would represent a major win for Nagel's PalmSource licensing operation.

Red Hat’s Fedora Test 3 Review

Submitted by Rob 2003-10-18 Fedora Core 53 Comments

LinuxElectrons.com is reviewing Red Hat's Fedora Test-3. Screenshots included.

SuSE Linux 9.0 Live CD Available

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-18 SuSE, openSUSE 34 Comments

SuSE has updated their site with features of the new SuSE Linux 9.0. Additionally, they released a Live CD based on the 9.0 version (it's the RC-1). Mirrors here.

Solaris x86 Resurgent, Sun’s Side of the Story

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-18 Solaris 16 Comments

"Several weeks ago, we cocked a collective eyebrow at Sun. When executive VP Jonathan Schwartz said "we do not believe that Linux plays a role on the server. Period," we didn't have much of a choice. Our read on the statement was that it was more than a little hyperbolic, perhaps fueled by bitterness at Linux making lunch meat of Solaris x86." Read the article at ServerWatch.

ARM Port Xscale Optimizations on NetBSD; AMD64 Crossbuilding

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-18 NetBSD 11 Comments

NetBSD's Steve Woodford announces that he has committed various Xscale micro-optimizations to the NetBSD/arm ports. NetBSD/arm is a collective term for NetBSD running on systems based on ARM Ltd's ARM architecture. Also, NetBSD's Frank van der Linden announced that he has added gdb support to the tree, as a result the NetBSD/amd64 port is now completely crossbuildable. NetBSD/amd64 is a port to the AMD64 family of processors.