OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3: Red Hat Overhauls Flagship Linux

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-22 Red Hat 50 Comments

Dominant Linux seller Red Hat will begin offering the newest incarnation of its product for business customers on Wednesday, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, a version that opens several new markets for the company. Read the rest of the report at News.com and "read more" for the full press release.

Microsoft To Unwrap Longhorn Code

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-22 Windows 35 Comments

The new OS, still a couple of years away, will change the way developers write business applications.

Deficiencies in Resolving Dependencies Limit Linux’s Appeal

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-22 Linux 86 Comments

"Utilities like urpmi, up2date, apt4rpm and OpenPKG may be a step in the right direction, especially if they become widely adopted. Until we have a universal tool for resolving application dependencies, we can't expect casual users to be able to install their own applications." Read the article at NewsForge.

XServe G5 Claimed on Apple’s XGrid Mailing List

Submitted by Kelly McNeill 2003-10-21 Apple 14 Comments

Ever since Apple introduced G5's towers, many have asked if the company would eventually release an XServe based on the fast new processor. Although Apple hasn't said anything officially, it would appear that the company made them available to select individuals for testing purposes. A support message posted on the new XGrid mailing list is very telling. A brief osViews post has all the details.

Microsoft Launches Exchange Server 2003 Worldwide

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-21 Internet 34 Comments

Today, Microsoft Corp. launched Exchange Server 2003, the next edition of its messaging and collaboration server, as part of the Microsoft Office System. Novell also issued a press release stating that Novell's Ximian Connector for Microsoft Exchange enables users of Ximian Evolution groupware suite on Linux and UNIX desktops to function as full Microsoft Exchange 2000/2003 clients.

Review: Mandrake Linux 9.2

Guest post by James Smyth 2003-10-21 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 87 Comments

MandrakeSoft has recently released the latest version of their desktop operating system. Mandrake Linux 9.2 Download Edition is available on their web site across three ISO files for the Club members. The first disk is about 650megs and the following two are ~700.

SGI and Linux Accelerate Research Efforts at NASA Ames

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-21 SGI and IRIX 29 Comments

SGI today announced that large-scale SGI Altix 3000 systems have once again generated breakthrough performance results on demanding scientific applications. Recent achievements include attaining record levels of sustained performance and scalability on a 256-processor global shared-memory SGI Altix 3000 system, the largest such system ever to run on the Linux operating system.

Ballmer: Raising Microsoft’s Security Game

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-21 Privacy, Security 51 Comments

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Tuesday defended his company's efforts to secure its software and fend off open-source rivals.

WinServer 2k3 & SQL Server 2k on Itanium: Impressive but incomplete

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-21 Windows 16 Comments

The InfoWorld Test Center evaluates the performance of Microsoft's new 64-bit platform, assesses its usefulness for IT today, and reveals what's in store for tomorrow.

New Office Opens its Doors

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-21 Office 30 Comments

But is anyone ready to move in? Migration to Office System--the latest version of Microsoft's widely used Office package--is expected to be slow, given the software's complexity. Still, backers from SAP to the U.S. Postal Service are ready for the housewarming.

Fedora Core Test 3 Review

Guest post by Jason Parker 2003-10-20 Fedora Core 96 Comments

Fedora Test 3, is, most certainly, as the name says, a test. In my experience there are a few problems and a few bugs that would keep me from recommending it as an everyday desktop replacement, but nonetheless, Fedora is an Operating System (distro) worth watching out.

OpenBeOS Status Report; More BeOS/Zeta News

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-20 Zeta 31 Comments

In the new OpenBeOS newsletter Michael Phipps is giving a good status report, explaining the status of each kit. However, what we don't learn yet is how far we are from an alpha public release. In the meantime, the Beunited Java team announced that they now have a complete coomand line version (1.4.2.) running, while 3Sat TV channel will present Yellowtab Zeta on TV today. Additionally, the people at BeOS Max said that the last version of their distribution will be 3.1, because they don't want to be an obstacle on Zeta's commercial success.

New HP AlphaServer the Omega of the Line

Eugenia Loli 2003-10-20 OS News 34 Comments

Hewlett-Packard plans to begin selling today the last and most powerful model in the AlphaServer line, a series of servers that stretches back to a very different era in the computing industry. HP plans to announce improvements to Tru64 and OpenVMS today as well.

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.