OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

FreeBSD 4.9, 5.x Release Engineering Status Report

Submitted by CooCooCaChoo 2003-09-17 FreeBSD 14 Comments

FreeBSD Release Engineering team's Scott Long provides a status report for FreeBSD 4.9 and 5.x. He says that FreeBSD 4.9 Release will be pushed back a few weeks until instability reports are tracked down. FreeBSD 5-stable roadmap document received a major overhaul - among the highlights, KSE is progressing extremely well and is no longer a major source of concern for 5-stable. Stability is also at a very good level.

IM Services Lock Out 3rd Parties

David Adams 2003-09-17 Internet 58 Comments

First it was MSN Messenger, now Yahoo Messenger is threatening to lock out 3rd party instant messaging apps like Trillian, Proteus, and Gaim. It's been an ironic and pleasant fact that users of alternative operating systems have had nice, multi-funtional instant messaging applications, while most Windows users didn't even know they could bypass the official clients. That era may be coming to an end, as the big IM services are starting to lock out the 3rd party apps. What will this mean for alternative platforms?

Xbox Update Squeezes Out Linux

David Adams 2003-09-17 Games 52 Comments

Internet-connected Xbox units are phoning home to Microsoft and downloading a patch that closes the loophole that the Xbox Linux Project was exploiting to get Linux running on the Microsoft-built game machine. The patch may also delete "foreign" files that the Xbox Linux users install on the machine. There is some evidence that even if Xbox users don't enable the "Xbox Live" settings, some games also can connect to the internet and transmit information back to Microsoft.

NewsForge: First look at Sun’s New Desktop

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-17 Oracle and SUN 35 Comments

Chris Gulker is offering a first look of Sun's new desktop OS, dubbed "Java Desktop System", for NewsForge. Yesterday, OSNews also published its first impressions on the Linux-based OS.

Borland is Embracing wxWindows

Submitted by Sean Long 2003-09-17 General Development 42 Comments

According to this, Borland is using wxWindows as the C++ framework for their upcoming C++ BuilderX product. Borland will be committing changes back to the open source wxWindows project.

OSNews T-shirt Ideas (With Contest)

David Adams 2003-09-17 OS News 43 Comments

We've been thinking of printing up some OSNews T-shirts. We're going to print up a whole batch of them, and we wanted to get some feedback on what they should look like. Would you be interested in buying a shirt? What would you like it to look like?

KDE 3.1.4 Released

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-16 KDE 29 Comments

The KDE Project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.1.4, a maintenance release. This release provides corrections of problems reported using the KDE bug tracking system and two security vulnerabilities in KDM, among other fixes.

Interview with Gaël Duval of MandrakeSoft

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-16 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 23 Comments

The french online magazine Clubic has published an interview with MandrakeSoft founder Gaël Duval. Update: English translation here.

OS Wars: Solaris vs. Linux – Parts 1 & 2

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-16 Solaris 47 Comments

"Before, Linux could run only on single- or dual-processor boxes," Yankee Group senior analyst Dana Gardner told the E-Commerce Times. "Now you're starting to see people many of these low-cost boxes in a gridlike fashion to perform highly intensive computing tasks." Read the part 1 of the article at eCommerceTimes. Sun stands behind Solaris from both a support and a legal standpoint, Sun's Bill Moffitt told the E-Commere Times. "As Scott McNealy says, it's a 'one-throat-to-choke' service," he said. "If there's a problem, you know who to call." Read the part 2 of the article.

Java Camp Takes Cue from Microsoft

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-16 Java 9 Comments

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Microsoft's fiercest foes--Java software providers--are showing growing admiration for their powerful rival, says News.com. eWEEK also has an article on Sun's new announcements, and here is our own report on Sun's Linux distribution: Java Desktop System.

Windows Small Business Server 2003 Released to Manufacturing

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-16 Windows 8 Comments

Microsoft announced that Windows Small Business Server 2003 has been released to manufacturing.

Ark Linux 1.0 alpha 9 Released

Submitted by Bernhard Rosenkraenzer 2003-09-16 Linux 10 Comments

Ark Linux 1.0 alpha 9, a Linux distribution designed primarily for new Linux users, has been released and is available for download here. Highlights of this release include, among the usual set of package updates and bugfixes, graphical bootup, semi-automatic recovery of corrupted XFree86 config files, and an improved network card configuration tool.The full release notes can be found here.

SciTech Software Announces Open Watcom 1.1

Submitted by Andrew Bloo 2003-09-16 General Development 13 Comments

SciTech Software, Inc. today announced that Open Watcom 1.1 has been released. This update includes a number of eagerly anticipated fixes and enhancements and can be downloaded, free of charge, from the Open Watcom web site.

XPlite Now Available

Submitted by Pasi Ruhanen 2003-09-16 Windows 52 Comments

After some time in development, XPlite has finally been released. XPlite (successor of 98lite) lets you remove Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player and several other components from Windows XP/2000.

Linux Cluster at Los Alamos For Nuke Simulations

David Adams 2003-09-16 Linux 24 Comments

Los Alamos National Laboratory has been a long-time supercomputer user, which they primarily use for models used to simulate nuclear explosions and estimate the health of America's aging arsenal. They're about to install one of the world's most powerful Linux clusters, a new 2,816-processor, 1,408 node system called Lightning, built by cluster company Linux Networx. The cluster will be using Mellanox's InfiniBand server interconnect technology to connect the nodes.

Switch Your PC on Like a TV

David Adams 2003-09-16 Intel 38 Comments

Intel is working on hardware to facilitate instant-on capability for PCs. It works on the same principle as the saved state functionality that OS vendors have used to eliminate the lengthy boot-up that PC users hate, but in hardware. What's really interesting about their work is that this saved state will not only work when the user shuts down the system properly, but will work even after a power outage. This has interesting application in the server space too, and eliminating the boot-up would help reduce downtime after a UPS failure, for example.

Apple Upgrades its Lineup

Submitted by James Alcasid 2003-09-16 Apple 79 Comments

In the Apple conference in Paris, Jobs spoke of the new 15" Powerbook, the updated 12" and 17" Powerbooks, the new Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and he re-iterated that Panther will be out before the end of the year and that G5 will reach 3GHz by the end of next summer.

Mad Penguin introduces Libranet 2.8.1

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-16 Debian 16 Comments

The Mad Penguin web site offers a review of Libranet and also an interview with Jon Danzig, its founder.

Java Desktop System: First Impressions on Sun’s Linux

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-16 Oracle and SUN 59 Comments

Sun Microsystems is introducing its Linux distribution, Sun Linux, a part of the Mad Hatter project, to the general public today. Sun Linux is targeting the Enterprise market and at a very low price. OSNews had a sneak peak at Sun Linux last Friday at Sun's offices and here is what we saw there.

GNOME-Office 1.0 Released; Nautilus Becomes Object-Oriented

Eugenia Loli 2003-09-15 Gnome 70 Comments

The GNOME-Office team announced the immediate availability of GNOME-Office 1.0. It includes the AbiWord-2.0 word processor, GNOME-DB-1.0 database interface and Gnumeric-1.2.0 spreadsheet. In the meantime, Nautilus is set to receive a new UI design which will be object oriented-based. In this OO design each folder is an object and opens in its own window, while the navigational buttons and methods are going away from the default interface (similar to Tracker in the pre-OpenTracker BeOS 4/5 days).