XPlite Now Available
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
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
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
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
Java Desktop System: First Impressions on Sun’s Linux
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
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).
Havoc Pennington: Linux has its Nails on UNIX’s Coffin
Today we feature a very interesting interview with Havoc Pennington. Havoc works for Red Hat, he is heading the desktop team, while he is well known also for his major contributions to GNOME, his GTK+ programming book, plus the freedesktop.org initiative which aims to standardize the X11 desktop environments. In the following interview we discuss about the changes inside Red Hat, Xouvert, freedesktop.org and Gnome's future, and how Linux, in general, is doing in the desktop market.
Keeping Older Hardware Doesn’t Always Save Money
As many OSNews readers forced to get by with ailing, slow computers at work may know, a stingy hardware upgrade cycle can have negagitve productivity effects. However, in this age of gigahertz processors, how often do businesses really need to upgrade? Every three to four years, a recent Gartner study recommends. Now, I'm sure Dell is happy to hear this news, but is it really necessary to upgrade that often?
SkyOS: Nvidia Support, GUI Contest Round Two Open
SkyOS now has hardware accelerated Nvidia support, supporting all known models. Additionally, the first round of the "SkyOS GUI Design Contest" is now over. Round two has started, and you may vote for the design you would like to see. The winner will be the design implemented and released in SkyOS 5.
Network programming with the Twisted framework, Part 4
In this final installment of the series on Twisted, the author looks at specialized protocols and servers contained in the Twisted package, with a focus on secure connections. One thing the servers and clients in Parts 1,2 & 3 had in common is that they operated completely "in the clear". Sometimes, however, you want to keep your connection free from prying eyes (or from tampering/spoofing).
Novell to Drop ZENworks from Linux Tool Bundle
Novell last week said it plans to use newly acquired systems management tools instead of including its own ZENworks technology in a Linux software package that's due to open beta testing next month.
An Ocean of Sun Microsystem News
InfoWorld features three articles on Sun: "Sun Network: Welcome to the post-boom Sun": Company hopes to bolster its enterprise worth at next week's user conference. "Sun steals page from Microsoft's playbook": Grid, p-to-p software missing from Project Orion's official launch. "Sun inches toward low-cost computing": Company demos Oracle 10g database running on a cluster of its Intel-based servers. Also, McNealy, 48, who co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982, sat down last week with a group of Chronicle reporters and editors to discuss the challenges facing his company.
Fortnightly Q&A with Fleecy Moss – Session 19
Session 19 of the Fortnightly Questions and Answers sessions with Amiga's Chief Technology Officer Fleecy Moss are now online. On other Amiga news, AmigaWorld reviews the download edition of the first Amiga Anywhere Entertainment Pack for Pocket PC powered devices.
Interviews with V. Perantzakis of BeOS Max & G. Maillard of B.E.O.S.
The BeOSJournal caught up with Vassilis Perantzakis recently in BeShare, who spoke about his work on BeOS Max Edition, his outlook on Be Inc.'s decision to "focus shift", and what he thinks is in store for future distributions of OpenBeOS, including YellowTab's Zeta. Additionally, the new french news site BeOptimistic.net features an interview of Guillaume Maillard, leader of the BlueEyedOS project. This interview is in french, but an english translation is also available. Other new BeOS-related news sites involve ZetaNews and IsComputerOn.
Banking on the Technology Cycle
Once the most aggressive users of IT, financial institutions have learned to make do with less. But few can go on cost-cutting indefinitely. Computer- and telecoms-makers could soon be feasting again. In most cases, IT systems have not been touched for more than a decade - "note the antiquated OS/2 operating system that runs many an IBM computer on tellers' desks", the Economist reports.
Cocoa Tutorial Series: Loop the Loop
This is the fourth tutorial in series of learning Cocoa for MacOSX. Read the article at MacDevCenter.
Windowing System DOpE GPL’ed
DOpE - a windowing system for the realtime OS DROPS, which is based on the microkernel Fiasco (an implementation of the L4 API) provides the realtime facilities of DROPS at the user interface level and is now available for download via CVS. The system is now offered under the GPL, via the project's CVS.
Apple Seeds Panther build 7B68 to Testers
Apple today seeded build 7B68 of Mac OS X 10.3, Panther. The update was posted to the Apple Developer Connection Web site this afternoon in three segmented disk images. The company also posted build 7B68 of the Xcode development tools.
IEEE Begins Standard to Create Baseline for More Secure OSes
The ability to enhance security in information systems and networks is limited by the operating systems that underpin them. Recognizing this, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has begun work on a standard to formulate consistent baseline security requirements for general-purpose (GP), commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) operating systems.