nVidia Drivers for FreeBSD

  Submitted by Matt Lacey FreeBSD 20 Comments
It came to my attention today that there has been a new release of nVidia detonator drivers for FreeBSD. Apparently released on 1st July, the first I heard of them was when I randomly checked the nVidia website today. The new drivers support 4.8 onwards, including -RELEASE -STABLE and -CURRENT branches. The drivers support the most recent hardware including the FX based cards.
Read More

When Technology Fails You

In the News 45 Comments
Most of the people in the United States and Canada should know about the crippling power outage that hit eastern North America yesterday, leaving New York, Toronto, Detroit, and other cities dark all afternoon and into the evening. When the outage hit, it was sometimes low-tech (or no-tech) devices that were the most useful, as trains stopped and mobile phone networks didn't work or became overloaded. Pay phones (now rare), pagers, and flashlights were the useful tech tools, and thousands were forced to walk home.
Read More

MS Slashes Prices for Thai “Peoples PC”

  Submitted by Scott Purcell Microsoft 54 Comments
In order to participate in Thailand's "Peoples PC" project (in which the goverment hopes to provide 1 million low-cost PCs for the population), Microsoft has cut their price for Windows and Office together to as low as $36 -- 10% of what they sometimes charge for Office alone! They also are dropping their controversial product activation requirements for this project. Previously, the Peoples PC project was based exclusively on Linux. My take: Watch for falling margins at MS as big customers realize, in the wake of Munich and Thailand, that threats of migration to Linux can win BIG price breaks from MS...
Read More

Linux vs Windows: Choice vs. Usability

  Submitted by Wally Linux 102 Comments
A Recent DevX editorial makes the (often made) claim that Linux's lack of a single standard UI will hamper its adoption on the desktop and makes developing applications for Linux more difficult. Hard-core Linux users love having the choice of many operating environments, and they are hardly likely to resolve the KDE vs Gnome argument anytime soon. Is there any hope of more standardization? Should we even want it?
Read More

SCO vs IBM: Battle Continues

  Submitted by linares Legal 40 Comments
SCO has terminated IBM's Dynix licence. Dynix was a product developed by Sequent, which was acquired by IBM in 1999. Technology developed by Sequent for its Unix OS (Dynix) called Numa was subsequently rolled into Linux. According to this article at Vnunet.com, it looks like a lot of this goes back to SCO's bitterness about project Monterrey, a joint venture between SCO, Intel, and IBM. IBM withdrew from the project, which was SCO's last chance at the big time.
Read More

XP Lite & 2000 Lite in Beta

  Submitted by Greg Windows 22 Comments
LitePC, the creators of a commercial utility that makes standard windows components optional, allowing for the creation of a stripped down (and even embedded) version of Windows98, is working on a version for Windows 2000 and XP. See more information on the Beta test.
Read More

GNU Questions: RMS on SCO, Distributions, DRM

  Submitted by Timothy R. Butler Open Source 80 Comments
Richard Stallman, the founder of the GNU Project and Free Software Foundation, took time to discuss many current issues with Open for Business' Timothy R. Butler. Stallman provides straightforward answers on SCO, GNU/Linux distribution choices, Digital Rights Management, dual license schemes, and more. Read the in-depth interview at OfB.biz.
Read More

Happy Anniversary!

OS News 101 Comments
Today is the second anniversary of OSNews' renaissance. Though OSNews started in Autumn of 1997, there was a long period in which it was in deep-freeze, with only occasional updates. August 2001 bought daily updates, a new back-end, and a lot of new readers, thanks to our new Editor-in-Chief (Eugenia). Since that time we've had:
  • 4,247 news postings
  • 133,118 comments
  • 244 Feature Articles
  • 82 Editorials
  • 94 Interviews
  • 1001 Flamewars
Thanks for reading, and keep coming back!
Read More

Making Your PC Secure: A Responsibility

Privacy, Security 68 Comments
I am a "Technologist", a Technology enthusiast that is usually the one that is called should a major catastrophe strike an end user. My saga of computer rescues becomes a plot that is ever so thickening, if not only for the fact that's it's becoming incredibly easy for hackers and malicious code writers these days to invade personal property to find, seek, and destroy. Each year, virus and hacker threats increase, and in addition the damage trail left behind is something of a problem. Not to forget, a majority of "PC Panic" cases I've come across are often times the same common, "major" problem.
Read More

End of Outlook Express a Good Thing?

  Submitted by Preet Wade Microsoft 76 Comments
It might be the world's most widely distributed e-mail client, but Microsoft has confirmed that it has no intention of further developing Outlook Express. Microsoft is moving its consumer-oriented email focus to MSN and Hotmail, while encouraging business users to use (and pay for) the full Outlook.
Read More

Resisting Open-Sourcery

  Submitted by Ken Walker Rumors 84 Comments
Analyst Rob Enderle has written what is sure to be a controversial article explining his conversion from an open source proponent to a disillusioned opponent. His reasons don't focus on technical merits, but on side issues such as the fanatical intolerance for dissent and ignorance in Linux forums (making it hard to get help sometimes) and the fact that when your boss expects everything to be free it makes it harder to exceed expectations. Food for thought, but he might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Read More

Microsoft Criticises Third Party Code for Windows Crashes

  Submitted by Preet Wade Privacy, Security 65 Comments
Scott Charney, chief security strategist at Microsoft, told developers at the TechEd 2003 conference in Brisbane, that information collected by Dr Watson, the company's reporting tool, revealed that "half of all crashes in Windows are caused not by Microsoft code, but third-party code" . . . Charney also reinforced Microsoft's message to developers and network administrators that they needed to build secure applications and networks "from the ground up"
Read More

Linux Usability Report

Linux 20 Comments
German firm Relevantive has performed a formal usability test of Linux as a desktop OS (SuSE/KDE), with a control group using Windows XP. They found that user, who presumably had some familiarity with Windows, took slightly longer (almost equal) to perform an identical task in Linux and estimated that it would take a week for them to achieve familiarity with the new system. The study also identified several problems with Linux as a desktop system, mostly around the UI.
Read More

Introduction to “Open”

  Submitted by Manish Bansal Editorial No Comments
The word open gets thrown around pretty gratuiously in the tech world, resulting in a lot of confusion. A very detailed article in The Rational Edge examines the phenomena of open computing, open standards, open source software, and proprietary commercial software, how they differ, and how they're similar.
Read More