OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

GCC Begins to Match ICC on the Pentium 4

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-23 General Development 20 Comments

As reported by KernelTrap, CVS version of the yet to be released GCC 3.4 is reaching parity with ICC on floating point performance according to SPECFP2000. SPECINT still isn't as good however when compared to ICC.

Syllable 0.4.3 is Released

Submitted by Shawn 2003-02-23 Syllable, AtheOS 23 Comments

Syllable 0.4.3 has been released. Check out the homepage or go straight to the files. Also check out Syllable Internet, the home for the native Syllable internet apps, including ABrowse a WWW browser based on KHTML which now has tab support.

Screenshots from TriangleOS v0.0.3

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-23 OS News 35 Comments

Teenager programmer Wim Cools from the Netherlands released two new screenshots of his upcoming v0.0.3 hobby OS, TriangleOS.

Q&A Session with Bill Gates

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-22 Microsoft 30 Comments

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates recently sat down with The Seattle Times to talk about the company and its future.

New ‘Topdown’ UVM in NetBSD-Current

Submitted by Jan Schaumann 2003-02-22 NetBSD 17 Comments

Andrew Brown has committed changes to -current implementing a new 'topdown' uvm. With these changes, the areas for heap growth and mmap(2)'ed allocations, which used to be separate, are now one and the same, allowing either one to grow much larger than before. As an example, on i386 it is now possible to mmap(2) over 2GB of memory.

Bank ATM Security Not So Secure

David Adams 2003-02-22 Bugs & Viruses 16 Comments

Two Cambridge University researchers have discovered serious flaws in the security that many banks use in Auomatic Teller Machines around the world. The researchers, Mike Bond and Piotr Zielinski, released their findings in a paper, but various powers-that-be in the banking industry are not happy.

LindowsOS Steals the Show at First Desktop Linux Summit

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-22 Linspire 25 Comments

Attendees of the Desktop Linux Summit have spent the past two days reveling in the growing number of games, PCs, software applications, and peripherals that are now compatible with the underdog operating system. Designed to spread the word about Linux on the desktop and to teach the almost 550 attendees about the open-source operating system, the show also served as a platform for new product announcements, including several from the show's host, Lindows.com. Read the report at PCWorld.

Microsoft Fires Back at Sun in Java Case

Guest post by Kevin Adams 2003-02-22 Legal 16 Comments

"Microsoft went on the offensive Friday in the antitrust case brought against it by Sun Microsystems, accusing its bitter rival of violating California law through 'unfair competition.' In a court filing, the software giant asked a judge for attorney's fees and damages to cover what it characterized as Sun's unlawful violation of a settlement inked in an earlier lawsuit over the Java programming language." Read more at News.com.

MicroBSD Project Removed Because of Copyright Violations

Guest post by Jim 2003-02-22 BSD & Darwin 32 Comments

Because of violations of the BSD license the MicroBSD project has been completely removed from the internet, and all MicroBSD users are asked to remove it from their computers.

SciTech Asks OSNews Readers About Future Support

Submitted by Andrew 2003-02-21 Hardware 67 Comments

Andrew from SciTech writes: "SciTech SNAP Graphics now supports 180 different graphic chipsets. With that said we have been hearing that we now support too many different cards. So OSNews faithful, how many graphics cards should we support and which cards should make the cut in the next release?" And to add to this question, which OSes SciTech should add support for?

AmigaNews.de Interviews Hyperion Boss Ben Hermans

Guest post by MB, submitted by Iggy Drougge 2003-02-21 Amiga & AROS 5 Comments

An insight into the current state of AmigaOS 4 development is offered in this interview with Ben Hermans, leader of Hyperion Entertainment, charged with the development of the new OS.

Review of KStars 0.9 under Mac OS X

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-21 Geek stuff 8 Comments

They say the best things in life are free, and for UNIX computers, open source software certainly goes a long way towards proving that statement. KStars, a planetarium program written for UNIX machines running the K Desktop Environment, has been ported to OS X via Fink and X11, and offers Mac users a sophisticated but free planetarium program. Neale Monks takes a closer look at KStars and sees how it stacks against the shareware and commercial Mac OS planetarium programs. Not directly an OS news item, but definately of general interest especially for our geek readers. At the end of the article, you will find links to five more reviews of astronomy applications for the Mac.

A “Perfect Marriage” for Microsoft?

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-21 Microsoft 15 Comments

Redmond's Tim McDonough says Mac lovers have no need to fret over the giant's purchase of the cross-platform franchise from Connectix. Read the interview at BusinessWeek.

J2EE vs .NET: Levelling the Playing Field

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-21 Rumors 33 Comments

"It’s one of those rare situations where Microsoft is David, not Goliath; .NET is a displacement ploy targeted squarely against Java and J2EE, which has gained significant momentum amongst customers since its debut. As in J2EE, .NET applications go through a number of stages between source code and application. These stages are designed to liberate the source code from dependencies on the underlying software platform, although in .NET’s case there are many operating system hooks available when necessary." Read the article at ZDNews.

Intel in No Hurry for the 64-bit Desktop

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-21 Intel 17 Comments

"AMD and Apple will likely tout that they can deliver 64-bit computing to desktops this year, but Intel is in no hurry. Two of the company's top researchers said that a lack of applications, existing circumstances in the memory market, and the inherent challenges in getting the industry and consumers to migrate to new chips will likely keep Intel from coming out with a 64-bit chip--similar to those found in high-end servers and workstations--for PCs for years." Read the article at ZDNet.

A Brief Comparison of KDE 3.1 and GNOME 2.2

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-21 Rumors 61 Comments

Nicholas Petreley installs and compares the two most popular desktop environments for Linux & other Unixes. His recommendation? It depends... Update: OSNews reader Cesar Cardoso just sent us this: "Why not a UI-fight between Havoc and Mosfet?" This is Mosfet's rebuttal article answering to Havoc Pennington's article, while the first part is here.

Sun’s Schwartz: ‘We’re Back in Force’

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-20 Oracle and SUN 40 Comments

With Java, StarOffice, Solaris and Linux all on the verge of major breakthroughs (or busts), Sun Executive Vice President Jonathan Schwartz has a lot on his mind. Since shifting over from his role as Sun's Chief Strategy Officer last July, Schwartz has been revving up the Sun software engine, which had lost ground in several critical areas, including development tools, application servers and dealing with Linux. In a dinner conversation that carried over to a subsequent e-mail exchange, eWEEK's John Taschek asked Schwartz about the threat of Linux and how Sun will cope with Dell as a competitor.

Lindows.com Launches Linux Notebook

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-20 Linspire 75 Comments

Lindows.com on Thursday unwrapped an inexpensive and lightweight notebook PC based on its version of the Linux operating system. The San Diego, Calif., software maker's new Lindows Mobile PC will sell for $799. It includes a 12.1-inch screen and a 933MHz Via Technologies C3 processor, along with LindowsOS, a version of the freely available Linux.

Microsoft Urged to Innovate

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-20 Microsoft 36 Comments

In a report inspired by the advice of a departing Microsoft manager, a Merrill Lynch technology analyst wrote that the software company must "notch up the innovation component" if it wants to succeed in an era of networked systems and increased pervasiveness of open-source applications. The report, released Wednesday by Merrill tech strategist Steven Milunovich, analyzes points raised in an essay recently published by retiring Microsoft program manager David Stutz.

Intel Outlines New Processor Roadmap

Submitted by Bascule 2003-02-20 Intel 23 Comments

The Pentium 4-based Prescott processor, due in the second half of 2003, will be manufactured using 90-nanometre production technology and carry 13 new instructions aimed at specific applications including media and games. Debuting at 3.4GHz, Prescott will also carry improvements in hyperthreading and an 800MHz bus. Prescott will also feature larger caches and be scalable to 4 to 5 GHz. Intel vice president for mlogic technology development, Joe Schutz, said the company plans to be hitting the 15 to 20 GHz mark by 2010.