IcePack is the third biggest German Linux distribution after SuSE and Knoppix. DistroWatch informs us that they recently released their commercial edition as a free download, as its developers are currently working on Icepack Linux 3.0. Icepack Linux 2.75 comes on 4 CDs, plus a bonus CD containing plenty of artwork, true type fonts and some commercial applications. Download from either the English, German, French and development web site.
"Many enterprise software users and vendors have made significant commitments to open source technologies. Projects such as the Linux operating system, Apache Web server, and the Perl programming language, have proven themselves as viable alternatives to equivalent commercial offerings. But what about the tools used to hold core information assets? Are open source databases ready for the enterprise?"Read the article at LinuxWorld.au.
Software designed by humans will always have flaws, says Microsoft, but the company argues that its security record is improving. Microsoft has admitted it does not expect to ever release completely secure, flawless code, but denied that its software was any less secure than any other complex code.
Delfim Machado made public a way of crashing a password-protected screensaver and thus giving full access to the user account that the screensaver was running under. All a user has to do is to keep pressing any key for 5 minutes or so and then pressing Enter. Delfim Machado contacted Apple's Security department with his discovery, but when he didn't hear back, he decided to go public.
Castle Technology, makers of an XScale based desktop machine, announced today they had purchased RISC OS from the previous owners, Pace. RISC OS was initially developed by Acorn, starting in 1988, and has appeared in a large number of Acorn machines, and later on machines by other manufacturers.
wx.NET is a C# wrapper for wxWindows, providing a portable GUI toolkit for .NET programs. wx.NET can be used with various implementations of the CLI, including .NET, Mono, and DotGNU Portable.NET. Other C# wrappers for popular freely available toolkits are GTK# and QT#. Also, more developers are needed to assist porting Mono or dotGNU to Mac OS X.
The MorphOS/Pegasos Quickstart Guide written by Jürgen Lucas has updated to version 2.5. The guide shows you how to install MorphOS on Pegasos with an empty IDE hard drive. Thanks to Andreas Zierl and Fabrice Lehaut the guide is beside german also available in english and french.
NASA recently benchmarked Apple's dual 2GHz Power Mac G5 at its Langley Research Center in Virginia. The main purpose of the tests was to compare the G5 to the G4 for "computational fluid dynamics applications" however they also compare it to the Pentium 4.
In the Windows 2003 SP1 beta, Intel says it will offer a preview of the 32-bit execution layer that will cause the Itanium 2 processors to run x86 applications at the full clockspeed rating of the processor. For example, the 1.5-GHz Itanium 2 "Madison" processors launched this week would offer that clockspeed to 32-bit applications, as well. Until now, the inability of the Itanium Family processors to run 32-bit applications without a large performance penalty has been a major shortcoming of Intel's 64-bit Itanium line that has negatively affected industry adoption.
Microsoft has killed off Windows NT 4, but it should now release its source code to the open-source community in order to fight off the challenge from Linux, Munir Kotadia claims. My Take: Sorry, but the suggestion doesn't hold business-wise. Read more for my short commentary on the subject.
"Few languages have been as popular over the years as BASIC. Until about a decade ago, almost every programmer cut his teeth learning BASIC. Indeed, the name itself came from Beginner's All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. If you've had BASIC training, can you find a familiar flavor that runs under Linux? Because it is not enough to find a good BASIC language implementation for Linux; one must find a BASIC language variant that approximates the style of BASIC to which you are accustomed."Read the article at DevChannel by Russell Pavlicek.
VMware, whose software lets an Intel server run several operating systems simultaneously, is expanding both its software capabilities and business ambitions.
Rocklyte Systems announced the latest version of its free multi-platform operating system environment, Athene 3.1. Available for Linux and Windows, Athene supports the rare ability of being able to function on competing operating systems, while also maintaining its own independent OS infrastructure (the Athenyx 2003 CDROM series). The 3.1 release of Athene continues to make significant strides in the advancement of its desktop interface.
Do you remember the
Contiki desktop OS, an Internet-enabled graphical operating system for constrained systems? I have just ported
Contiki to the 8-bit Atmel
AVR microcontroller, which is commonly used in various kinds of embedded systems, and have set up a demo server running the Contiki AVR software at http://contiki-demo.sics.se/.
Although Linus Torvalds didn't meet a goal to release the upcoming 2.6 version of the Linux kernel in June, the Linux leader said a test version could come as soon as next week. A day after Linux founder Linus Torvalds joined the Open-Source Development Lab, the group has hired another top programmer, Andrew Morton, the developer who will assume responsibility for the upcoming 2.6 version of Linux.
Apple readies Panther Server, a forthcoming update to Mac OS X Server. Version 10.3 will feature improved management capabilities and support for Windows networks, add a variety of services including a new edition of the QuickTime Streaming Server. Read the rest at ExtremeTech.
Are you a long time Windows user curious about the Apple Switch campaign? Are you wondering if you should try it? Read below for my experience with the whole thing... twice. Just over a week ago I purchased a new 12" Apple PowerBook G4...
