OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Is Free Software Always a Good Thing?

Adam Scheinberg 2003-05-21 Editorial 178 Comments

According to the Free Software Foundation, free software includes "the freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits... Access to the source code is a precondition for this." While I agree that the principles of the FSF are noble, I also feel that there is an unspoken assumption - an assumption that pods of hobby developers across the world can coordinate on the same scale that directed companies with a budget can. Where free software has an important place in computing, so does closed-source commercial software.

Opera 6.02 for Mac Released

Eugenia Loli 2003-05-21 Opera 27 Comments

Opera released v6.02 for the Mac, while promises version 7 soon. Opera Software also released version 7.11 for Linux recently. In other browser news, Gecko-based Epiphany, released version 0.6.1.

FreeBSD 5.1 Beta2 Now Available

Eugenia Loli 2003-05-21 FreeBSD 39 Comments

FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long has uploaded the 5.1 i386 Beta2 release of FreeBSD. He will be uploading the alpha release, work is under way to get a beta2 for sparc64 and pc98. Additionally, FreeBSD team's Hiten Pandya has written a manual page for the Asynchronous Logging Queues (ALQ) for FreeBSD 5.x and is requesting your comments and reviews.

Let the Mobile Games Begin: Java J2ME vs. .Net CF

Eugenia Loli 2003-05-21 Games 24 Comments

J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition) and the .Net Compact Framework follow different design philosophies and target different developer communities. However, both have important places in the future world of pervasive computing.

Red Hat, Linux, Consumers, Money – Do They Mix?

Eugenia Loli 2003-05-21 Red Hat 21 Comments

"Earlier this year Red Hat split its range into two segments - effectively, business and everything else. It did this in the wrong order, as The Register remarked at the time, but subsequently the company has padded out its Enterprise range to consist of Advanced Server, Enterprise Server and Workstation, so here at least it has a complete set." Read the article at The Register.

TPC-C Benchmark Heats Up, Windows Back on Top

Eugenia Loli 2003-05-21 Benchmarks 17 Comments

HP hoisted its Superdome-Itanium-Windows combination to the top of the premier OLTP scalability benchmark on Tuesday, about a month after originally gaining the top spot and little more than a week after IBM displaced the combo with a system based on its own AIX/RISC/DB2 stack. Also, Microsoft gained ground on its database rivals in 2002, despite a decline in sales for the market as a whole, according to research published Wednesday by Gartner Dataquest.

Performance Inspector for Linux

Submitted by Frank 2003-05-21 Linux 4 Comments

Performance Inspector puts your finger on the pulse of your C/C++ and Java code, helping you nail down performance bottlenecks and problems with Linux kernel interaction. The suite of tools includes sample-based profiling, monitoring at the thread level, and more

SGI Altix 3000 Breaks Speed Record

Eugenia Loli 2003-05-21 SGI and IRIX 42 Comments

SGI today announced that its SGI Altix 3000 servers and superclusters deliver world-record performance on the next-generation Intel Itanium 2 processor (Intel code name Madison). Preliminary results of 64-bit application tests reveal that "the SGI Altix 3000 family running on Madison will once again provide record-shattering performance, price/performance and scalability in a standard Linux OS environment".

Poll: Vote for your Favorite File Manager

Eugenia Loli 2003-05-21 Rumors 196 Comments

So, which file manager is the best across many OSes? Click more and cast your vote!

What’s New in the Upcoming Java v1.4.2

Submitted by Kim Pedersen 2003-05-21 Java 40 Comments

What's new in the upcoming Java version 1.4.2? The answer can be found in the discussion here.

Ben Hermans of Hyperion Entertainment Interviewed

Submitted by Ruben Monteiro 2003-05-21 Amiga & AROS 28 Comments

Ben Hermans, project manager for AmigaOS4 has been interviewed by the Amiga.org staff.
Update: Ben has agreed with nOMAAM of Amiga.org on interviewing him once every 3/4 weeks, until the release of AmigaOS4.

Mandrake Linux 9.1: Can Installation Get Any Easier?

Eugenia Loli 2003-05-21 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 43 Comments

"At the risk of sounding blasé, Mandrake 9.1 is a pretty standard distribution, and consists of the latest KDE, GNOME, OpenOffice.org, Xine, Apache, MySQL, PHP, and PostgreSQL. The PowerPack version comes with 60-days of support via e-mail. The higher-priced ProSuite version of Mandrake comes with 60 days of telephone support and some additional server software." Read the review at LinuxWorld.

Creating a Place for Users in the Open Source Process

Eugenia Loli 2003-05-21 Open Source 34 Comments

Several months ago William Lamb witnessed a heated debate in the open source community, an article titled "The Future Belongs to GNOME; Inertia to KDE," in which it was suggested that GNOME was overtaking the KDE project by being more responsive to the user community's needs.

Vector Linux 3.2 Review

Eugenia Loli 2003-05-21 Linux 23 Comments

After a dissapointment with Red Hat's Anaconda installer, a user is on a quest to find the OS that will fit the bill. Reading an OSNews article he finds Vector Linux, he tries it, and here is his review of it.

DIY, Windows Preinstallation Environment CD “WinPE”

Submitted by Dennis Baptista 2003-05-21 Windows 30 Comments

Bart Lagerweij has created an easy way for users to create his/her own version of Microsoft's Windows Preinstallation Environment with his new PE Builder. Windows will then run off the CD-rom, without a needed hard drive installation.

3000 USD for First Programmer to Port Mozilla to AmigaOS

Mike Bouma 2003-05-20 Amiga & AROS 34 Comments

The CEO of DiscreetFX will pay 3000+ USD to the first developer(s) to port the current version of Mozilla to AmigaOS. Read the announcement for the details and people can provide Bill suggestions here at the AmigaWorld.net portal. Update: The money pot is now at $3000+ and rising.

Lindows 4.0 Due Next Month

Adam Scheinberg 2003-05-20 Linspire 72 Comments

With today's "Michael's Minute" comes the first official announcement of LindowsOS version 4.0. This humorous take does not include details about the OS improvements, but does seem consistent with their strategy of targetting Windows users looking to make the switch by promoting programs like gaim, Evolution, and Mozilla, which are very similar to their Windows-based competition.

Xr: X11 Cross-device Rendering for Vector Graphics

Submitted by someone 2003-05-20 Wayland 31 Comments

Xr, the 2D Postscript-like graphics library for X is near completion. Xr is a device independent API, and can theoretically be layered upon an API like OpenGL.

Perspective: Windows vs. Mac OS X

Submitted by Andy Satori 2003-05-20 Rumors 63 Comments

Yet another head to head review, this time from the perspective of a developer that's spent 10+ years with Windows, "who views the Mac zealotry with a wary eye", as he says. The same author also wrote "On Switching to the Mac" editorial in the past.

Mac OS X Filesystem Performance Comparison

Eugenia Loli 2003-05-20 macOS 17 Comments

"These are the results of a series of tests I did using IOZone to determine the performance of various filesystems under Mac OS X. I tested HFS+, HFS+ w/ journaling, HFS, UFS, and Ext2 . Due to wide variation in the results, I did at least 4 runs of each configuration and then used the best score for each test." Read the benchmarks here.