Jordan Hubbard Talks About Apple and Motorola

Jordan Hubbard, formerly head of FreeBSD development, and now of Apple MacOS X/Darwin fame, talks frankly about UNIX, Apple's MacOS X, BSD, and the business of competing in the consumer computer world in this MacCentral article. In it, we see some of his impressions on the present and future of MacOS X, opinions on Motorola's CPU's in Apple products, and what it takes to get ISV support.

Graphical User Interfaces: It’s Time for an Overhaul

"Apple released Mac OS X last year. Having used computers for almost twenty years, I can say that this new operating system is undoubtedly the best ever. Yet, there is an undercurrent of disappointment. There is something wrong with this OS. It’s not the MACH microkernel, the UNIX core or the fluid motions of the new GUI. Well, actually it is the GUI. It’s not a bad interface, it’s probably the best yet, but isn’t it about time we stopped pointing and clicking?" Read the editorial at MetaMute.

Sun to Ship non-SMP x86 Solaris 9 for $99 USD

Sun on Friday will announce plans to release an unbundled version of the Solaris 9 operating environment for non-Sun x86 hardware for $99 for a single CPU system. After months of indecision, Sun will now ship Solaris 9 x86, unbundled, supporting both the Sun hardware platform, for both current and future products, as well as the same list of all hardware supported for Solaris 8, according to Sun officials in Palo Alto, Calif. Early access to the Solaris 9 bits will come in the next four to eight weeks, and the final product will ship in the January time-frame, they said.

Red Hat 8 For Joe & Jane User?

Well, here on OSNews, there has been plenty of discussion about Red Hat 8, what it is, what it isn't, the Bluecurve look and many other features and issues. I ordered Red Hat 8 Personal Edition and decided to see how close Red Hat 8 may be to a distribution that Joe and Jane User could install and use.

Why Microsoft Needs .NET

" I think you can see where I'm going with this - by moving software to .NET, Microsoft frees themselves from the x86 pit. They need to compile the .NET framework for each platform they want to support, and they need to write the final compiler stage that converts the IL to machine code, and bingo your code runs on the new platform!" Read the article at Kuro5hin.

Interview With Adam de Boor, ex-CTO of GeoWorks

It is always an honour to interview people who have 'served' and worked on operating systems at the "golden" times of the operating systems, the '80s and pre-Win9x days. Today we interview Adam de Boor, who was the CTO at GeoWorks, developers of the GEOS, in the begining of the last decade. Adam today works for OpenWave Systems. We discuss about GeoWorks, its past, its future, where it should have been.

Red Hat Hits More Sensitive Nerves

Like the PR headaches with KDE were not enough for Red Hat, now it seems that Taiwanese people are unhappy because their flag was left out of the KDE control panel, while it was there by default. Also, "in a surprising move they've completely broken with their previous policy of 100% open source. The new distribution contains a few components which are (C) Red Hat and are *not* freely re-distributable", the Linux Emporium claims. Discussion about the issue here and here.

Libranet GNU/Linux 2.7, Debian with a Kick

Linux Orbit has reviewed Libranet GNU/Linux 2.7: "Other Linux distribution companies have tried to create commercial Linux products based on Debian GNU/Linux, but few have achieved long term success. Progeny Linux comes to mind as a commercial Linux distribution company whose Linux product met with good reviews, but couldn't remain in business. Libranet is a rare exception to this rule. Libranet GNU/Linux has been around quite a while and continues to build a devoted Linux user base on a commercial product based on Debian GNU/Linux. With their most recent release of Libranet GNU/Linux 2.7, Libranet continues to improve on an already solid Linux distribution."

Jaguar Does Windows–and Then Some

"I sat down at my Macintosh at home to do some photo editing when I realized the pictures I wanted were on a Windows computer. Although the two machines are just a few feet from each other, moving the files from one to the other would, until recently, have required me to copy the pictures to some sort of removable storage unit, probably a recordable CD. Then plunk that into the Mac." Read the article at BusinessWeek.

Mungi 1.2 released

Mungi is a 64-bit, single-address-space, capability-based operating system designed to easily support distribution and persistence. The initial public release is now available as GPLed source, and runs on the L4/MIPS (R4x00 CPU) and L4/Alpha (21164 & 21264 CPU) microkernels. This release features a mostly complete kernel, user-level libraries for POSIX support, and some initial application code. It lacks device drivers, persistence, mandatory access control, and a raft of other features currently under development.

Development Release: Lycoris Build 52 (Beta)

From DistroWatch: "A new beta version of Lycoris Desktop/LX has been spotted on several mirrors. Build 52 is a development release; among the major packages only Mozilla has been updated to version 1.1. Download: cd1_en_binary.iso (517MB), cd2_en_source.iso (415MB), cd3_en_devtools.iso (193MB). As usual, a Build 52 bug reports forum has been opened." We featured a review of Lycoris recently.

SGI SPECIAL: Introducing the Jewel of UNIX, the 64-bit IRIX OS

In the '90s, before MacOSX was released, if people were to reffer to a user-friendly Unix that looked cool at the time, that would have been SGI's 64-bit operating system for the MIPS processors, the IRIX. IRIX was first released in 1987, and by 1995 was already a highly respected UNIX, the first with immense multimedia capabilities! Check out our introduction and some screenshots of IRIX.

KDE 3.1-Beta2 Released

The KDE Project today announced the immediate availability of KDE 3.1 beta2, the third development release of a significant feature upgrade for KDE 3. KDE 3 is the third generation of KDE's free, Internet-enabled desktop for Linux and other UNIXes. KDE 3.1, scheduled for final release in October 2002, will provide substantial improvements to the KDE desktop experience. As the KDE 3 API is frozen for binary compatibility, KDE 3.1 will be binary compatible with KDE 3.0.