The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce that release 1.6.1 of the NetBSD operating system is now available. NetBSD 1.6.1 is a maintenance release for users of NetBSD 1.6 which provides the following updates relative to 1.6:
It seems that the SMP 1.25 & 1.42 GHz Apple PowerMacs came by default with a NEC USB 2.0 controller and no one knew about it. A Korean site broke the news that while these Macs are currently sold as "USB 1.1", in reality they are USB 2.0-capable, missing only the drivers needed to function as such. Some users claim that these drivers work fine with that NEC chipset, as USB 2.0. Caution: Installation on other Mac models could render the system inoperable.
The OS/2-eZine site features a mini-review of eComStation's 1.1 golden master copy. OSNews has in its hands an... even newer build, and we will be featuring a review soon too.
Novell is to investigate whether it can give customers the option of a Windows kernel for its Netware operating system. Earlier this week the company said it will offer customers the choice between a Netware and Linux kernel for Netware 7, which is due next autumn, but the company also plans to research whether it can offer a Windows kernel option.
The final BlueEyedOS demo CD that we reported recently, is out and about and ready to get downloaded. The CD weighs 106 MB and it requires an XFree86 supported graphics card at 1024x768.
Simple Message Queue Protocol (SMQP) is a publish/subscribe specification that is currently being reviewed by the IETF since September of 2001. Several revisions of the protocol have also been submitted based on people's comments, and recommendations. This article is to further introduce readers/developers to the protocol and encourage additional input to the specification.
ZDNet's David Coursey talks with Microsoft Research about a new technology that uses simple hand gestures to control a personal computer. The video requires Real or Windows Media.
Sun Microsystems announced another milestone in its x86 computing strategy with support from leading independent software companies for the Sun Solaris 9 OS, x86 Platform Edition. Brooks Automation, Check Point, MatrixOne, RSA Security, and SunGard joined the growing list of Sun iForce(SM) partners such as Sybase supporting Solaris-based x86 platforms.
MacNN reports that the Darwin team today posted the Darwin 6.5 source code, corresponding to Mac OS X 10.2.5. "Darwin 6.5 is what we call an 'on-cycle' source-code release, where the corresponding Darwin source is made available soon after a new release of Mac OS X to customers." Several projects (e.g., gcc, gdb, CUPS, Rendezvous) will continue to do 'off-cycle' releases, according to the developer, whereby the source code is updated more frequently than our commercial releases.
The open-source project's leader says the unused portion of a $2.3 million grant has been withdrawn due to concerns that it was mainly funding foreign researchers. OpenBSD would have 60 developers flying in from around the world (they bought their own tickets, non-refundable) for a Hackathon May 8 - 20, which
is a major part of OpenBSD's development cycle. Follow the discussion here.
"Two of the most critical parts of a kernel are the memory subsystem and the scheduler. This is because they influence the design and affect the performance of almost every other part of the kernel and the OS. That is also why you would want to get them absolutely right and optimize their performance. The Linux kernel is used right from small embedded devices, scaling up to large mainframes. Designing is scheduler is at best a black art." Read the article at LinuxGazette.
There is a Linux distro for any possible need and CollegeLinux is geared towards students and schools! Today, we interview Prof. David Costa of the Robert Kennedy College in Delémont, Switzerland regarding their initiative behind CollegeLinux.
What will Apple Computer Inc. look like by the end of 2003? The picture should come a lot clearer in the next couple of months, as Apple moves simultaneously on several fronts that encompass its home turf as well as new swathes of territory. Read the editorial at eWeek. Update: OSNews reader Charles Finch points us to another Apple-related article, a benchmark showing the fastest SMP Apple machines against a single Pentium4 3 GHz (two pages).
As expected, yesterday Microsoft announced that the company is renaming its .NET Enterprise Servers to the Windows Server System, in keeping with previously announced plans to drop the .NET moniker from most of its product names. Additionally, the released the adminpak, which allows administrators to install the Windows Server 2003 management tools onto a Windows XP Pro or Windows Server 2003 family machines to perform remote server management functions.
The Australian hacker has been working on pushing Samba beyond the POSIX world and figuring out what work needs to be done to get Samba to support new filesystems such as XFS, ext3, and Storage Tank. The answer is nothing less than a complete rewrite of Samba's smbd code, which has become his latest pet project. Here's an interview with Andrew Tridgell on his latest Samba rewrite.
OSNews had the privilege to play with the upcoming B.E.O.S. bootable CD recently. The test/demo CD is based on Knoppix but it runs a BeOS-like app_server and toolkit on top of XFree86 and it is carefully optimized for extra speed.
Several days ago I wrote a rather scathing article about my utter dismay and disappoint with Mandrake 9.1 and by association, Linux as a whole. Since then I have had many many flames and equally as many agreeing emails (is there a simple opposite word for flame?) Since then I have been trying, really really trying to get my system working fully. But time and again I'm coming up against the same brick wall of (un)usability, computer esotericism and down right idiocy.
Since Keith Packard's XWin.org went live a lot of people seem to join the discussion on how to make XFree86 better. Some, even write some code! Gilbert Baumann writes: "I hacked an X server which uses OpenGL for what would be the graphics card driver. We render windows to textures and then assemble them on the screen getting translucent windows for free. Although currently not done, the idea is that we will use OpenGL for rendering the X primitives." Check his screenshots!
HP will not makefurther investments in Gnome and they will stick with CDE for their HP-UX operating system. This is a bummer for Gnome, but not all is bad today, as the Bitstream Vera TTF fonts for X11 are out of beta and available to download (read the release notes and get a newer freetype/fontconfig though, as it fixes some problems when using these fonts).
