OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Peace, Love… and Lycoris: Interview with Spisak & Cheek

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-05 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 76 Comments

'Flower Power' was the mantra of a generation in the 1960s. That metaphor takes on a whole new meaning as DesktopLinux.com interviews Lycoris executives, CTO Joseph Cheek and marketing guru Jason Spisak about Lycoris' Linux desktop. The in-depth talk focuses on the company's strategy, open source philosophy, the challenge to Microsoft's Windows XP, and how Lycoris is shaping the future of Desktop Linux for the consumer today.

GNOME 2.2 Released

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-05 Gnome 122 Comments

Announcement is here and the sources of Gnome 2.2 are available for downloading. Get more info about this version, and many screenshots here.

Computer Programmers See Beauty in Bid to Revive BeOS

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-05 Haiku 44 Comments

WSJ has an article on OpenBeOS featuring Michael Phipps, Timothy Lord from Slashdot and Eric Raymond. "As far as I can see, OpenBeOS is more an admirable aesthetic experiment," says Timothy Lord. "As it is," he adds, "they're esoteric among esoterica."

Sneak Peek: Windows XP’s Successor

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-05 Windows 98 Comments

"The next major release of Windows won't be ready for a couple of years, but it's already taking shape. We checked out a leaked pre-beta version of the successor to Windows XP, code-named Longhorn, that we found on the Internet. Though Microsoft declined to comment for this story, company bigwigs Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer have given some broad hints about Longhorn. In numerous speeches and published reports, they've promised a totally revamped OS built on a new file system that gives users a single route to data, regardless of how that data is created or where on a PC or network it's stored ". Read the article at PCWorld.

GCC 3.2.2 Released

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-05 General Development 44 Comments

GCC 3.2.2 is now available from sites listed at here and here. This release is a bug-fix release in the GCC 3.2 series. There are no new major features; however there are many bugs fixed. More detail about this release is available here.

Vector Linux 3.2 Released

Submitted by Tony Brijeski 2003-02-05 Linux 2 Comments

Vector Linux announced the release of version 3.2. The disto is now fully Slackware compatible and LSB compliant. It is based on the linux kernel 2.4.20 and Glibc-2.2.5. Several new additions to the software mix have been added such as CDRW support to burn cd's, faster web browsing via Dillo and the latest Opera , autopkg to keep things up to date, checkinstall for easy source installation, and additional security updates. Antialias font support is in both the available window managers. New in version 3.2 are new and enhanced configuration tools to make installation and hardware detection even easier.

IBM Plots Road Ahead with Power5

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-05 IBM 9 Comments

"IBM has plans to make the midrange and low end of its Unix line stronger in a move that could liven up competition within the company between competing chip architectures. In 2004, IBM will roll out its Power5 processor, which will in some ways complete an overhaul of the company's entire Unix server line. With chips tuned for each class of Unix server it sells, IBM is looking to keep the heat on Sun Microsystems and stop users from defecting to Intel's Itanium processor." Read the article at InfoWorld.

SGI Indigo Magic Desktop for Linux Project Needs Betatesters

Submitted by Gil Bates 2003-02-05 Desktop environments 28 Comments

"IMD for Linux (Indigo Magic Desktop) is going much further that those themes that simulate the IRIX look and feel. IMD for Linux has it own window manager that looks, behaves and provides the same features found on an IRIX box. Read more about the recreation of 4dwm desktop environment on Linux and how to beta test for the project.

GNOME 2.0 Desktop for the Solaris OE Released

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-05 Gnome 6 Comments

GNOME 2.0 Desktop, the user environment for the Solaris OE, is now ready for production use. It has been built by Sun Microsystems and is fully supported. Additionally, Sun went beta with Star Office 6.1.

eCS 1.1RC1 R5 Available for Subscribers and Beta Testers

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-05 OS/2 19 Comments

eComStation OS/2 1.1-RC1 R5 is now available for subscribers and selected beta testers to be downloaded from the site's ftp server. There is at least one more RC to be expected before final release.

Interview with Ken Case, CEO at Omni Group

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-05 Original OSNews Interviews 54 Comments

Omni Group is well known to most Mac users and NeXT ones back in the day. Omni Group today is a MacOSX-only company, writting high quality applications in Cocoa, apps like OmniWeb, OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner and 3D game ports. Today, we talked to its CEO, Ken Case, about the company and its products, Apple's strategies, Safari and the future.

Sun’s Own Engineers Find Java “Impractical” on Solaris

Submitted by Tom Bierce 2003-02-05 Java 25 Comments

An insider at Sun says there's frantic discussion inside the company about big problems with the Java platform that, he claimed, "prevent general acceptance of Java for production software within Sun". He said: "It strikes me as hypocritical for Sun to blame Microsoft for any failure of the Java platform when Sun's own engineers find developing common software applications in Java impractical". One of the problems, he claimed, is that while Java has a lot of benefits compared to C and C++, its implementation on Solaris makes it difficult to deliver reliable applications. The Inquirer has the scoop.

Tablet PC Platform SDK v1.5 Available

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-04 Windows No Comments

The Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition Platform SDK contains the information you need to develop applications for Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. The Tablet PC platform encompasses Windows XP and its extensions that enable input and output of handwriting and speech data on a Tablet PC as well as interchange of this data with other computers.

Industry Leaders Launch Desktop Linux Consortium

Submitted by Jill 2003-02-04 Linux 35 Comments

Responding to the overwhelming interest in Desktop Linux, representatives from key firms and organizations today announced the formation of the Desktop Linux Consortium, or DLC. The vendor-neutral association will promote interests and raise awareness of the emerging role and benefits offered by GNU/Linux on the desktop. Consortium members comprise both commercial companies and open source organizations that are developing and shaping the technology that will speed the adoption rate of Linux to the desktop.

FreeBSD 5.0 Looks to the Enterprise

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-04 FreeBSD 15 Comments

"After three years in the making the FreeBSD Release 5.0 operating system has been made available to the general public. Released towards the end of January, the OS provides first-time support for Sun's Sparc64 and Intel's IA64 platforms. And while some effort has been put into AMD's Hammer architecture, there is presently no usable support for the 64-bit mode of Hammer, said FreeBSD engineer, Scott Long." Read the article at LinuxWorld.

SuSE Linux Office Desktop 8.1

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-04 SuSE, openSUSE 17 Comments

"In this release SuSE has worked hard to create a version of their Linux distro that runs MS Office applications, and that is also generally more geared toward ordinary desktop users. This release is based on SuSE 8.1, but contains key additional desktop applications including StarOffice 6.0, and Codeweaver's CrossOver Office products that let Linux users run Windows programs, albeit older Office 2000 and Office 97 apps, not Office XP." Read the review at ExtremeTech.

The GNU-Darwin Distribution 1.0: A Perspective from the Founder

Submitted by sunlit mechanism 2003-02-04 BSD & Darwin 12 Comments

Although GNU-Darwin can be viewed as a standalone OS for x86 and PowerPC architectures, it is also a source of free software to Apple users.

Apple Unveils New iMacs, Lowers eMac Pricing

Submitted by Steve Latsch 2003-02-04 Apple 23 Comments

As we already mentioned yesterday, now from MacMinute: "Apple today announced a new Spring line of iMacs, a new 17-inch widescreen model featuring a 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processor and 133 MHz system bus; 256MB of Double Data Rate (DDR) memory; a faster 4x SuperDrive for playing and burning CDs and DVDs; and internal support for AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth, for US$1,799. The new 15-inch flat panel model features an 800 MHz G4 processor and is now priced at $1,299. Apple also announced lower pricing on its line of eMac computers, dropping the prices to $999 and $1,299."

KDE, Gnome to Share Common HIG; Desktop Linux Gets Together

Submitted by Datschge 2003-02-04 KDE 14 Comments

An effort has been started for closer cooperation between the KDE and GNOME usability teams. Additionally, you can read this long article about the corporate KDE. Also, several companies have joined to launch a consortium to promote Linux for desktop computers. The consortium's goal will be to raise awareness of desktop Linux and to speed its adoption, the organization plans to announce today.

Review of BeOS Developer Edition 1.1

Guest post by Stephen Reilly 2003-02-04 Haiku 57 Comments

I have been a big fan of BeOS since the Creative Labs OS Championship Team dumped it on me in 1999. At the time I was working technical support in Dublin and they had some guy looking after support for BeOS who really could not care less. He had never even installed it! I was deputy Linux champion and generally considered interested in OSes so they said "Hey, Stevo! Wanna be a champ? All you need to do is get this OS installed and play with it a bit." So, needless to say, I did and I was hooked.