OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

What’s New in Visual Studio .NET 2003

Eugenia Loli 2003-01-13 General Development 20 Comments

"Visual Studio .NET 2003 just came out as a "final beta." I’ve been developing on it for a while now, and I want to point out some of the signature features and tools in this product.2 Read the article at 3Leaf.com.

Thinking about the Intelligent OS

Guest post by Patrick Dwyer 2003-01-13 Editorial 21 Comments

Is the modern operating system a tool of facilitation that should provide just the basic necessities of a system and no more, staying out of the way of the user? Or should the modern OS assist the user in their everyday tasks, sorting and displaying relevant information, providing a filter between the ever increasing amount of information and the task at hand.

GNOME 2.2 Desktop RC 1 Available

Eugenia Loli 2003-01-13 Gnome 37 Comments

From the GNOME Desktop 2.2 Release Candidate 1 (2.1.90): "1.21 Jigawatts", is ready for your bug-busting and testing pleasure! It is available for immediate download on ftp.gnome.org and mirrors."

MacNN.com: “Windows beats Mac in digital file transfers”

Submitted by Prognathous 2003-01-13 Benchmarks 51 Comments

From MacNN: Rob Galbraith has posted an article on digital file transfers, comparing an Alienware Laptop, a discontinued Dell Desktop and a MDD Dual 1.25GHz PowerMac in RAW photo and Photoshop batch processing. The article concludes that the Windows machines beat the Mac in virtually all of the benchmarks:

GCC to Get New C++ parser and Precompiled Header Support

Submitted by Garen 2003-01-13 General Development 12 Comments

The GCC Project has just updated its front page with the addition of two significant announcements: support for precompiled headers (PCH) and a new C++ parser that has brought g++ near the top of the food chain in conformance and led to over 100 bugs being closed.

Interview with Lycoris marketing Director Jason Spisak

Eugenia Loli 2003-01-13 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 10 Comments

Lycoris interview with Jason Spisak the Marketing Director, at Lycoris. Lycoris provides operating systems such as Desktop LX and Productivity suites for office use. "We provide an alternative to Microsoft's core products at a much greater value."

IBM’s Wacky Linux Cartoons

Adam Scheinberg 2003-01-12 Linux 23 Comments

Frank alerted us to the new cartoons IBM presents on their website. Though generally out of character for OSNews.com, here's a little weekend humor. Linux Animations (requires Flash or Realplayer).

ReactOS Makes Strides In Development

Adam Scheinberg 2003-01-12 ReactOS 15 Comments

KAMiKAZOW writes "It's now possible to boot ReactOS from CD and to compile ReactOS under itself. There will be also a new release before the end of this month." Unlike many of the small, independent Linux distros and other OSes, ReactOS has a clearcut, fairly unique goal - to run Windows binaries. Read more on their homepage.

FreeBSD 5.0 RC3 Available

Adam Scheinberg 2003-01-12 FreeBSD 19 Comments

Terminus wrote in to tell us that FreeBSD 5.0 RC3 is now available on the FreeBSD FTP servers. He also reminds us "The final release is scheduled for January 17th 2003."

Former Red Hat Employee “Bero” Starts New Distro

Adam Scheinberg 2003-01-12 Linux 36 Comments

Timothy R. Butler writes "Former Red Hat employee Bernhard "Bero" Rosenkraenzer has resurfaced, after leaving Red Hat last fall, with a brand new GNU/Linux distribution meant for the average user. According to the distribution's web site, "The Ark Linux distribution is based primarily upon a Red Hat Linux 7.3 / 8.0 foundation. On top of this, we have added a new easy-to-use installer (an Ark Linux installation is only four mouse clicks away!) and extensively tailored the software applications and utilities included - all in an effort to ensure that Ark Linux provides superior ease-of-use and the features and functionality end users have told us they want." Read more here." The ArkLinux home page.

Cosmoe 0.6 Released

Guest post by Kevin Adams 2003-01-11 Syllable, AtheOS 11 Comments

Cosmoe 0.6 has been released. The have added new Be APIs and the APIs are more similar to the Be APIs. The built-in FreeType library has been removed, and new fonts have been added. 0.6 does not include the DirectFB-based rewrite of the appserver, that is expected to be added in release 0.7. Visit the Cosmoe website for more details.

Judge Gives Mixed Ruling in Be/Burst/Sun-Microsoft Cases

Eugenia Loli 2003-01-10 Legal 79 Comments

Microsoft Corp. won some and lost some on Friday in its efforts to get a federal judge to dismiss antitrust lawsuits filed by Sun Microsystems Inc., Be Inc. and Burst.com Inc. U.S. District Court Judge J. Frederick Motz denied Microsoft's motions in the Be and Burst.com case in a hearing this morning. But this afternoon, Motz granted requests to dismiss some of the counts raised by Sun, while taking others under review.

Red Hat Linux 8.1 To Ship in April, Corporate Desktop Due In Late 2003

Eugenia Loli 2003-01-10 Red Hat 45 Comments

"Linux software vendor Red Hat plans to fortify its desktop Linux lineup by shipping Red Hat Linux 8.1 in April, a 32-bit technical workstation this quarter and a full-fledged corporate desktop in the next six to 12 months, the company confirmed. While the company plans to continue to position its Red Hat Linux 8.0 as a consumer-oriented product, it is gearing up for a corporate desktop in late 2003, said Mark De Visser, Red Hat's chief marketing officer." Read the news at CRN.

Handspring Courts RIM

David Adams 2003-01-10 Wireless 3 Comments

Infoworld is reporting that Handspring, who has been an exclusive Palm OS licensee, is interested in the RIM email software. The RIM Blackberry devices have proven very popular among business users, but the Blackberry units have limited PDA capabilities. Palm-based wireless messaging devices have been less popular. Presumably, Handspring is interested in producing a "best of both worlds" solution.

killerAudio is Coming with QNX 6.2.1

Eugenia Loli 2003-01-10 QNX 32 Comments

With QNX 6.2.1 there are many new features. One of them is a new multi-media system. Screenshots of one of the first apps to use this system can be found on QNXZone.

How Windows Server 2003 Stacks Up

Eugenia Loli 2003-01-10 Windows 34 Comments

"In any large software project the end result comes up many features short of the wish list. If you're lucky the product catches up to the wish list by the next version, and that is what seems to be the case with Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003." Read the article at ZDNet.

Inside the Intel Compiler

David Adams 2003-01-10 Intel 6 Comments

The folks at Linux Journal used a time machine to post an article from the future about Intel's compiler for Linux, and specifically about the optimizations they used to beat gcc on benchmarks. The increasing acceptance of Linux among developers and researchers has yet to be matched by a similar increase in the number of available development tools. The recently released Intel C++ and Fortran compilers for Linux aim to bridge this gap by providing application developers with highly optimizable compilers for the Intel IA-32 and Itanium processor families.

Mandrake Linux 9.1 Beta 1 Available

Submitted by dave_sn 2003-01-10 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 73 Comments

The first beta of Mandrake Linux 9.1 is downsized to only one CD. A complete list of packages on this CD is available here. BTW, OSNews would be happy to host your preview. Update: Screenshots.

SCO Linux 4 – Ready for the Big Time

Eugenia Loli 2003-01-10 SCO 2 Comments

"SCO have taken the lead in bringing UnitedLinux consortium's UnitedLinux server operating system to the reseller market. At first glance, SCO Linux 4, SCO's version of UnitedLinux 1.0, doesn't look that much different from OpenLinux. In fact, it really just looks like a typical-albeit stripped down to the vital server basics-Linux server distribution. And, that's as it should be." Read the story at Practical-Tech.

Bare Feats Benchmarks New Powerbooks

Guest post by Kevin Adams 2003-01-09 Apple 64 Comments

"The Apple booth staff 'freaked' when I tried to plug my FWDepot Cutie FireWire test drive into the new 17" and 12" PowerBooks with Photoshop, Quake3, and other real world test apps. But I knew you wanted some idea of the performance, right? So since the demo units were connected to the 'Net, I downloaded Xbench beta and ran it on the two new PowerBooks... along with a few others." Take a look at the benchmarks over at Bare Feats.