OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

The Rise of the $99 ‘Consumer’ Linux Distribution

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-03 Linux 23 Comments

"$99, give or take $20, seems to be the new price point for full-featured, consumer-level Linux distributions. This is a great deal for non-technical users, since most of the new-wave consumer Linux products give users a much prettier and easier experience than traditional, all-GPL distributions tailored for a geeky user base. Whether or not the current explosion of Linux use by ordinary people is "good" is still open to question, but I suspect the answer depends more on who is doing the answering than any other factor." Read the editorial at NewsForge.

AOL Reports First-ever Drop In Subscriber Base

David Adams 2003-02-03 Internet 22 Comments

Mega-ISP America Online reported that it lost 170,000 subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2002, after of years of steady growth. Still, more people access the internet through AOL than any other source, but several factors have made AOL less relevant and more susceptible to competition in the past few years.

Xandros Desktop Deluxe 1.0 Review

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-03 Oracle and SUN 15 Comments

"Xandros Desktop is a beautifully crafted operating system by a staff of meticulous and talented human beings. Had I not experienced one major roadblock during my initial installation, I would doubt that this creation had sprung from human hands. With that said, I will take you further into the highest highs and the melancholy lows of my awkward waltz with Xandros." Read the article at LinuxLookup.

Apple Dealers Biting Back Mac Sellers

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-03 Apple 35 Comments

Apple Computer Co. has been hit by a growing number of lawsuits filed by Mac dealers who are upset by the company's alleged efforts to lure their customers to outlets that Apple owns. They are also fed up with what they say are long-standing problems in the company's service and billing systems. Tom Santos, owner of San Francisco's Macadam, one of the largest Apple- authorized storefront dealerships in the nation, filed a multimillion-dollar complaint last month that accuses the Cupertino company of fraud, breach of contract, unfair competition, false advertising and even violation of the federal RacketeerInfluenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

Microsoft Protecting Rights–or Windows?

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-03 Microsoft 12 Comments

How music labels, Hollywood studios and consumers answer that question could determine whether the software giant dominates digital media the way it does Web browsers or desktop productivity applications, say analysts.

NEC and Samsung Plan for New, Smaller Devices

David Adams 2003-02-03 Wireless No Comments

NEC and Samsung, two Asian electronics giants, have each announced new hardware components that will help them make smaller, cheaper, and more-functional devices, particularly, "smart" mobile phones. NEC has developed a new small display with a serial interface that requires fewer connecting wires and uses less power than older displays. Samsung has designed a small chip that contains a 206 MHz ARM920T processor core, 32MB of NAND flash memory, and 32MB of SDRAM on a chip measuring .7" square and .05" thick. Read more at PC World.

Writing Multithreaded GUI Applications with Python

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-03 General Development 8 Comments

Want to take advantage of multithreading and side-step its associated obstacles? Boudewijn Rempt uses the PyQt toolkit to help you work around the challenges of programming a multithreaded GUI in Python .

Apple’s Safari Browser Shows Promising Start According to OneStat

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-03 Internet 64 Comments

OneStat.com, today reported that Apple's Safari browser has shown a fast adoptation rate with a global usage share of 0.11 percent in the first weeks of its public launch. Opera 7 is not so successful as Apple's Safari. Opera 7 has a global usage share of 0.03 percent in the first weeks (since December) of its public launch. Microsoft still dominates the browser market. As of February 03, 2003, all versions of Microsoft accounted for 95,2 percent of the global usage share market. The total global usage share of Netscape is 2.9 percent and the global usage share of Netscape 7 is 0.64 percent. Mozilla is at 1.2%.

RoxOS Discusses the Possibility of a New Linux-based OS

Submitted by Simon Porter 2003-02-02 Linux 115 Comments

No, this is not a traditional "Linux distro". The RoxOS guys are feeling like innovating today, even by breaking legacy and some compatibility at places with other Linux distros or Unix. RoxOS is a desktop OS which is evolving by using existing tools (Linux kernel, X11, ROX Filer, gnu etc), but somewhat modified (e.g. new filesystem hieriarchy and dependancy on filesystem's metadata). Most apps will probably need repackaging or altering in some way in order to run on RoxOS. Join the discussion or the project. This project was made known to us after the long discussion we had the other day about innovation and on creating a new OS, but by re-using existing tools and extensively modifying them, in order to cut production time and to easily get hardware support (via X11 & Linux or FreeBSD's kernel).

ReactOS 0.1.0 Released

Guest post by Kevin Adams 2003-02-02 ReactOS 20 Comments

Jason Filby wrote to tell us: "ReactOS 0.1.0 has been released! ReactOS is an Open Source effort to develop a quality operating system that is compatible with Windows NT applications and drivers. In this release, among other new features and fixes, especially worth mentioning are the ability to boot from CD and self-hosting capabilities." For more infomation, go to the ReactOS website.

First OpenVMS boot on IA-64

Adam Scheinberg 2003-02-02 OS News 20 Comments

Anders Østergård writes "According to this newsgroup message, the OpenVMS OS (former DEC, now owned by Compaq) is now able to boot and operate on Intel's 64-bit Itanium-platform. OpenVMS was originally developed for the legendary VAX-architecture and has evolved for into a stable but anonymous OS for more than 25 years."

Red Hat 8 as a Windows XP Replacement

Adam Scheinberg 2003-02-02 Red Hat 52 Comments

Joel Konkle-Parker pointed us to ballsome.com where they are investigating Red Hat 8 as a possible replacement for Windows XP on the desktop. Our Take: It's a decent article that outlines a lot of known issues, but serves as a nice reminder we're close, but not there yet.

X-Desktop: The Browser Based Desktop

Adam Scheinberg 2003-02-02 Wayland 28 Comments

"This exciting project is designed to unify different operating system desktop interfaces into a browser only application interface. It helps users to feel comfortable with any application using the interface they are used to. It helps companies to unify their intranet applications into one desktop interface - built on existing interfaces or one which incorporates their own CI. It helps to design the same interface for all types of devices using browsers like PDA and other mobile devices, Notebooks, Desktops, Tablett Computers and any other future devices which may come up." Read more at x-desktop.org and definitely check out their demo!

Installing MPlayer for Mozilla

Adam Scheinberg 2003-02-02 Mozilla, Gecko 23 Comments

There's a nice bit over at linux-sxs.org detailing how to install mplayer for mozilla. Should be useful for all Linux users, particularly those that use new distributions that use Mozilla as the default browser.

Gnome 2.2 User Interface Discussion

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-01 Gnome 32 Comments

Chrisime, member of the Gnome project, has put up a page discussing UI shortcomings on Gnome 2.2. Update: And here is another one, this time for Mandrake 9.1b3.

Shuttle Columbia Disintegrates, 7 Astronauts Dead

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-01 In the News 123 Comments

The space shuttle Columbia broke up Saturday as it descended over central Texas toward a planned landing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Seven crew members were aboard. Many believe that a debris that hit some shielding during take off might be the culprit for the explosion during the return of the shuttle. Our condolences go out to the families of the brave astronauts.

Wi-Fi Woes on the Horizon?

Guest post by Kevin Adams 2003-02-01 Internet 6 Comments

"When 802.11b first burst on the scene, offering a quick and workable wireless home-networking platform, some manufacturers jumped into the market with components and products long before industry standards groups tested and approved the specification. The result was headaches for some as interoperability issues emerged." Read more at ZDNet.

Can Linux and Unix Live Together?

Guest post by Mike Bouma 2003-02-01 Unix 17 Comments

James Maguire has written an article for osOpinion.com regarding the continuous industry move from Unix towards Linux based solutions: "As tech buying cycles progress, year by year, Linux will eat away at more of Unix' mission-critical work. That's because, at each new upgrade point, servers running Linux will grow ever more capable." As reported earlier IBM's top software executive recently stated that Linux is the 'Logical Successor' to IBM's Unix solutions.

Lycoris Withdraws from First Desktop Linux Summit

Guest post by Mike Bouma 2003-02-01 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 26 Comments

Following in the footsteps of Hewlett Packard and DesktopLinux.com, Lycoris also announced that the company will withdraw itself from this LindowsOS.com, Inc. controlled event: "Lycoris originally joined the conference after assurances of balanced control and changes to the conference schedule including the addition of keynote speaker Bruce Perens and vendors like Hewlett Packard. The recent changes to the conference schedule, the withdraw of Hewlett Packard, and conference management have given a single-vendor too much focus which is no longer in the interest of Lycoris." In response LinuxToday.com has published an Open Letter directed towards the Lindows Corporation.

Mandrake Linux 9.1 Beta 3 Available

Eugenia Loli 2003-02-01 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 41 Comments

The three CDs for the third beta of Mandrake Linux 9.1 are still getting uploaded to most mirrors around the world, but you can already download it from here or here for now, until all the mirrors receive the files.