OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

The Penguin Takes Flight

Eugenia Loli 2002-12-19 Mono 51 Comments

After creating a program that makes Linux as easy to use as Windows, Miguel de Icaza is trying to make it just as simple to produce open-source versions of thousands of new Windows applications. So why isn't Microsoft worried? Read the article at Business2.0.

Apple Girds for Sync Push

Eugenia Loli 2002-12-19 Apple 28 Comments

The Mac maker would love to corner the hot market for software that syncs up PCs with cell phones and other gadgets. But then there's Microsoft--and its pesky bundling habit. Read the article at ZDNews.

Sponsorships Double for Desktop Linux Summit

Eugenia Loli 2002-12-19 Linux No Comments

The Desktop Linux Summit today announced that it has doubled the number of sponsors for the highly-anticipated Desktop Linux Summit to be held in San Diego, CA on February 20 and 21, 2003. Linux Professional Institute (LPI), Microtel Computer Systems, NeTraverse, Nova Computech, Inc., OpenOffice.org, StepUp Computing, the Kompany, Transgaming Technologies and Xandros now join Codeweavers, Hewlett Packard, Lindows.com, Lycoris, MandrakeSoft, Sun, SuSE and Ximian as Desktop Linux Summit Sponsors.

IBM Releases IP Security Validator for Linux

Adam Scheinberg 2002-12-19 IBM No Comments

Frank wrote in to tell us "IBM has released IP Security Validator, which enables independent evaluation of VPN configurations and quick/autonomous reaction to problems. An offline mode even allows the offline evaluation of traffic that was captured into a file with other tools such as tcpdump or pcapture. This way, traffic collected from non-Linux network nodes can be evaluated on a Linux machine." The site goes on to say that among the features, it "reports the results on the standard output in words." Finally, not only can I compete with my friends who use all Windows 2000 networks, I can read the results without a man page!

Troll Tech (QT) Releases Beta of Scripting Language (QSA)

Adam Scheinberg 2002-12-19 Qt 15 Comments

dave linenberg wrote "Troll Tech last night released a beta of QSA, which stands for QT Scripting Language for Applications (download here). As a business apps developer for a major financial institution's trading floor, I know the traders will love this. Hopefully, with QSA, I can get rid of Excel, and give the traders Spreadsheet widgets, with the flexibility of "VBA-like" scriptability to boot!"

GNU-Darwin Drops PPC Support

Eugenia Loli 2002-12-19 BSD & Darwin 36 Comments

GNU-Darwin will no longer 'support or distribute any software which links to proprietary libraries, and that includes Cocoa, Carbon, CoreAudio, etc.' They will also be putting PPC collections into 'maintenance mode' and moving all operations to x86. Read the story at MacSlash.

Review of Mandrake Linux at UnixReview

Eugenia Loli 2002-12-19 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 3 Comments

"Mandrake Linux has always been looked at as a desktop Linux. While Red Hat may be the star of the corporate server world, Mandrake's star rests firmly with the legion of Linux users who have abandoned the Windows world for their desktop needs. For Mandrake users, there hasn't been any question of whether Linux is ready for the desktop Mandrake is, has been, and continues to be. The loyalty and enthusiasm of the Mandrake community speaks volumes. It is with this knowledge that I embark on my review of Mandrake 9.0." Read the review at UnixReview. In the meantime, MandrakeSoft explains some non-free software they are favoring currently.

Interview with VectorLinux Developer Robert S. Lange

Submitted by Tony Brijeski 2002-12-19 Linux 1 Comment

There is an interview up at TinyMinds.org with the developer of the Slackware-based Linux distribution called VectorLinux. VectorLinux works great on both old and new hardware and yet it is very up-to-date in terms of software versions.

YellowTAB Zeta Reaches Beta 3

Eugenia Loli 2002-12-19 Zeta 98 Comments

BeOSJournal.org reports that YellowTab's Zeta has reached Beta 3, and is on testers hands. According to Bernd, project leader, later this week a new beta will be ready. This version has many fixes and improvements over the previous version.

Arch Linux 0.4 (Dragon) Released

Eugenia Loli 2002-12-19 Linux 1 Comment

The project is pleased to present Arch 0.4 to the public for general consumption. The ChangeLog and package list are at their usual locations.

Beunited.org Announces Talks With Gobe

Guest post by Kevin Adams 2002-12-19 Haiku 20 Comments

As previously reported, over $10,000 dollars has been pledged to open source Gobe Productive. Today Beunited.org has announced that conversations with Gobe have begun. Beunited.org thanked everyone for their donations and requested that the community be patient while the disscussions are going on.

SciTech to Provide Future Support for Intel Chipsets on OS/2

Guest post by Kevin Adams 2002-12-19 OS/2 8 Comments

Chris writes: "According to this press release, SciTech software is effectively taking over all OS/2 graphics driver development, validation, and support for Intel integrated graphics chipsets from Intel as of January 1, 2003. Given that OS/2 isn't really "dead" (as some have claimed), this is a substantial fillip for SciTech."

Opera 7.0 Beta 2 Released

Guest post by Kevin Adams 2002-12-18 Opera 49 Comments

Opera has released Beta 2 of the new Opera 7. New features include the ability to import e-mails from Netscape versions 6/7, speed optimizations, a fifteen day banner free period and various other enhancements. Check out the changelog for a complete list of what's new.

Interview: Colin Walters of the Debian Desktop Subproject

Adam Scheinberg 2002-12-18 Debian 17 Comments

An anonymous reader wrote in to tell us, "DesktopLinux.com caught up with Colin Walters of the Debian Desktop subproject. Launched in late October, the project aims to simplify Desktop Linux. Walters discusses the project goal to offer "Software which Just Works" for home and office, new user and expert." The rest can be found at DesktopLinux.com.

Sony and Panasonic set to develop new Linux

David Adams 2002-12-18 Linux 30 Comments

Japanese consumer electronics giants Sony and Panasonic announced that they will be co-developing a Linux distribution for "digital home electronic devices." As consumer electronics devices increasingly take on the capabilities of computers, makers need a sophisticated operating system to run them, and many have already turned to Linux. (like Tivo). See the Press Release.

FOSDEM Conference Feb 8-9, Brussels, Belgium

David Adams 2002-12-18 General Development 4 Comments

FOSDEM, the Free and Open Source Software Developers' Meeting is coming soon, and in preparation, the organizers have published interviews with some of the participants: David Faure for KDE and Michael Meeks for GNOME.

Ydesktop Release Candidate 2

Submitted by Andreas Girardet 2002-12-18 Linux 28 Comments

Yoper Limited, the New Zealand Linux company, is proud to announce Release Candidate 2 of Ydesktop, the first part of 'Your Operating System that Yoper Limited' ("Yoper") is developing. This second public release contains dozens of fixes and updates from over 5000 downloads of Ydesktop-rc1.

100,000 i-mode Subscribers in the Netherlands

Guest post by Mike Bouma 2002-12-18 Wireless 27 Comments

KPN Mobile today revealed that the popularity of its new online i-mode service is sky-rocketing, gaining over 77,000 new Dutch mobile phone subscribers since mid-August. This month KPN is expected to introduce a third i-mode handset, the NEC n22i, in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. Meanwhile KPN's main partner, NTT DoCoMo, has over 36 million i-mode subscribers in Japan.

Interview with Jiang Li, Project Leader at MS Research

Eugenia Loli 2002-12-18 In the News 11 Comments

Dr. Jiang Li joined Microsoft Research, Asia as Researcher in January 1999. His research interests include video compression, image processing, video broadcast and communication, peer-to-peer networking, realistic image synthesis and image based rendering. Read the interview at ActiveWin.

Mixed Messages for Embedded Linux

Eugenia Loli 2002-12-18 Linux 2 Comments

Companies selling Linux for embedded devices such as set-top boxes took one step back and one forward Tuesday as Motorola agreed to acquire once-hot Embedix, formerly called Lineo, and Toshiba invested in MontaVista Software. Read the articles at ZDNews and LinuxDevices.