Operating System µnOS 0.95 Released

  Submitted by Michael Haunreiter OS News 18 Comments
miray Software introduces the new version 0.95 of the operating system µnOS with numerous new features today: µnOS is now based on a completely new realtime microkernel, has a graphics server with a software graphic engine and full true color support (VESA) and a window server with a complete GUI component framework and support for arbitrary freeform windows. You can easily try the OS as it fits on a floppy disk (didn't run on my VMWare 3.x though).
Read More

New AmigaOS4 Screenshots

Amiga & AROS 72 Comments
Eight new preview AmigaOS4 screenshots have been released, demonstrating some of the default GUI customizability. However should be noted, none of these new screenshots yet show the default AmigaOS 4.0 appearance. However "In the end, it is you that will decide what your AmigaOS 4.0 looks like...". Consumer AmigaOne boards will be delivered before Christmas, with the AmigaOne version of AmigaOS4 following shortly after them. The official mainstream launch of these new AmigaOS4/AmigaOne computers will be at CeBit in Germany, to be held March 2003.
Read More

Lindows vs. Windows: Round 3.0

Linspire 23 Comments
The company announced version 3 of Lindows this week at Comdex, and Robertson took the opportunity to talk with PC World about his operating system, its business model of powering extremely low-cost PCs, running an online software mall, and what it's like to go head-to-head with one of the most firmly entrenched products in the world. Read the article at PCWorld.
Read More

Microsoft Teases AMD Over 64bit .Net Server

AMD 12 Comments
"Microsoft is playing wait-and-see with AMD's 64-bit Opteron processor. The company has no definite commitment to ship a version of its .Net Server operating system for the new processor, though both will be available at the same time, around April of 2003. The stance was laid out at Microsoft's IT Forum event in Copenhagen on Thursday by Microsoft's Windows supremo." Read the report at ZDNet.UK. AMD does have samples of Windows 64bit for their new processors though.
Read More

Microsoft Talking Big for Servers

Microsoft 8 Comments
"For years, Microsoft has argued that servers containing only a handful of processors are good enough for most of the world. But now, with the advent of huge Intel machines and the approaching release of a new version of Windows that will run on them, the company is changing its tune. For heavyweight business computing jobs such as housing a large company's sales transaction database, Microsoft's preferred philosophy has been to share the load among lower-end servers grouped into a "cluster". It's been a tough sell, however, with large corporations sticking with mainframes or Unix servers." Read the report at News.com.
Read More

SkyOS Gets a Preliminary JavaVM Engine

SkyOS 17 Comments
Robert Szeleney will never cease to amaze us. After developing a software OpenGL stack and porting Quake 1&2 on top, this time around he has a preliminary JavaVM core running simple Java programs for his OS, SkyOS. Indeed, SkyOS has gone where no other hobby OS has ever gone before with these new features (not even AtheOS ever had such goodies).
Read More

Moving from Windows to Linux with Kylix 3

  Submitted by Anonymous General Development 17 Comments
One of the great things about using tools and databases such as Borland Delphi 7 Studio and IBM DB2 Universal Database is that moving between platforms is only a matter of a few changes and a recompile. This article shows how to move a functional application from a Delphi 7 application running on Microsoft Windows to a Linux application using Borland Kylix 3. This article also goes over DB2 on Linux and minor source code changes.
Read More

Donate to Help Open Sourcing Pepper

  Submitted by J. Todd Slack Office 79 Comments
Just like Blender did a few months ago, Hekkelman Programmatuur are now following the same approach to open their product's sources (development has stopped in the meantime). Pepper 4.x is a programmer's editor, running on Unix/Linux, Mac/X, Windows and it has already a lot of BeOS-specific code to kickstart a BeOS version too (I personally have a BeOS beta of Pepper 3.5 on my hard drive from the times I was beta testing it, a version that was never released). A small team of developers and users are trying to open its source so they have made an offer to Maarten Hekkelman for $11,000 USD and they would appreciate your donations (screenshot of Pepper running under Gentoo Linux).
Read More

Review: United Linux 1.0

  Submitted by Jörg Luther Linux 6 Comments
Tecchannel.de has a preview of SuSE's UnitedLinux flavour SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8: "A close look into United Linux 1.0 substantiates the not so new suspicion that the initative of the four UL companies essentialy is an attempt to stand up to Red Hat's overwhelming market potence and to counter Red Hat Advanced Server with a competitive product. Conectiva, SCO and Turbolinux apparently have insisted in delivering their own management tools as a last line of defense for differentiating "their" UL flavours from a plain SuSE SLES."
Read More

Advanced filesystem implementor’s guide, Part 13

General Development 4 Comments
In the Advanced filesystem implementor's guide, Daniel Robbins shows you how to use the latest filesystem technologies in Linux 2.4. In this conclusion to the AFIG series, Daniel continues his discussion of the Enterprise Volume Management System for Linux, or EVMS. He shows you how to use evmsn to take a new hard drive, partition it, and create LVM volumes on it. Along the way, he fills you in on important EVMS concepts that you'll find essential as you continue your exploration of this powerful technology.
Read More

Review of Mandrake Linux ProSuite Edition 9.0

Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 34 Comments
MandrakeSoft and Pearson Education sent us over a copy of their latest "pro" edition of the popular Linux Mandrake 9.0. We already wrote a review about Linux Mandrake 9.0, so this is going to be a review of the ProSuite deal specifically and what you get for $199 USD RPP (easily found for around $175 USD in the market). Update: Apparently, StarOffice 6.0 is included in its full version with the distribution. Too bad Mandrake does such a poor job and include its RPMs along with some hundreds other demos in the two Commercial CDs, without saying a word about it (or where to find it) in the "Commercial Software Guide" booklet or another really prominent place.
Read More

Why Red Hat Owns Linux

Red Hat 51 Comments
"Red Hat is the biggest bandwidth user on the East Coast," company vice president Mark de Visser said. "If we wanted to make a killing in the retail market, we could, but that's not the intent. The intent is to get it into the hands of the most people." Read the article at NewsFactor. The article in a single sentence: Ladies and Gentlemen, meet the upcoming leader of the Linux market: Red Hat.
Read More

NSA Backdoor Key Into All MS OSes Since WIN95 OSR1

  Submitted by Wade Gilbreath Privacy, Security 51 Comments
This is old news, but still, everyone should be aware of it. And on a theoretical basis, the co-creator of UNIX, Ken Thompson wrote a paper on which he explains that it is possible to add a backdoor to a closed source compiler and when you first compile any other compiler (e.g. GCC), any concequent compiles from this new compiler, would include the backdoor by default. Pessimistic thought of the day: nothing is safe. Neither Windows or Unix. I wonder how "safe" the Security-Enhanced Linux from NSA is. It might secure you from others, but does it secure you from NSA itself? ;P Update: More info here (Ms reply on the issue) and here.
Read More