Opera Casts Off Legacy Code for Speed

  Submitted by dave_sn Opera 56 Comments
Opera, the self-described "fastest browser on earth," has decided to jettison its legacy code in favor of something a little faster. The Oslo, Norway-based company is on the verge of releasing a trial, or beta, version of Opera 7, which will resemble its predecessor only in superficial ways. The rendering engine--the heart of the browser, which interprets code pulled down from Web servers--has been rewritten from the ground up over the past 18 months.
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Microsoft Office XP Service Pack 2 Released

Office 6 Comments
From ActiveWin: "Microsoft Corp. has released the second service pack for Office XP, which will combine previously released and new updates into a single, integrated package that will be available as a Web download or on CD. Office XP Service Pack 2 (SP-2) provides the latest updates to Microsoft Office XP. SP-2 contains significant security enhancements as well as stability and performance improvements. SP-2 updates the following Office applications: Word 2002, Excel 2002, Outlook 2002, PowerPoint 2002, Access 2002, FrontPage 2002, Publisher 2002, and Office XP Web Components."
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IBM’s JFS Merged into 2.4.x Linux

General Development 20 Comments
Marcelo Tosatti released 2.4.20-pre4 today. Included in the bug fixes and driver updates was the merge of JFS. JFS is IBM's journaled filesystem port from OS/2. JFS had previously been merged into the -ac tree (2.4.18pre9-ac4) and was merged into the 2.5 tree early on (2.5.6). JFS joins ext3 and reiserfs in the 2.4 tree. SGI's XFS is still awaiting inclusion into the stable tree. Read more at KernelTrap.
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TrollTech Previews Qt 3.1

Qt 9 Comments
The new Qt 3.1 upgrade features hundreds of enhancements, TrollTech claims. Among the features are better ActiveX support, Motif integration, while for MacOSX you will find integration with the Appearance Manager, anti-aliased text drawing, and user settings. The Qt OpenGL support for OSX is also greatly improved, and uses the hardware-accelerated drivers. Also, Qt 3.1 offers more classes available for multi-threading, thereby optimizing performance. Elsewhere, GTKmm 1.3.21 for GTK+ 2 was released.
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Open-Source Databases Hike Enterprise Appeal

Databases 13 Comments
"The creators of the open-source databases MySQL and PostgreSQL are trying to push them further into the enterprise with new features aimed at better support for transactions, database recovery and replication." Read the news at eWeek. On the other hand, VA-Software said that they had to switch SourceForge to IBM's DB2, because their database grows very fast (70 new projects and 700 new users daily) and while they did a move from mySQL to PostgreSQL a year ago (mySQL is faster for smaller dbs, while PostgreSQL scales better), now they have to move again to an even more powerful database, which happens to be proprierty.
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The Little Penguin That Could – Or Not

Linux 26 Comments
"Now Wal-Mart's website is selling $299 PCs that run on an operating system called Lindows (Microsoft is suing over the name), while another Linux brand called Lycoris Desktop LX is about to hit the shelves at CompUSA. The ubiquitous Linux logo, a penguin, is already a hit at places like IBM and much of the U.S. government. Should the rest of us tune him in too?" Read the article at Time.com. On the other hand, eWeek has a kinda opposite article: "Linux vendors are showing a renewed interest in developing a desktop version of the operating system to challenge Microsoft Corp. But many corporate users are simply not ready for—or not interested in—such a product."
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Too Many Unices? HP Supports them All

Unix 13 Comments
"It's not an easy job, but Hewlett-Packard is determined to support no fewer than five major operating systems: Linux, HP-UX, Tru64, OpenVMS and Windows. Dig a bit deeper and it's even more complicated with three main flavors of Linux -- Debian, Red Hat, and UnitedLinux -- and at least as many versions of Windows -- Windows 2000, XP and the up coming .NET Server." The story is at NewsForge.
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MicroBSD 0.5 released

FreeBSD 15 Comments
As seen over at Deadly.org: "Some Bulgarian fellows made a tiny BSD distro, which is a mix between FreeBSD and OpenBSD, has some ports and other stuff -a. Full install is about 200 megs, the install iso is 64 MB.It can run on low end x86 boxes." More infrormation here.
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JaysOS 0.2 for the Gameboy Advance

  Submitted by Ranjit Mathew OS News 4 Comments
Justin Armstrong wrote JaysOS, a "toy OS" that runs on the Gameboy Advance. It provides preemptive threads, semaphores, condition variables, and message queues. As of 0.2, it also includes a port of the Waba VM for Java bytecodes. Waba comes with a few interesting demo applets you can try out. The OS apps interact with the world using the "UI Manager". Screenshots and more information available.
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Third Red Hat Limbo Beta Released

  Submitted by Richard Goodwin Red Hat 38 Comments
The third ("null") beta of Red Hat Linux has been updated. New in this release include lots of bug fixes and gcc-3.2. Gcc-3.2 allows for better ABI compatibility going forward. Note that C++ apps compiled on the first beta will not run on this beta.
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Wanted: Killer App for New Smartphone

Wireless 19 Comments
Sony Ericsson challenges developers to come up with an irresistible program for its P800 phone. Analysts say it's a sign that software development for smartphones is in the doldrums. Read the news at News.com. Our Take: This is so unoriginal. There is only one application that can be re-created easily, to match a phone's requirements, that is completely a must-have for a phone/PDA that has internet access: A Watson replica. Even Apple had to copycat it for its new Sherlock, and even we asked for it. Watson just rocks, and it is extra useful when you are "on the go".
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Apple’s Chief in the Risky Land of the Handhelds

  Submitted by claudio Wireless 22 Comments
A thought-provoking New York Times article examines the evidence that Apple may secretly be working on a PDA/Phone device. It cites some cryptic statements by Steve Jobs about how PDAs are going to be replaced by phones, and some not-so-cryptic ones about the sorry state of the handheld offerings today. The article's main evidence, though, is the interesting proliferation of features in Max OS X.2 that have more immediately applicable benefit in a handheld, like handwriting recognition and the "internet distilled" functionality of Sherlock (also seen in the shareware app Watson). Apple already has a license to use the iPod software in a second device.
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Classic AmigaOS Emulation – A Guide for WinUAE

Amiga & AROS 38 Comments
As Amiga Inc is about to re-enter the computer arena with new AmigaOS4 powered desktop systems as well as with 3rd party embedded products utilizing AmigaDE technology pre-installed, there are a growing number of people who wonder what an advanced classic AmigaOS currently offers. This was an important reason for me to write a simple to understand WinUAE tutorial, so this would hopefully help interested people with setting up a fun and easy to use emulated AmigaOS environment on widely available mainstream Windows computers. This article also includes many WinUAE screenshots and information on acquiring and using freely available software.
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