OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Can Macs and PCs Really Get Along?

Eugenia Loli 2002-04-23 Editorial 44 Comments

"If you put a bad-tasting item in your mouth, the natural instinct is to spit it out. A similar reaction can occur to those stalwarts testing computer hardware and software. However, quite the opposite reaction could be seen as my colleague David Coursey extended his test of the Macintosh from one month to two, and then to three." Read the rest of the editorial at ZDNews.

Microsoft To Support AMD’s Hammer 64-Bit CPU

Eugenia Loli 2002-04-23 AMD 21 Comments

"Microsoft Corp. is finally expected to formally announce that it will support AMD's 64-bit "Hammer" line in future operating systems, sources said Tuesday. Sources within AMD, Sunnyvale, Calif., said that the company will announce the Hammer support in a press conference tomorrow at 4:30 PM, after the market closes. In a notice sent to press and analysts, AMD described the press conference as one where the company 'answers the 64-bit question'." Read the rest of the report at ExtremeTech. Update: Read more for a leaked memo. Update 2 AMD has renamed its "Hammer" 64-bit server line with the "Opteron" brand name.

Symbian Opens OS Source Code

Eugenia Loli 2002-04-23 Wireless 11 Comments

"Symbian today said it will open most of the source code for its mobile operating system to third party developers, in its latest effort to encourage the creation of more software for the platform. The company also announced that German electronics giant Siemens has agreed to buy 5 percent of the company for more than 20-million euros ($17.8 million). The software company, which is co-owned by Psion as well as Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola and others, already provides most of its code to its licensees, and will offer the same access to software developers through a new plan called the "Symbian Platinum Program". A number of third parties have already committed to joining the program, including Intel, AppForge, Texas Instr. and UK chip-designer ARM Holdings." Read the rest of the story at ZDNews.

Lineo Goes To the Block

Eugenia Loli 2002-04-23 Linux 8 Comments

"The Canopy Group and Egan-Managed Capital, two of Lineo's many investors, have been running a "notice of public sale" in a local Utah paper since April 8 apparently. It recalls the sheriff hammering a foreclosure sign on an Oklahoma farm with the butt-end of his gun during the dust storms of the Great Depression. As previously reported, Lineo has run out of money to the point of bouncing paychecks and having at least one of its offices padlocked by the landlord for want of the rent. Lineo has a pretty lustrous retinue of backers and burned through at least $65 million, maybe $20 million or $30 million more than that. It's reportedly never been profitable." Read the rest of the report at LinuxGram.

IBM Middleware for Linux CD Set Give-Away

Submitted by Frank 2002-04-23 IBM 10 Comments

The latest IBM middleware for Linux (DB2 Universal Database, WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Studio Application Developer, and Lotus Domino) is being provided, at no cost, on a 2 CD set, along with Web Services technologies, Linux technical articles, Linux Redbooks, and the very popular Java battle-bots game Robocode. IBM is also providing a worldwide no-cost 2-day Linux workshop, which includes hands-on labs for installing and configuring Linux.

GCC 3.1 Pre-Release Almost Ready

Eugenia Loli 2002-04-22 General Development 29 Comments

Mark Mitchell, the GCC release manager posted at GCC's mailing list that a GCC 3.1 pre-release test version will be ready any time now, today or tomorrow. GCC 3.1 is the first "stable" version that developers were awaiting to base their projects on, as in some cases it delivers up to 30% faster executables than GCC 2.9x.x for the same codebase. GCC 3.x is a bit slower in compilation times than GCC 2.9x.x, but it creates faster executables, so it worth the extra time it takes in order to utilize the extra optimizations (a tip: compiling GCC 3.1 itself with the Intel compiler (which creates about 35% faster code than gcc 3.x), it would optimize GCC and it will make it require less compilation time). GCC 3.1 also has an extra flag for specific Pentium4 optimizations while it is more C++ compliant (lays out stricter rules for the C++ devs). Macintosh users should also await this release, as the new GCC seems to offer about 5% faster code than the previous GCC for the G3/G4 architecture. Apple has already switched internally to GCC 3.1.

AmigaOS 4 Screenshots Released

Submitted by CattBeMac 2002-04-22 Amiga & AROS 60 Comments

A lot of people have rushed to submit the news, but CattBeMac was the first one to do so. Hyperion Software has released some never seen before screenshots of the upcoming Amiga OS 4, with full support for transparency.

A Top-Secret, One-of-a-Kind Mac

Submitted by Henrik Petersson 2002-04-22 Apple 15 Comments

OSNews reader Henrik "rain" Petersson writes: "In a drafty shed in rural northern California is perhaps the rarest Macintosh ever made: an electronically shielded Mac used by a spy or military agency. The machine appears to be unique, and is so secret, no one knows anything about it." Part I and Part II of the article at Wired.

Connecting to IPv6 With FreeBSD

Submitted by John Gowin 2002-04-22 FreeBSD 5 Comments

Linux Orbit contributing author and FreeBSD user David LeCount shows you how to connect your FreeBSD system with the '6Bone': "The next generation Internet that uses this protocol is called the 6Bone, and it's accessible from the current Internet. Now you may ask, "What are the advantages of getting on this 6Bone?" Good question. Some people just want to get an early start on tomorrow's technology. Some enjoy having a new toy to play with. Some may like the idea of owning a huge subnet of IP addresses for free. You may already have had your reasons before clicking on the link to this tutorial. Whatever the case, if you're interested in trying out this new internet and you have a FreeBSD machine connected directly to the internet, keep reading."

Review of Hancom Office 2.01 Standard for Linux

Eugenia Loli 2002-04-22 Office 4 Comments

Hancom Office 2.01 is the latest version from the Korean company Hancom Linux, released only a few days ago. The company used to offer a Windows version of their product, but they have since completely focused on the Linux platform, even though their product is pretty portable as it is based almost solely in the Qt 3 tooklkit. In latest news, Hancom has canned their Professional version of their office suite (contained more applications in assosiation with TheKompany), and they now going with the Standard version, which is the version we review today. Update: From the Hancom press release: "200 Million Arabic Speakers Finally Have an Affordable, High-Quality Alternative to Microsoft - And Save 90% in the Process."

Microsoft Fears Hype and IBM, but not Sun

Eugenia Loli 2002-04-22 Microsoft 15 Comments

"Microsoft has admitted its biggest worry over the roll out of its flagship .Net strategy is the potential backlash from angry customers once they realise today's web services are mainly hype. And according to Charles Fitzgerald, global director of strategy for the .Net platform at Microsoft, his firm is also much more worried about IBM's Websphere than the widely perceived battle between .Net and Java." Read the rest of the stoy at Yahoo! News.

Mandrake 8.2 and SuSE 8.0 Now Available in Retail

Eugenia Loli 2002-04-22 Linux 7 Comments

MandrakeSoft, today announced the availability of the boxed versions of Mandrake Linux 8.2 through a number of retail outlets worldwide and also online. Mandrake Linux 8.2 for PowerPack and ProSuite are the first Linux distributions to include StarOffice 6.0, the new office suite from Sun Microsystems which is compatible with Microsoft Office documents. Customers are provided with three packaged versions of Mandrake Linux 8.2 to choose from: ProSuite ($149.99), PowerPack ($69.99) and Standard ($39.99). OEM versions, targeted at hardware manufacturers, are due out later this month. In the meantime, SuSE 8.0 also hits the retail market today. SuSE's prices start at $39.95 for the SuSE Linux 8.0 IA32 Personal and go up to $79.95 for the SuSE Linux 8.0 IA32 Professional.

Take Advantage of WMI within Managed Code With System.Management

Eugenia Loli 2002-04-22 .NET No Comments

Visual Studio .NET and the Microsoft .NET Framework SDK provide a new set of APIs and tools that let you consume Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) data and events from managed .NET applications. After presenting an overview of what's new for WMI in the .NET Framework and the Visual Studio .NET environment, the author provides an in-depth exploration of the Management Extensions in Visual Studio .NET for Server Explorer. These extensions help you develop management-aware software and come in handy in a variety of distributed application development scenarios.

Linux and Open Source Idealogy

Eugenia Loli 2002-04-21 Linux 43 Comments

KernelTrap features three interesting articles - first, second and the newest -, round ups of the Linux kernel mailing list, where some of the developers are fighting against the use of the proprierty BitKeeper, while the rest are evangelizing regarding the "best tool for the job". When emails like "Rot in hell, closed mind" emerged in the list, Linus replied: "Quite frankly, I don't _want_ people using Linux for ideological reasons. I think ideology sucks. This world would be a much better place if people had less ideology, and a whole lot more 'I do this because it's FUN and because others might find it useful, not because I got religion'". Our Take: Personally, I am on Linus' side. He rocks on this particular subject.

A Closer Look at the i-Mode

Guest post by Mike Bouma 2002-04-21 Hardware 10 Comments

Recently i-mode was unleashed onto the Dutch and German markets. This internet service is hugely popular in Japan, where it connects over 30 million people to the internet through mobile phones. Read more to get to know its features and see two screenshots of the devices.

Free Software and Good User Interfaces

Eugenia Loli 2002-04-21 Graphics No Comments

"Many people have argued that free software has trouble creating good user interfaces. Recently Matthew Thomas posted a nice example of this argument, which I found on Joel's web site. It was cool to find mpt's article, because it nicely articulates what's gone wrong with many projects - including past versions of all the major Linux/UNIX desktops." Read the rest of the editorial at Havoc Pennington's site.

The Coldfire Amiga Project

Submitted by Rodney 2002-04-21 Amiga & AROS 7 Comments

OSNews reader Rodney, writes: "The Amiga Coldfire project announced a radical move to create a 100% compatible classic Amiga that shall take advantage of modern technologies such as PCI, AGP and of course the Coldfire CPU. It is thought the project will first create a Coldfire accelerator card for the A1200, which will then aid the developers in creating a standalone motherboard which should than be ready for the general community. There has been a non-technical FAQ posted @ Amiga.org and a mailing list created. To avoid confusion, this has nothing to do with the AmigaOne from Eyetech and is not made to run the new operating system AmigaOS4, but as a replacement for OLD Amiga’s and to run the OS3x series of AmigaOS. In other words, a hobbyist’s machine!" Update: Fred Horvat wrote: "There's a similar project under way for the Atari computer platform."

Microsoft is Preparing High-End Windows

Submitted by Ian Smith 2002-04-21 Windows 32 Comments

"Microsoft is building a high-end feature into Windows for speeding up data access in multiprocessor servers--a feature that to date has been available only in high-end Unix servers, the company said Tuesday. The Redmond, Wash.-based software company is working on support for a technology called non-uniform memory access, or NUMA, one method for designing large servers crammed with processors, said Sean McGrane, program manager for Microsoft's top-end Datacenter server. The support will be available in two versions of the next edition of Windows for servers, .Net Enterprise Server and .Net Datacenter." The report can be found at Yahoo! News.

News from Around the Web

Eugenia Loli 2002-04-20 OS News 8 Comments

We will first start with the 1.0 release of the free word processor, AbiWord, for many different platforms, including Linux, FreeBSD, Win32, MacOS and QNX. Mozilla RC-1 was released also a few days ago and its developers appreciate any bugs people can submit before the final 1.0 release. OSNews reader "Number9" submitted the news about the world's fastest computer, at NYTimes (free registration required). The computer is about 5 times faster than IBMs (previous world fastest) computer at a national lab. Another very interesting article can be found at PCMag. Given the hullabaloo around the Tablet PC, PC Magazine roundups six new tablet PCs from ACer, Fujitsu, HP, and others while it also investigates the past of such devices. The Menuet OS project released a new version and a new screenshot. Also, KlipFolio 1.0 for Windows is now released (more platforms are coming soon) and the OSNews news klip is installed by default! Thank you Serence!

The Future of Computing

Guest post by Jon Bach 2002-04-20 Editorial 12 Comments

I just should begin by saying that this article is different from the others. While my other articles can be quite useful to aid you in the design or purchase of your next computer system, this article is simply a fun look at things to come.