OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Ximian & theKompany: Converging Doctrines

Eugenia Loli 2002-01-04 Linux 2 Comments

"If KDE and GNOME are the Hatfield and McCoy of Open Source graphical desktop environments, then theKompany.com and Ximian are not exactly kissing cousins. But the philosophical beliefs of the two businesses are converging, and the community is settling down to a broader acceptance of commercial software. Assuming computer users choose their desktops before they choose their desktop applications, ostensibly theKompany's and Ximian's target markets are non-intersecting sets. But their business practices and philosophies on Open Source have been scrutinized, discussed and compared at length in public." Read the editorial at NewsForge.

XFree86 With XP or Win2k Looks

Submitted by BeAdingo 2002-01-04 Wayland 14 Comments

XPwm is an X11 window manager and a desktop that emulates the behaviour of Windows XP. XPwm (which is an evolution of the W2Kwm, both written in Kylix) tries to be an "exact" copy of the Windows XP Interface (except the registered logos), including menu fading/dissolving and taking care of "every pixel" of each element. The author is looking for feedback and bug reports.

nVidia GeForce4 to be Announced February 5th

Eugenia Loli 2002-01-04 3D 21 Comments

"nVidia Corp. will announce its next-generation desktop graphics chip, which may be known as the GeForce4, in early February. Several reports on the capabilities of the NV25 have already been published, most believing the chip will feature six pixel processing pipelines versus the four used by the GeForce3. The reports also suggest that the NV25 will feature significantly higher clock rates, faster memory interfaces, and improved antialiasing capabilities. The Nvidia spokesman declined to comment on any of the features of the new chip." Read the whole story at ExtremeTech.

Technology Update on LCD Monitors

Eugenia Loli 2002-01-03 Hardware 4 Comments

"Thanks to display technology, the world is going flat. No, it's not deflating, nor was Columbus wrong (or at least not entirely). It's our desktop displays that are getting flat-- buyers have decided that flatter is better, and flat-screen sales have gone through the roof. How did this happen, and what impact might these developments have on your future purchases?" Interesting article at ExtremeTech.

Getting ready for GNOME 2, Part 1

Eugenia Loli 2002-01-03 GTK+ 5 Comments

"developerWorks is pleased to announce the relaunch of the Linux zone's popular GNOMEnclature column. In this incarnation of the column, Mikael Hallendal and Richard Hult of CodeFactory will give you the inside information you need to make the best use of the new GNOME 2 platform. In this series, you'll learn how to use the new and improved libraries available with GNOME 2 so that you can write your own Nautilus view, panel applets, and much more. In this article, Mikael and Richard reopen the series with a gentle introduction to GTK+ 2, the new foundation for the GNOME 2 desktop environment. By the end of this article, you'll have written and compiled a few sample GTK+ 2 programs and have a good understanding of GTK+ 2's many improvements over GTK+ 1." Detailed article, introducing the new features of GTK+ 2, such as double buffering (helps avoid flickering), full antializing, a powerful textview and more.

An Alternative View on MacOSX by TheRegister

Submitted by Hero 2002-01-03 macOS 29 Comments

"Both John Siracusa at Ars Technica and Bruce Tognazzini have raised the same concerns, with Tog warning that Apple's dismal OS X user interface was leading the company into a New-Coke style disaster. But if we can indulge you, this is a battle-tested road report on rubbing along with OS X. That's eight months spent on our own personal kit, trying to justify the investment. And watching the gold CD-ROM cursor spinning, and spinning." Read the rest of the story at TheRegister.

Intel Revamps the Pentium 4

Submitted by Jean-Baptiste M. Queru 2002-01-03 Intel 2 Comments

"Intel will debut the Northwood Pentium 4 chip with 2.0GHz and 2.2GHz models next week. With double the cache and DDR memory, PCs equipped with the smaller and faster new chips promise to give AMD a new level to surpass." Read the story at ZDNews.

Is the LCD iMac Really an… iPad or… iWalk?

Eugenia Loli 2002-01-03 Apple 5 Comments

Microsoft is trying to push the idea of the Tablet PC in the last few months but sources say that their product won't be ready for another year, while Apple may already have a tablet product already in the works. There are a lot of rumors flying around recently regarding next week's MacWorld, but these rumors are mostly about a possible iMac upgrade with an LCD display. Imagination among the Macintosh fans fly though, some even say that this is the reason (more illustrated/rendered screenshots 2, 3 and 4) as to why Apple writes to their web site "Beyond the rumor sites. Way beyond.". Others, say that the "secret" device that Apple is hiding is actually called iWalk and it is a PDA. In any case, we will know for sure on Monday. Our Take: Personally, all I want to see (and buy) is a iMac G4 600 Mhz with a DVD/CD-RW combo drive and an ATi Radeon VE 32MB, all for $999 USD...

The Future of Linux Discussed Once More

Eugenia Loli 2002-01-02 Linux 35 Comments

The 2002 is here and everyone's seems busy writing editorials as to what it might bring to Linux. Some are optimistic, others are not so much. Judging from the amount of the... almanac Linux articles on the web, one thing is for sure: people are worried about its further success. Newsforge says (wisely) that Linux doesn't have to beat with Windows while ZDNews has three articles already: "Is it time for Linux on the desktop?", "2002 prediction: Linux won't make it this year" and "Will Linux survive the dot-com crash?"

Matthew Dillon Interview at KernelTrap

Submitted by Jeremy 2002-01-02 FreeBSD No Comments

KernelTrap has interviewed Matthew Dillon, a well-known FreeBSD kernel hacker. He has recently been in the spotlight due to many impressive NFS related bug fixes, as well as fixes to the TCP stack. In the KernelTrap interview he talks about these bug fixes as well as his history with computers, programming and FreeBSD. He also discusses Linux, open source, embedded systems, the Amiga (and his DICE C compiler), and much more. OSNews also interviewed Matt a few months ago.

Second Leaked Email from Microsoft’s Sales Department?

Eugenia Loli 2002-01-02 Microsoft 9 Comments

Less than two months ago an email from Microsoft's Brian Valentine was leaked and TheRegister published it, a second email comes to light today, again with the same outlined subject: Linux Vs Windows. Interesting read (if the email is actually original), and lots of disclaimers to the email recipients from Mr Valentine to not distribute the email (too late!).

Krusader & Gnumeric 1.0 Released

Eugenia Loli 2002-01-02 General Development 3 Comments

Good news for the Krusader fans, as version 1.0 was released today after 1.5 years of development. Krusader is a KDE/QT-based file manager and being similar to Norton or Midnight Commander it should already have lots of friends among the Linux users. Krusader seems to be today the only real & viable alternative to Konqueror or Nautilus today under a Linux desktop. In a related note, Gnumeric 1.0, the Gnome Office spreadsheet was released recently.

Designing a Dream OS or GUI

Guest post by Desmond Ong 2002-01-01 Editorial 34 Comments

We hail those who attempt to create new operating systems from scratch. They are the leaders, the visionaries, the influencers of this great tech-age. There will always be only 2 areas of how an OS can be great - great marketing (which provides great third party support), and great design. Microsoft has always invested more in the former, and Apple in the latter. This article discusses some design aspects. Update: The article has been updated at several places.

LinuxPlanet’s Picks for the Best and Worst of 2001

Eugenia Loli 2002-01-01 Office 4 Comments

2001 is almost over (and already over for a lot of our readers), and there are plenty of ways to look at the past twelve months. LinuxPlanet has put together a list of their Linux best and worst of 2001: Favorite distro, desktop environment, browser, mail client and more. Oh, and Happy New Year everyone!

BeOS Refugee Redux

Guest post by Scot Hacker 2001-12-31 In the News 19 Comments

The 'Tales of a BeOS Refugee' seems to have touched a nerve. In the two weeks since it was published at OSNews, I have received more than 500 email responses from users of Mac OS, BeOS, Linux, and Windows. Most of the responses were point-by-point rejoinders to facts and observations in the original piece, some of them highly detailed. Because it was impossible to respond to everyone individually, and because I thought many people would appreciate being able to read some of the comments and my reactions to them, I've assembled this addendum: Reactions to "Tales of a BeOS Refugee". The piece includes further clarifications and extrapolations on my ideas about the Creator code and application binding, plus dozens of miscellaneous notes and continued comparisons between BeOS and OS X. Many thanks to everyone who took the time to write. As always, comments are welcome, but no guarantees on responses.

Debian GNU/Hurd H2 release

Jon Jensen 2001-12-31 OS News 1 Comment

A reader over at Slashdot noted that the folks making Debian GNU/Hurd have released a new snapshot in 4 CD images. This is up from three CDs in the G1 release we noted in October, although only the first CD is required to install a basic system.

News on AmigaDE

Guest post by Mike Bouma 2001-12-30 Amiga & AROS 32 Comments

Amiga's CEO has posted his latest executive update in which Bill writes about the progress being made. Also included are videos of AmigaDE software running binary identical on various devices. For instance the Compaq iPAQ and Sharp Collie. Also Luca Diana recently visited the Amiga's headquarters and made a little report with pictures for us to enjoy, included is a picture of a PDA by Casio running the AmigaDE.

Learn about LinuxBIOS

Jon Jensen 2001-12-29 Hardware 2 Comments

LinuxBIOS is a project aimed at replacing the proprietary legacy BIOSes of x86 PC hardware with an open, free, fast, and customizable BIOS. Eric Biederman of Linux NetworX has written an excellent article explaining how the BIOS works, how the boot process on x86 differs from PowerPC, SPARC, Alpha, and Itanium, and what people are using LinuxBIOS for.

Virtual Machines & VMware, Part II

Eugenia Loli 2001-12-29 OS News 3 Comments

"From our perspective, we believe VMware 3.0 is a big improvement from Version 2.0, which had some technical problems and limitations, a non-intuitive user interface, and required users to edit config files at times to gain added features (much like configuring Linux). It also presented misleading messages occasionally. Version 3.0 brings a big change to the UI, with a cleaner more intuitive look, and more descriptive messages. The help system has been expanded, with far fewer references to the Web (which was a real problem in Version 2)." This is the second part of the excellent two-part article on Virtual Machines and VMWare at ExtremeTech. Read the first part here.

Review: Windows eXPerience

Guest post by Sebastian Alvarez 2001-12-28 Windows 60 Comments

After years of crashes, BSODs (Blue Screen of Death), Stop errors and dozens of other problems, Microsoft finally has delivered what most of us would think impossible from them: a rock stable operating system. Granted, Windows 2000 was a decent try, but it had its share of system crashes, even with the neatest possible installation. It was more susceptible to bad written device drivers than Windows XP, and that shows. Of course, it’s not like you can throw anything at XP and it will stay unharmed, drivers are a very important component of an operating system, and if they’re buggy they make the whole system unstable, whatever OS it is.