OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Big Gobe Competition – Win a Free gobeProductive 3

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-11 Gifts, Contests 29 Comments

Gobe Software recently announced the release of version 3.0.3 of gobeProductive, a free update for all 3.0.x versions. If you are a user of gobeProductive, you may upgrade by selecting "Check for Updates" from the 'Help' menu within gobeProductive. gobeProductive 3 is a great office suite for Windows and Gobe is so generous that is giving away 10 copies to 10 lucky OSNews readers, one copy every day for the next 10 business days! Total value of $1250 USD. Enter the competition now, read more how you can win.

Windows .Net Build 3604 Released To Testers

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-11 Windows 4 Comments

From ActiveWin: "Microsoft has just released to its set of beta testers a new pre-RC1 build of Windows .NET. This new release, that can be downloaded by every Windows .NET approved beta tester carries the build number 3604. This is an interim build between Beta 3 and RC1 is not considered "Beta quality". This build is intended as a preview of our progress post Beta 3 and to allow you to regress bugs fixed since Beta 3."

OSNews Web Design Update Complete

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-10 OS News 50 Comments

After more than a week of coding, the updated OSNews design is pretty much done. While a lot of you (including myself) prefered the older, simpler & cleaner design, which was also much faster to load and even rendered nicely on... text-based browsers, this updated design was necessary. We had to expand PriceGrabber (part of the deal) so we can get some revenue to be able to pay for our (always on-the-increase) bandwidth needs, and the only way to do so was to add a vertical bar. Also, we needed to add more menu items (check out the massively updated "OS Resources" and "Advertise" pages), so we had to make the menu vertical (the 765-pixel wide horizontal menu was not a scalable option anymore). UPDATE: I just added better support for Lynx, Links & W3M text-based browsers. *You will have* to load www.osnews.com/home.php instead of the plain www.osnews.com though because the default index.php is actually static (generated on-the-fly every 1 minute) so it won't work with my PHP text browser detection code. UPDATE 2: Better AvantGo support added.

A Titanic Story – The History of the Itanium

Guest post by Nicholas Blachford 2002-02-10 Editorial 24 Comments

"This will end up being one of the world's worst investments, I'm afraid," - David House, former Intel chief of corporate strategy said in the early 1990s. I've been fasinated by microprocessors for years and have been following the Merced debacle since back in 1994 when HP and Intel announced they were getting together to make some amazing new technology.

Robert Love’s Preemptive Patch Made it Into Linux 2.5.x

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-10 Linux 19 Comments

Great news for the Linux desktop users. Robert Love's patch which turns the Linux kernel to behave like a preemptive one, has been accepted to the development 2.5.x Linux source tree. Preemptiveness greatly improves UI responsiveness (for example mp3s won't skip when you do something CPU heavy at the same time and you won't experience as many UI "locks" during normal usage). Our Take: Let's hope that SGI's XFS will also make it to be included by default to the 2.5.x Linux kernel.

English Video of the Amiga 2001 Show Available

Guest post by Mike Bouma 2002-02-10 Amiga & AROS 12 Comments

Virtual Dimension has finished translating this year's video coverage of the Amiga 2001 show. This annual show held in Cologne, is the highlight Amiga event among the dozens Amiga events being held annually all over the world. Highlights inlude an interview with Ben Hermans of Hyperion Entertainment about the development of AmigaOS4, an interview with Gerald Carda of bplan GmbH regarding their new PPC based PEGASOS motherboard and MorphOS; 'a lightweight PPC OS which is able to emulate 68k AmigaOS and software on PPC hardware in a similar way to how Amithlon works on x86 hardware' and finally it also includes a demonstration of AmigaOS XL powered systems. Amiga Inc and some AmigaDE partners were not present as they decided to attend a very small Canadian Amiga show, which was being held simultaniously to ensure some interest.

Kyro On The Block; ST Pulls Out Of Graphics

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-09 3D 16 Comments

"ST Microelectronics Inc. has decided to put its graphics operations up for sale, placing the future of the Kyro graphics accelerator in limbo. The announcement comes after the troubled graphics accelerator, designed by PowerVR Technologies, itself a division of the U.K.'s Imagination Technoogies PLC, missed several major milestones that company executives outlined in an exclusive interview last June." Read the rest of the report at ExtremeTech. Our Take: With 3Dfx long gone, Matrox & 3DLabs already out of the 3D gaming market and SiS, VIA, Intel and Trident not been able to produce fast 3D chipsets, the ball is now only between the duopoly of ATi and (mainly) nVidia. I wish good luck to ATi, as I just can't handle yet another monopoly in the tech world. I want choice, I need diversity.

64-Bit CPUs: What You Need to Know

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-09 Hardware 4 Comments

"Itanium--you've gotta start somewhere". ExtremeTech will take you from the genesis of IA-64 through the present day of Itanium, to the future: McKinley, Madison, and Deerfield. Then on to Hammer, PowerPC, SPARC, and more. "It's Nothing Like a Pentium": Ten years in development, 325 million transistors and counting. "The Good Stuff: the Instruction Set" 41-bit VLIW instructions are elegant... until they get weird. "But What About x86 Compatibility?" It's there, sorta. It probably won't be the most popular feature. Read the first article of a three-part series at ExtremeTech.

Sun in Love with Linux

Guest post by Mike Bouma 2002-02-09 Oracle and SUN 30 Comments

Sun's chief executive dressed up as Tux the penguin at an analysts meeting to prove his love for the GNU/Linux operating system. CEO Scott McNealy: "Sun will create its own version of Linux". Read the rest of the article at ZDNet UK.

OpenBeOS Concept GUI Screenshots and… an Easter Egg

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-09 Haiku 67 Comments

'Stubear' is a graphics artist who in his free time helps the OpenBeOS folks in constructing the User Interface for a future version of this new operating system. Particularly, this shot looks pretty clean, but the widgets still need some work to look sharper. These are just concept screens, but sometimes, especially if you have lots of time in your hands, it is nice staring at nice shapes and colors. Moreover, OSNews received an email (which contained a real screenshot) from a BeOS user who wished to remain anonymous. The screenshot shows a hidden feature ("easter egg") of the "Dano" version of BeOS which is called ZSnake! To enable this feature press and hold CNTRL+ALT+SHFT and then click on the "Menu" application under "Preferences". While this feature seems unfinished (zooming to the screenshot shows some pixels out of order) this is a neat little UI gimmick that it not supported by any other operating system or Toolkit so far and it looks at least interesting UI-wise.

XFce: Not Just Another Desktop Environment for UNIX

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-09 Xfce 6 Comments

Oliver Fourdan, a French developer who works his day job at embedded Linux company Anfora, explains how XFce got started: "Back in late 1996, I'd started working on HP workstations that used CDE and I really liked that interface. I was very disappointed with Microsoft Windows 95 and its 'Start Menu,' so I found the concept of the toolbar in CDE very much more convenient. I had been using Linux since 1994, so it sounded natural to me to try to reproduce a concept I liked, on Linux. And at that time, there were no other projects like this--well at least, none really usable." Read the review of the XFce desktop environment at NewsForge.

i-Mode Soon to be Released in Europe

Guest post by Mike Bouma 2002-02-08 Hardware 5 Comments

NTT DoCoMo, by far the most successful Japanese wireless internet technology provider for cellphones and PDAs is set to launch its i-Mode service for cellphones in Europe. DoCoMo is also planning to roll out an internet enabled version, of the soon to be released US and European version of the Zaurus PDA.

Dell Discontinues Intel Itanium Workstation

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-08 Intel 50 Comments

"Dell Computer Corp. has discontinued its Itanium-based workstation due to weak demand, marking another setback in Intel Corp.'s efforts to promote its 64-bit chip released eight months ago." Read the rest of the report at ExtremeTech. Our Take: It is astonishing (and truly disapointing) to see a super-chip (a real wonder in the CPU design), like Itanium is, not being able to sell well, mostly because sysadmins not wanting to give up on x86. I think, now I understand better when software companies choose to support legacy code, even if it bloats their product. It seems to be a necessary reason to commercially succeed, no matter what we geeks say about clean designs and speed. Let's see what the new Intel 64-bit CPU McKinley can do in the marketplace. The failure of Itanium so far also caused Intel to try competing with AMD Hammer in the x86-64 bit area.

AppleScript Primer for Mac OS X

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-08 macOS 13 Comments

"AppleScript is a built-in Macintosh automation tool that gives users the ability to control the operating system and several of their favorite applications. While this powerful scripting system has always had a loyal following of Macintosh aficionados and publishing professionals, the release of Mac OS X 10.1.2 may mean AppleScript is ready to strut its stuff in front of a wider audience. Here are some of the exciting AppleScript developments on MacOSX..." Read the rest of the article at OReillyNet.

FreeType 2.0.6 Released

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-08 Wayland 18 Comments

Among other new features, this recent release of the popular font engine which used in many projects "is a must have if you're using XFree86 with anti-aliased text, since it features enhanced glyph rendering and better (more consistent) letter spacing". Download FreeType 2.0.6. Update: As some of our readers have spotted out, FreeType 2.0.8 was released just yesterday.

Get FreeBSD 4.5 on DVD

Submitted by scud 2002-02-07 FreeBSD 18 Comments

No more hours of downloading for the four FreeBSD ISO CDs. FreeBSD Services has officially begun to distribute FreeBSD on DVD. You can pre-order the FreeBSD 4.5-RELEASE DVD here.

Sun Broadens Support for Linux

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-07 Oracle and SUN 40 Comments

From the press release: "Sun Microsystems has embraced the Linux operating system, rolling out a multipart program that will significantly broaden the offerings of Linux on low-end Sun servers and commit new resources to the ongoing development of the Open Source operating system." Our Take: I am very concerned as to what this may mean for Solaris. Was this the real reason behind the Sun decision to drop support for the x86 Solaris? Did Sun took marketing/strategy lessons from IBM regarding Linux and its accompanied hype? Because technically speaking, Solaris is a far more advanced server operating system (in its core) than Linux is.

PostgreSQL 7.2 Released

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-07 Databases 4 Comments

After almost a full year of development since PostgreSQL v7.1 was released, the PostgreSQL Global Development Group announced the availability of the latest development milestone, PostgreSQL v7.2. In a related note, OSNews had a review of the "Practical PostgreSQL" book just a few days back.

OS Themes Are Only Skin Deep

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-07 Editorial 33 Comments

"What advocates of 'theme' or 'skinning' software fail to realize is that OS consistency is only truly realized when an entire platform is universally similar. As computers continue to dominate an increasing number of daily activities, it is ever more important that operating systems adopt the most idealistic standards to allow their users to be as productive as possible. In the world of user interface design, consistency is king. A consistent user interface not only can make a product more intuitive, but also can help users be significantly more productive. Unfortunately, the latest trend in 'user-friendliness' is allowing users to modify the interface of an operating system extensively by applying 'skins' or 'themes.'" Read the interesting analysis on the phenomenon of skinning at OSOpinion.

What Steve Jobs Won’t Do at Apple

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-07 Apple 23 Comments

"I can only infer that Steve Jobs has a vision for the future of Apple Computer. I say this because after spending more than an hour with the Apple CEO recently, I walked away knowing more about what Apple won't do than what it will do. Here's an example of what Apple won't do: Steve says Apple will not get into the home entertainment business--not during the next 24 months, anyway. You won't find Apple doing a personal video recorder, à la TiVo or Replay, or an advanced set-top box, à la Moxie. According to Jobs, those devices have yet to catch on, a fact perhaps best borne out by Microsoft's recent staff cuts and reorganization of its UltimateTV unit. TiVo has had its problems, too." Read the rest of the editorial at ZDNet AnchorDesk.