Review: Windows eXPerience

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.
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CNN Reviews Opera 6

Opera 20 Comments
"Opera bills itself as "the fastest browser on earth!" -- and indeed it is fast. But to laud it only for its speed would miss the point. Much more impressive are Opera's other features for surfing the World Wide Web. Consider the menu item for quickly deleting cookie files that Web sites leave behind to track you. Or the item for rejecting pop-up windows, such as those pitching wireless cameras from X10." Read the rest of the review at CNN.
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2002: ‘Year of .Net’?

.NET 4 Comments
"Microsoft Corp. watchers are dubbing 2002 "the year of .Net" as the software company prepares to release products that will build on its software-as-a-service vision. Releases slated for the new year include the Visual Studio .Net 2002 development suite, the Windows .Net Server family and the Tablet PC. The company's teams are also working on the next version of Office and the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, as well as Visual Studio .Net 2003." Read the rest of the article at ExtremeTech.
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Analysis: New iMacs For The New Year?

Apple 3 Comments
"Even for self-styled Mac pros, the introduction of the consumer-friendly iMac remains a watershed event in the history of Apple. Between its striking industrial design and appealing specs, the entry-level desktop system proved that master marketer Steve Jobs was truly back in Apple's saddle: The all-in-one system's distinctive aura of one-button consumer cool recalled the earliest Mac models, but its sub-$1,500 price point appealed to a far wider audience than those $3,000, mid-'80s trailblazers." Read the rest of the analysis at ExtremeTech.
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Lindows Done Right

Linspire 44 Comments
You may or may not have heard about Lindows already. Lindows (the company) is a new Linux start-up, launched earlier this year by former MP3.com CEO Michael Robertson. The promise of Lindows (the Operating System) is to be an affordable alternative (Operating System) to Microsoft Windows. And, as an extra boon, this alternative to Windows (which promises to run all your Windows applications), will run Linux applications as well.
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Kernel Hacker Interview: Dave Jones

Linux No Comments
Kerneltrap interviewed Dave Jones who currently lives in London, employed by SuSE as a Linux kernel hacker. In the past six months since he graduated from the University of Glamorgan he has gotten involved in an impressive range of kernel related projects, including Powertweak, x86info, OProfile and the Kernel Janitors Project. Additionally, he maintains a -dj patch for the 2.5 development kernel, helping to sync it with the stable 2.4 kernel as well as offering increased stability.
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The Year the Hype Died (but Open Source Thrived)

Editorial 10 Comments
In the year 2000, some pundits suggested the growing enthusiasm about open source was destined to give out. Once economic conditions returned to pre-dot-com levels, they reasoned, open source would be seen as a fad, just like the pet rock. The editorial at InfoWorld concludes that "the hype surrounding open source did not survive the year. But open source itself not only survived, it began to thrive in the business world."
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Hardware Platforms: Worth a Change?

Editorial 49 Comments
There were an amazing number of people (around 300,000) who visited OSNews recently to read Scot Hacker's article on MacOSX. As part of the camp of BeOS refugees, I have been searching for some time for a suitable replacement. Many come close - FreeBSD is fantastic, but still complicated, the new school of Linuxes are very close to ready for me, even Windows XP has come a long way. My x86 machine is pretty fun - it gets a new OS every two weeks or so. But what does that say - that I like variety or that I can't find what I want? I'd suggest most of us still feel that we're missing something - otherwise, why read osnews.com?
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FBI Warns of WindowsXP Security Hole

Privacy, Security 2 Comments
The FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center has urged users of Microsoft's WindowsXP operating system to disable a feature that could leave computers open to attacks from hackers. In a statement issued Saturday, the FBI's NIPC, which usually leaves computer security warnings to the private sector, said it held technical discussions with Microsoft and industry experts Friday to identify ways to minimize the risk from security holes in the XP software, which was launched in late October.
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Mercury 0.1 for AtheOS Released

Syllable, AtheOS 14 Comments
Just in time for Christmas, one of the well known AtheOS developers, Kristian Van Der Vliet ('Vanders'), released as a Christmas gift to the AtheOS community the first full scale native AtheOS application, the email client Mercury. We normally do not post on such application releases, but this app is indeed a major step for AtheOS. From Vanders and all of us here at OSNews, Merry Christmas to all !
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Compiling the Linux Kernel

Linux 8 Comments
At the time I was writing this article, the Linux kernel 2.4.17 was released only 3 days ago and these holly days you may find some more time to experiement with it. The following article includes step-by-step instructions on how to compile a Linux 2.4.X kernel, an article mostly targetting people who have never dared to compile their own kernel yet. Read on and we promise, it is not that hard to do so.
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FreeBSD Gets a Java Injection from Sun

  Submitted by Brennan Stehling FreeBSD 9 Comments
From the announcement: "The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce that it has secured a license from Sun Microsystems to distribute a native FreeBSD version of both the Java Development Kit (JDK) and the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). Thanks to the great efforts of the FreeBSD Java team, these should be available for inclusion with the upcoming release of FreeBSD 4.5 in January, 2002. The general availability of a distributable version of Java will benefit end users, commercial users, and developers who use FreeBSD. Java continues to grow in popularity and has become heavily used in server side web applications, one of FreeBSD's core areas of strength. With an officially licensed binary Java distribution, FreeBSD becomes an ideal platform for execution, development, and deployment of Java based solutions."
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The End of a Chapter for Be & BeOS

  Submitted by Emanuele Haiku 52 Comments
The Be website has been updated and now mostly contains stock info and other legalese. Also hints at a liquidation auction to be held on January 16th are to be found in the new pages. The http://free.be.com (BeOS) sub-domain does not work anymore, and all the developer info, BeBook, Developer's newsletters, sample code etc, are all gone from that server. However, you can still access the old web site from archives.org and their old ftp site from PlanetMirror. In the meantime, Palm's David Nagel (the person who leads the subsidiary that Be engineers are working under, and he also has control over Be's IP) has said that parts of the Be technology will be used in a new, 32-bit, PalmOS, but sources say that he has firmly declined any further desktop versions of BeOS, as the desktop is not Palm's focus.
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