OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

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.

Miguel de Icaza Explains His Gnome .NET Plans

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-06 Mono 50 Comments

When Miguel de Icaza, the founder of Gnome and Gnumeric among other things, told TheRegister some days ago that he would like to see Gnome 4.0 to be based on Mono (a free .NET re-implementation), a lot of people thought that he is "selling" Gnome to the Microsoft's "evil .NET" technology. Miguel says that it ain't so and he has written a long reply answering to both the Gnome community and RMS himself. Miguel explains that Mono is just a free re-implementation of a proprierty technology (that Microsoft pushes enough to make it the 'de facto' standard in the years to come, so the Unix world should catch up), just as Linux was a free re-implementation of AT&T's proprierty UNIX, therefore people should look deeper to the facts before they start complaining without having done their research first.

OS Wars: Microsoft vs Open Source

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-06 OS News 46 Comments

"The operating systems debate tends to run on religious lines. In an attempt to shed some light on the issue, we assembled a panel drawn from various parts of the IT community (systems administration, systems integrators, market analysts, academia, and recruitment) and asked them to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of various systems for different network services: mail serving, web serving, database serving, file/Print serving, application serving, network services, staffing issues." So, which operating system is good for what exactly? Read what these professionals have to say at ZDNet Australia.

nVidia Introduces GeForce 4

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-06 3D 16 Comments

Today nVidia launches two new graphics chips and 3 new cards for each, making it six new products. While the GeForce4 Ti series of cards will be using the new high-end chip with the code name 'NV25', the GeForce4 MX value series (the chip used in the new PowerMacs) will be based on nVidia's new low-cost (and comperatively much slower) solution 'NV17'. Get the rest of the scoop & benchmarks at Tom's Hardware. On Monday both ATi and nVidia launched new versions of the ATi Radeon 8500 and the GeForce3 Ti-200 respectively, with 128 MB of RAM. Benchmarks showed that more RAM did not bring more speed and that such a purchase is not justifiable until the new games have such requirements. Update: Anandtech has some interesting benchmarks.

Book Review: “Practical PostgreSQL”

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-06 Office 7 Comments

PostgreSQL is considered by many to be the most advanced open source database in the world (sorry mySQL), providing a wealth of features (sub-select, transactions, write-ahead logging etc) that are usually only found in commercial databases. PostgreSQL is an object-relational database management system (ORDBMS), originally developed in 1977 by the University of Berkeley and it is included by default as the main database on most *BSD systems, like FreeBSD. But in spite of its long history and extensive user base (however, it is still not as popular as the Linux-centric mySQL though), PostgreSQL suffered from a lack of comprehensive and easy-to-use documentation. "Practical PostgreSQL" (along with 2 more PostgreSQL books, all released the last 2-3 months) fills that information void with a fast-paced guide to installation, configuration, and usage.

Borland to Ship C++ Builder 6

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-06 General Development 5 Comments

Borland on Friday will ship a new software development tool for C++ programmers. The new version, Borland C++ Builder 6, features support for Web services, allowing developers to build software that is accessible over the Internet via PCs, cell phones and other handheld devices. The cost is $2,999 for the enterprise edition, $999 for the professional edition and $69 for the personal edition. In other development news, Rational Software on Tuesday introduced a new software development tool that is compatible with software from Microsoft, IBM and Sun Microsystems. The software company, which has worked mostly with Microsoft in the past, announced Tuesday that its new XDE Professional v2002 product will work with Microsoft's Visual Studio.Net development tools and IBM's rival WebSphere Studio development tools. The XDE, or extended development environment product, has also been designed to support IBM's Eclipse IDE, software based on Sun's Java technology.

Halcyon Releases .NET Java Framework

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-06 Java 2 Comments

Halcyon Software announced the beta release of its iNET technology, the first commercially available Java-based implementation of the Microsoft .NET framework. The iNET technology offers Microsoft VisualStudio.NET developers an immediate solution to deploy their Client/Server applications and Web Services to any platform. "Develop in .NET, deploy anywhere," Don Hsi, Halcyon's President & CEO explained, "is what iNET delivers to the Microsoft .NET developers." He went on to say, "Our customers need a seamless solution to accommodate their commitment to both J2EE and Microsoft .NET architecture."

Mozilla 0.9.8 Released

Submitted by Matthias Toth 2002-02-05 Mozilla, Gecko 48 Comments

Mozilla.org released the latest Mozilla 0.9.8 Milestone. New to this release are improved Address Book functionality, page setup(for printing), MNG/JNG support, native-style widgets on Windows XP and MacOSX, dynamic theme switching, improved BiDi support, speed, stability and footprint improvements and more. This release also brings the first BeZilla version that it is actually... usable under BeOS. Two ex-Be engineers have contributed large chunks of code to the BeZilla team during the past month and massively optimized the BeOS version.

One More Excerpt from “Modern Operating Systems”

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-05 OS News No Comments

Last week InformIT had released two chapters from the bible of the operating systems books, "Modern Operating Systems" by Andrew Tanenbaum. This new excerpt from the book (free registration required) provides an introduction to the causes of OS deadlocks. Deadlock can be defined formally as follows: "A set of processes is deadlocked if each process in the set is waiting for an event that only another process in the set can cause."

PalmSource Previews PalmOS 5 Beta

Submitted by Ryan Pavlick 2002-02-05 OS News 13 Comments

From the press release: "In a move to dramatically broaden the market for handhelds and smart phones, PalmSource, Inc., the Palm OS subsidiary of Palm, Inc., today previewed the Palm OS 5 beta and announced that final delivery of the new operating system to Palm OS licensees is scheduled for early summer. Palm OS 5 will be the foundation to build a new class of devices that will help make mobile computing ubiquitous. Palm OS 5 will bring the flexibility, innovation and ease of use of the Palm OS to powerful ARM-compliant processors. Licensees can choose from a full range of processors, starting with the ARM 7 CPU and scaling to the highest-performance ARM chips from Intel, Motorola and Texas Instruments. In addition, the operating system will deliver enhanced performance, data security, multimedia and wireless networking, as well as compatibility with existing Palm OS software programs ." ZDNews also has an article about it: "The new OS will feature only a modest influence from Palm's acquisition of the assets of Be. Palm executives said future versions of the OS will use more Be technology, although Palm is not continuing development of the Be operating system."

Interview with ELX Founder & Chief Architect, Abhi Datt

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-05 Linux 12 Comments

DesktopLinux.com founder and executive editor Rick Lehrbaum interviews Abhi Datt, Chief Software Architect and founder of Project ELX, a new project to create a uniquely easy-to-use Linux distribution. Abhi Datt describes his vision for Project ELX, lists the main features of the ELX Linux distribition, provides an update on the status of ELX, and shares his thoughts on how Linux can succeed on the desktop and elsewhere.

Sleepycat Announces the Release of Berkeley DB 4.0

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-05 Databases No Comments

From the press release: "Sleepycat Software, Inc. today announced the release of version 4.0 of the award-winning data management system, Berkeley DB. Version 4.0 delivers new services and significant performance enhancements for high-end mission critical applications. Berkeley DB 4.0 provides a new feature required by developers building mission-critical applications: High Availability. Designed for applications that must run around the clock, High Availability uses a technique called "replication" to keep multiple copies of a database, stored in different places, up to date. In the event of a hardware or application crash that causes one of the copies to fail, applications can use the remaining copies to continue operating without interruption. Application developers can also use the copies to answer queries during normal operation. As a result, applications can support more users more reliably than ever before."

The Forest of the Linux Kernel Trees

Submitted by ramesh 2002-02-05 Linux No Comments

Ramesh writes: "I came upon this kernel Benchmark article at Byte, via Slashdot. Very good data on different kernels. The author has done testing on different kernels with input from Alan Cox and Andrea Arcangeli."

Red Hat Chairman Says Linux Won’t Rule the Desktop

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-04 Red Hat 20 Comments

"Red Hat chairman Bob Young says Windows will continue to rule the desktop, but open source will win the day on the Internet. Red Hat said at last month's earnings announcement that it would be emphasizing its focus on two key areas: replacing legacy Unix systems, and expanding its presence in the embedded market. That strategy is paying off so far: despite the continued world economic slump, Red Hat showed a slight profit for the third quarter of its 2001 financial year. In a conversation with ZDNet UK, Red Hat Chairman Bob Young explains why converting UNIX customers is easy; why open source will win the day on the Internet; and why Linux will never replace Windows on the desktop." Read the interview at ZDNews.

Palm: OS, Hardware Don’t Mix

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-04 In the News 10 Comments

"As David Nagel ponders the future of Palm, he is ever mindful of what happened to Apple Computer. Both companies have a legion of loyal fans and both are considered leaders in making technology that is easy to use. Both walk a treacherous line by building hardware and operating system software. And a growing number of Apple refugees now work at Palm." Read the rest of the story at ZDNews. Update: Here is an interview at C|Net with PalmSource's CEO, David Nagel.

Running AmigaOS on a PC: Review of AmigaOS XL

Guest post by Mike Bouma 2002-02-04 Amiga & AROS 50 Comments

Today, most Amiga users and developers own PCs next to their Amiga platform(s). The PC platform is currently the only "cheap" solution available to give access to modern day hardware. This is why many Amiga fans use it as a development platform or use PCs for applications which aren't available for the currently dated Amiga hardware platform . Of course, this is soon to change with advent of new PPC based AmigaOS 4.x compatible computers on the horizon, as well as a huge variety of AmigaDE enabled devices. But there is also another way: run AmigaOS on your PC. This article will review a new product, AmigaOS XL, which allows you to run the AmigaOS under any modern PC. Screen shots included.

Microsoft Releases USB 2.0 Drivers

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-03 Windows 7 Comments

Microsoft on Friday released USB 2.0 drivers for its Windows XP operating system. The drivers are designed to enable third-party USB 2.0 add-in cards to work with XP, which originally shipped without support for the connectivity standards. The drivers can be downloaded using the "Windows Update" feature. USB 2.0 transfers data at 480mbps, which is much speedier than USB 1.1's rate of 12mbps for exchanging information between PCs and peripherals such as external hard drives and CD-rewritable drives. USB 2.0 is also backwards compatible with USB 1.1.