Microsoft Details Windows Phone 7.1 ‘Mango’

Windows 69 Comments
It's about time! Microsoft has just detailed its next update to Windows Phone 7. This update, codenamed 'Mango', will bump the version number from 7.0.7 to 7.1, and will include 500 new features (how Redmond reached that number, god only knows). The developer tools are out in beta form today. There's a lot of cool stuff in there, such as the already known pseudo-multitasking and the hardware accelerated Internet Explorer 9, but also a lot of stuff we didn't know anything about. Also, news on new hardware partners, and, of course, Nokia.
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End of Linux 2.6 Kernel; to Start Afresh From 2.8

  Submitted by Debjit Linux 38 Comments
"So far. we have seen 39 development cycles of Linux 2.6 and the 40th is about to start. However, Linux 2.6.39 might be the end of the Linux 2.6 series. In an email, Linus Torvalds wrote that the numbers are becoming too big and he might thinking of giving the next release a version number of 2.8.0. In the ensuing discussion, Torvalds wrote that a version number of 3.0 is also a strong possibility", as a natural way to introduce a new numbering scheme where odd numbers are also used for stable releases and feature releases increment the second digit.
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Fedora 15 Released

  Submitted by Debjit Fedora Core 20 Comments
"After months of development, Fedora 15, codenamed "Lovelock" has finally been released today." Highlights of this release include restart-free firewall configuration, a switch to Gnome 3, LibreOffice, PowerTOP 2.x and systemd, "Consistent Network Device Naming", and... Rupee symbol support for Indian users.
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Ballmer: Windows 8 Coming in 2012

Windows 9 Comments
Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer has officially confirmed today, during a developer conference in Tokyo, that the next version of Windows will be called Windows 8 and will debut in 2012. More details on Windows 8 could emerge at the upcoming D: All Things Digital conference, where Steven Sinofsky, president of the Windows division of Microsoft, is scheduled to "talk about the future of Windows in the era of all kinds of new devices and the cloud".
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libcxxrt C++ Runtime Available Under BSD License

  Submitted by vermaden BSD & Darwin 3 Comments
"The FreeBSD Foundation and the NetBSD Foundation announced that they have acquired a non-exclusive copyright license to the libcxxrt C++ runtime software from PathScale. This software is an implementation of the C++ Application Binary Interface originally developed for Itanium and now used for the x86 family by BSD operating systems. Libcxxrt will be available under the 2-clause BSD license."
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Corporate Mac Sales Surge 66%

Apple 52 Comments
Mac sales in the enterprise during Apple's last fiscal quarter grew a whopping 66 percent, significantly outpacing the rest of the PC market, which grew just 4.5 percent in the enterprise. The data from Apple's previous fiscal quarter was highlighted on Friday by analyst Charlie Wolf with Needham & Company. He said though he originally viewed success in the enterprise as a "one-quarter blip," it now appears to be a "durable platform" for Apple.
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What’s New in Linux 2.6.39

Linux 66 Comments
Version 2.6.39 once again took Linus Torvalds and his fellow developers less than 70 days to complete. This is further indication of a slight, though ever more apparent, increase in the kernel's development speed, as about 80 to 90 days still passed between the release of two versions one or two years ago. With 2.6.39, this also meant that there was a slight decrease in the number of advancements which are worth mentioning in the Kernel Log; however, there are still plenty of changes that will make Linux faster and better.
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Apple Enacts ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’-Policy for Mac Malware

Apple 76 Comments
I have personally tried to pretty much let the whole MAC Defender trojan thing pass by, since we're not a security website. However, we have an interesting turn of events this week. An article over at Ars Technica quotes several anonymous Apple Store employees as saying that the infection rate of Macs brought into the Apple store has gone up considerably. More interestingly though, Apple's official policy states that Apple Store employees are not allowed to talk about infections to anyone - they're not even allowed to inform Mac owners if they find the infection without the customer's knowledge. Another interesting tidbit: Apple mandates the use of Norton Antivirus on company Macs, according to one Apple Store genius.
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MeeGo 1.2 Release

Linux 17 Comments
"Today we are announcing the project release of MeeGo 1.2. This release provides a solid baseline for device vendors and developers to start creating software for various device categories on Intel Atom and ARMv7 architectures. The MeeGo 1.2 Core OS provides a complete set of enabling technologies for mobile computing." Highlights include significantly enhanced connectivity, a switch to QML, and the release of a development preview dedicated to tablet devices.
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Eric Schmidt: Anti-piracy Laws Disastrous for Free Speech

Google 41 Comments
Wait - is this for real? A large American company openly defying the anti-freedom and totalitarian content industry? In comments in the UK media, Google chairman Eric Schmidt took aim at the big content-sponsored PROTECT IP act. The PROTECT IP act is the US internet censorship (the China kind) law, which more or less takes aim directly against Google. In his criticism, Schmidt went far - very far. The content industry obviously isn't pleased.
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OSnews Asks on Interrupts: More Results

Hardware 36 Comments
Having read the feedback resulting from my previous post on interrupts (itself resulting from an earlier OSnews Asks item on the subject), I've had a look at the way interrupts work on PowerPC v2.02, SPARC v9, Alpha and IA-64 (Itanium), and contribute this back to anyone who's interested (or willing to report any blatant flaw found in my posts). I've also tried to rework a bit my interrupt handling model to make it significantly clearer and have it look more like a design doc and less like a code draft.
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GNOME Discusses Becoming a Linux-only Project

  Submitted by fran Gnome 171 Comments
Something's - once again - brewing within the GNOME project. While a mere suggestion for now, and by no means any form of official policy, influential voices within the GNOME project are arguing that GNOME should become a full-fledged Linux-based operating system, and that the desktop environment should drop support for other operating systems such as Solaris and the BSDs. I have a feeling this isn't going to go down well with many of our readers.
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OS Devotees as Religious Supplicants

  Submitted by Hans Otten Apple 46 Comments
Well, this will come as no surprise to OSNews readers, but as outlined in a recent BBC documentary, UK neuroscientists have studied brain scans of hard-core Apple fans and have found that their mental reactions to Apple imagery are quite similar to scans of religious devotees' brains when shown images of their iconography. The DigitalTrends article summarizing the finding singles out Apple users, but I think we all know that, RDF aside, this is not an Apple-only phenomenon.
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Mac Protector: Fake AV Targets Mac OS X Users

Privacy, Security 26 Comments
"A little over two weeks have passed since the appearance of MAC Defender, the fake AV solution targeting Mac users. And seeing that the approach had considerable success, it can hardly come as a surprise that attackers chose to replicate it. This time, the name of the rogue AV is Mac Protector, and the downloaded Trojan contains two additional packages. As with MAC Defender, the application requires root privileges to get installed, so the user is asked to enter the password."
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Intel: No x86 Compatibility on ARM Version of Windows 8

  Submitted by fran Windows 74 Comments
The ARM version of Windows 8 might have just become the most desired version of Windows in our hearts and minds. After us talking about legacy code and backwards compatibility in Windows for years now, an Intel senior vice president, Renee James, has just stated that Windows 8 on ARM will not have any form of compatibility for legacy applications whatsoever. Update: Microsoft has responded to Intel's claims. "Intel's statements during yesterday's Intel Investor Meeting about Microsoft's plans for the next version of Windows were factually inaccurate and unfortunately misleading," the company said, "From the first demonstrations of Windows on SoC, we have been clear about our goals and have emphasized that we are at the technology demonstration stage. As such, we have no further details or information at this time."
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VDPAU on Radeon Starts Working

Linux 18 Comments
Efforts to implement NVIDIA's Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU) on the open source Radeon Gallium3D drivers (for AMD/ATI chipsets) are reportedly just beginning to work. Being Gallium3D-based means this new VDPAU state tracker is using GPU shaders and not the dedicated Unified Video Decoding (UVD) engine found on modern Radeon HD graphics processors, but using shaders is still a big performance win for HD video playback compared to pegging the CPU constantly. Also, MPEG-2 is the only codec known to work at this time. Once the basic state tracker functionality works, support for other video codecs, such as VP8 and H264, should be relatively easy to add.
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