OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing - Page 553

Intel Sets up MeeGo Research Center

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-12 Intel 12 Comments

Intel is establishing a joint innovation center with Tencent, one of China's largest Internet firms, to develop products and services around the chip maker's MeeGo mobile operating system and devices using its Atom processors. The new partnership could help Intel to promote MeeGo in China, along with its Atom-based microprocessors.

Symbian ‘Anna’ Official

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-12 Wireless 41 Comments

The long-rumoured Symbian update, called Anna, has finally been made official by Nokia today, bringing with it a new browser, new icons, an on-screen portrait qwerty keyboard, and more. The Finnish Windows Phone OEM (sorry) also launched two new Symbian phones today.

Microsoft Unveils Internet Explorer 10

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-12 Internet Explorer 60 Comments

So, have you installed Internet Explorer 9 yet on your Windows machine? No? Well, feel assured in the knowledge that at MIX11 today, Microsoft announced Internet Explorer 10, while also pushing out the very first preview release. Also, IE10 (can I call it IEX? Can I? Can I?) was demonstrated running on Windows for ARM.

Red Hat’s Future Linux Desktop

Guest post by fran 2011-04-11 Red Hat 22 Comments

"San Franciscoâ€“Red Hat is the strongest Linux company in the world when it comes to servers, but it has almost no presence on the desktop. That will be changing in 2012 with the reintroduction of a Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments-based virtual desktop infrastructure."

Windows 8 App Store Images Leaked?

Guest post by fran 2011-04-11 Windows 25 Comments

"Microsoft's Windows App Store screenshots appear to have leaked for the first time on Monday. The screenshots show Microsoft's new application store for Windows. The store appears to be running in Windows 7, hinting that the software giant may also be planning to offer its app store for legacy versions of Windows."

CyanogenMod 7.0 Released

Submitted by Coldfirex 2011-04-11 Wireless 11 Comments

"After over 4 months of work, many sleepless nights, and contributions from people all around the world, I am proud to release CyanogenMod 7.0 into the wild! CM7 is based on the 2.3.3 (Gingerbread) release of Android from Google. We’ve added most of the great features from CM6 you know and love, and many new ones including support for several tablets. We are currently providing support for 30 devices! I continue to be amazed with this community and the dedication of everyone involved."

Sony, Hotz Settle Lawsuit

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-11 Legal 39 Comments

Well, it seems like Sony vs. George Hotz has ended pretty much without a bang. Sony announced on its Playstation blog that the two parties have settled the case. Under the settlement, Hotz agrees to a permanent injunction fo his jailbreaking hack, but admits to no wrong-doing. A wise and, dare I say it, mature end to the lawsuit.

Groklaw Calls it a Day, To Close May 16

Submitted by PLan 2011-04-10 Legal 49 Comments

Should I be sad or relieved? Groklaw, the website that played a central role in the SCO vs. sanity case, has just announced it will close up shop on May 16 of this year. Groklaw's place in history has been secured, surely, but in recent years, the site became more and more like a relic from the past, clearly stuck in the everyone vs. Microsoft mindset of the late '90s and early 2000s. Even in today's announcement post, Groklaw shows that its time has indeed come.

Nokia: Symbian Is Not Open Source

Submitted by Ooliebol 2011-04-08 Wireless 14 Comments

We've got a little correction to make - although this time, it's kind of Nokia's fault for an ambiguous choice of words. We said in a short item that the source code to Symbian had been published online by Nokia, but this is, in fact, not exactly the case. They're not open as in open source, but open as in open for business.

Thunderbird Returns to Mozilla as Labs Project

Guest post by imtiaz 2011-04-08 Mozilla, Gecko 26 Comments

Mozilla announced on Monday that it will reabsorb Mozilla Messaging and integrate it into Mozilla Labs, a team within Mozilla that incubates experimental projects.

ASUS Releases Honeycomb Linux Kernel Source Code

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-08 Linux 12 Comments

Well, this is fascinating. ASUS hasn't even released its Eee Pad Transformer yet, but it's already put up for download the source code to the Linux kernel used in the Android Honeycomb operating system the machine runs. In other words, Google isn't withholding anything it is not allowed to withhold. As said by many - storm, teacup, meet. Go here, select download, select Android.

Review: MID M80003W Tablet with Android 2.2

Eugenia Loli 2011-04-07 Wireless 50 Comments

Geeks.com sent us in an Android 2.2 tablet, the MID M80003W. They recently populated their store with a number of cheap tablets, so we thought it was a good idea to see what one could expect from these products that seem to have flooded the market recently.

Rubin: “I Think I’m Having a Gene Amdahl Moment”

Submitted by JAlexoid 2011-04-07 Google 18 Comments

Andy Rubin, the head of Android at Google, has responded to all the talk going on across the web over Android's openness. I would almost say he sounds a bit irritated, but that's probably my own imagination. In any case, his opinion is clear - "I think I'm having a Gene Amdahl moment", referring to the man who coined the term 'fear, uncertainty, and doubt'.

Facebook Open Sources its Servers, Data Centers

Thom Holwerda 2011-04-07 Hardware 9 Comments

"Facebook has shared the nitty-gritty details of its server and data center design, taking its commitment to openness to a new level for the industry by sharing its infrastructure secrets much like it has shared its software code. The effort by the social network will bring web scale computing to the masses and is a boon for AMD and Intel and the x86 architecture. Sorry ARM."

BareMetal Node: HPC kernel in 6KiB

Guest post by iseyler 2011-04-07 OS News 10 Comments

BareMetal Node is a HPC platform based off of BareMetal OS. The kernel binary on the nodes is 6KiB and mainly contains the network and disk drivers. A C or Assembly program can make use of all available CPU cores via the Orchestrator program that controls what the nodes are working on.

Ars Reviews GNOME 3.0

Submitted by Megatux 2011-04-07 Gnome 30 Comments

Ars has reviewed GNOME 3.0, and concludes: "The solid technical work that has been done under the hood really complements the new user experience features in GNOME 3.0. Despite some of the gaps in the feature set, I think that the environment and the new shell is a good starting point for building something even better. The GNOME contributors will be able to iterate on the design and move it forward in future updates."

LLVM 2.9 Released

Submitted by David Holm 2011-04-07 General Development 8 Comments

"This release includes 6 months of development that provide major enhancements and new features over the LLVM 2.8 release. LLVM 2.9 includes much better optimization and code generation than LLVM 2.8 (particularly for modern ARM targets), improved support for C++'0x in Clang, and a much more mature LLDB."

RC2 Build of OpenJDK 1.6.0-b22 for OS/2, eCS

Guest post by Sabon 2011-04-06 OS/2 4 Comments

"The netlabs.org project to port Java to OS/2 has released an RC2 build of OpenJDK 1.6.0-b22; both JRE and SDK packages are available, including versions marked as 'single processor only' to avoid SMP crashes. This release improves system tray support and has other fixes, and can compile and run Java applications, including GUI applications that use AWT and Swing. It uses the Odin32 runtime libraries; a GA release is scheduled for mid-April, and future updates should include browser plugins and OpenOffice support. The project is still short on funding; you can help by sponsoring units via Mensys. There is also a review with some screenshots showing some applications running with it." He didn't test Minecraft, though.

Android Virtualisation on Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9

Guest post by Bahadir 2011-04-06 OS News No Comments

B Labs demonstrates Codezero Embedded Hypervisor virtualizing an Android instance on Pandaboard with a dual-core Cortex-A9 based TI OMAP4 SoC. Codezero Embedded Hypervisor is a hybrid L4 microkernel that also acts as a Linux virtualization solution (currently version 0.4.4 in the demo). Earlier versions of Codezero are open source B Labs also releases open API toolkits for the hypervisor enabling operating systems and baremetal software development on multicore ARM processors.

Of Open-Source and Openness

Guest post by AcacioMartins 2011-04-06 Open Source 58 Comments

In a recent article Thom contributed his opinion to the discussion about the openness of Android that started when Google choose to withhold the source code for honeycomb, here are my 2 cents. In the article the obligations GPL puts on Google are made very clear. This makes it clear that Android is indeed an open-source project. However being open-source and being open aren't always the same thing.