OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

openSUSE Linux Seeks More Autonomy From Novell

Submitted by lopisaur 2010-06-24 SuSE, openSUSE No Comments

Ars reports: The developers behind openSUSE are drafting a new "community statement" as part of a broader effort to define a technical strategy for their project. The purpose of the community statement is to describe the kind of collaborative environment that the project wants to create as it refines its technical focus. The full text of the community statement is published in the openSUSE wiki. Additional details about the strategy proposals and community review process are available from the openSUSE News site.

Timothy Miller, Michael Dexter: OGD1s Almost Here

weildish 2010-06-23 Original OSNews Interviews 20 Comments

It's been a while since any of us have seen head or tail of the Open Graphics Project, but they haven't been just sitting around twiddling thumbs. Enjoy an in-depth interview between OSNews and Timothy Miller, the founder of the Open Graphics Project and the main man behind the drive that keeps it going, and Michael Dexter, Program Director at Linux Fund and a key player in Linux Fund's partnership with the OGP. Though it's been some time since there has been much public action, much of the work that the OGP has been putting into the OGD1 is finally coming to fruition.

Community Asking Mandriva More Directions

Submitted by E. Hermechals 2010-06-22 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 7 Comments

Following the previous article on the Mandriva situation, the various users communities, notably the French and German ones ( among others, as there is more and more people who express their support with the initiative ) have issued an open letter to Mandriva SA about the future of the distribution, asking for clarification about the possible deal, and their impact on the community.

Submitted by sjvn 2010-06-22 Privacy, Security 37 Comments

A Computerworld editorial takes note of some interesting changes Dell made to the Linux page we linked to last week. They watered down some of their pro-Linux claims, but not as far as you might think.

Solaris, OpenSolaris, and the Oracle Wall of Secrecy

Submitted by Jeremy Prince 2010-06-22 Oracle and SUN 44 Comments

Sometimes, Google's search engine does a better job of telling us about IT vendors than the vendors' own public relations and marketing machines, which are often there mostly to deflect questions rather than answer them. So it is with the next commercial and development iterations of Oracle's Solaris Unix operating system.

Guest post by Moochman 2010-06-22 Wireless 15 Comments

In a move out of nowhere, Toshiba just announced the limited release of a "concept" device with almost the exact same form-factor as the Microsoft Courier. The Libretto W100 features dual 7" multi-touch screens that fold out flat or clap together like a book. Those wanting the full Courier experience, be prepared for disappointment, however: no pen support is present, and the OS is stock Windows 7 Home Premium--albeit with the addition of some pretty slick-looking touch-friendly widgets.

Submitted by shaneco 2010-06-22 Privacy, Security 21 Comments

With Windows XP SP2 support ending in three weeks, a new report highlights the security risks that come with running an unsupported service pack.

Amiga X1000 Spotted in the Wild, Other News

Kroc 2010-06-22 Amiga & AROS 89 Comments

The fabled Amiga X1000 has been spotted in the wild, in the homeliest of places--Station X, a.k.a Bletchley Park. "The AmigaOne X1000 is a custom dual core PowerPC board with plenty of modern ports and I/O interfaces. It runs AmigaOS 4, and is supported by Hyperion, a partner in the project. The most interesting bit, though, is the use of an 500Mhz XCore co-processor, which the X1000's hardware designer describes as a descendant of the transputer - once the great hope of British silicon." With thanks to Jason McGint, 'Richard' and Pascal Papara for submissions.

Why Johnny Can’t Code

Kroc 2010-06-21 General Development 119 Comments

"For three years son Ben, and I have engaged in a quixotic but determined quest: We've searched for a simple and straightforward way to get the introductory programming language BASIC to run on either my Mac or my PC. Why on Earth would we want to do that, in an era of glossy animation-rendering engines, game-design ogres and sophisticated avatar worlds? Because if you want to give young students a grounding in how computers actually work, there's still nothing better than a little experience at line-by-line programming." Looking beyond the immediate fear-inducing acronym BASIC, this article delves deeply into what it means to simply be in control--via a basic understanding of under the hood--of your own computer, and how our whiz-bang world of technology today is failing to bestow this understanding on this generation of would-be hackers.

Apple Releases iOS 4

Thom Holwerda 2010-06-21 Apple 32 Comments

So, I might not be able to do much work on OSNews due to my internship (I always wondered what tumble weeds looked and sounded like on a website - now I know), but I did know one thing: Monday, June 21, is iTunes day. This means launching that horrid mess to go through the painstakingly archaic backup/update iTunes/update iOS routine (and yes, they still try to cheat you into installing Safari) - because Apple released iOS 4.0 today, adding a number of welcome features to bring the iOS up to par with the competition.

Linux Security – a Few Useful, Tactical Tips

Guest post by Igor Ljubuncic 2010-06-21 Privacy, Security 64 Comments

I've bored the readers of my personal website to death with two rather prosaic articles debating the Linux security model, in direct relation to Windows and associated claims of wondrous infections and lacks thereof. However, I haven't yet discussed even a single program that you can use on your Linux machine to gauge your security. For my inaugural article for OSNews, I'll leave the conceptual stuff behind, and focus on specific vectors of security, within the world of reason and moderation that I've created and show you how you can bolster a healthy strategy with some tactical polish, namely software.

Submitted by sjvn 2010-06-20 Linux 17 Comments

Hardware companies don't tend to have their own Linux distributions. IBM uses Linux everywhere, but they don't have their own Linux. Dell will be happy to sell you notebooks and netbooks with Ubuntu or a workstation or server with RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux). But, no major OEM (original equipment manufacturer) has had a house-brand Linux... until now. HP has recently bought not one, but two Linux distributions. Surely HP is not getting into the Linux distribution business? Are they?

So Many Mobile OSes, but Microsoft Lacks an iPad Killer

Submitted by fran 2010-06-20 Wireless 47 Comments

Microsoft has Windows Mobile 6.x (on the way out) Windows Phone 7, Windows Embedded Standard 7, Windows Embedded Compact 7 and then Windows 7 for tablet PCs and netbooks. What this bevy of systems is missing is a coherent answer for the tablet form factor. Windows Embedded Compact 7, which is the OS aimed at the mobile sector, isn't yet released, and when it is, it won't have a uniform UI, but will depend on hardware vendors to customize. It's an appealing strategy from the vendors point of view, I guess because they get to differentiate their products from their competitors, but it's not a recipe for success.

MeeGo 1.0 review

Submitted by Rohan Pearce 2010-06-20 Wireless 20 Comments

I recently got to spend some time with MeeGo, an Intel-sponsored Linux distribution designed for netbooks and other mobile devices (such as Nokia's extra-geeky N900 smartphone). I tested MeeGo on a Lenovo IdeaPad S10 netbook and I was extremely impressed.

Submitted by martini 2010-06-19 OS/2 3 Comments

"Previously, Java had been made available for OS/2 and eComStation by IBM, Golden Code and Innotek. However, new versions with many changes and improvements have been released since then and current applications require a current JVM implementation. The new project will port such a current JVM to OS/2 and eComStation. Dmitry Kumenov, who is well-known for his work on the Qt 3 and 4 ports, has been hired as chief developer. Funding is provided by several companies and individuals, with Mensys BV being the main sponsor."

Google Goes CLI

Submitted by Jason Spalding 2010-06-18 Google 28 Comments

Take a step back in time to use Google in your command line interface. GoogleCL "streamlines tasks such as posting to a Blogger blog, adding events to Calendar, or editing documents on Google Docs." Aside from Blogger, Calendar, and Docs, it also provides CLI access to your Google Contacts, Picasa, and YouTube. Whether you're in it for the sheer joy of feeling like it's 1984 again or for the ease of doing a load of tasks in a batch or even incorporating it into your scripts for uber functionality and friendliness with your other apps, this nifty little program is for you. The app is native to Linux, but Mac and Windows users can use it with a bit of fenangling-- all you'll need is Python 2.5 or 2.6, and Windows users will need to add Cygwin to the mix.

Improving the Linux Desktop

David Adams 2010-06-18 Linux 212 Comments

Linux Magazine has a profile of Daniel Fore and the Elementary project. Elementary is a Linux distro that's committed to a clean and simple user experience, but it's more than a distro - it's actually a multi-pronged effort to make improvements to the user experience for a whole ecosystem of components, including icons, a GTK theme, Midori improvements, Nautilus, and even Firefox. The work that elementary is doing isn't limited to their own distro, and some of their work is available in current, and perhaps future, Ubuntu releases. The results are really striking, and I think it's probably the handsomest Linux UI I've ever seen.

Why an Ubuntu Tablet Won’t Sell

Submitted by Jonathan DePrizio 2010-06-16 Linux 32 Comments

Canonical recently announced that they are developing a tablet version of their popular Ubuntu operating system, slated to be released in 2011. This comes hot on the heels of the release of the Apple iPad, and the rumors that HP plans to release a WebOS-based tablet sometime late 2010. However, Canonical's foray into the tablet arena is fundamentally different from both the iPad and a WebOS tablet, and unfortunately reeks of a company failing to learn from their competitors successes and failures.

Submitted by Develer 2010-06-15 OS News 7 Comments

BeRTOS 2.5 has been released: "This is a major stable release, and provide a brand new support for Cortex-M3 (and many new CPUs), one-click support for many different development boards (Arduino included!), new project examples to bootstrap your development with BeRTOS even faster than before! Don't forget that we have a shiny new preemptive kernel with real time scheduler and really fast context switching!"

Dell Makes the Case for Linux

Submitted by Anonymous Linux Fan 2010-06-15 Linux 40 Comments

Dell has posted a page extolling the virtues of Linux (Ubuntu in particular), with a quick explanation of what Linux is and how it compares against Windows. Of course, the page links off to Dell's various computers that ship with Linux pre-installed.