OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Google To Unveil Chrome OS Tomorrow

Thom Holwerda 2009-11-18 Google 104 Comments

Okay, so it's not an actual release as Arrington predicted last week, but Google will indeed take the wraps off its Chrome OS tomorrow. The company will hold an event tomorrow at its company headquarters in Mountain View, California, where it will unveil its plans for the operating system. Update: An OSNews reader has uncovered possible evidence that Chrome OS uses X, Clutter, and Slim.

Samsung Sponsors Enlightenment, EFL Development

Submitted by Michael 2009-11-18 Desktop environments 10 Comments

Only last week Samsung pushed out a press release announcing its new mobile operating system, named Bada. Little is known about this new operating system beyond the name of the project, but thanks to Phoronix, we know a little detail that might indicate what, exactly, Bada will be like. As it turns out, Samsung is sponsoring the Enlightenment project.

Submitted by diegocg 2009-11-17 Fedora Core 124 Comments

Fedora 12 has been released today. "I'm proud to announce the release of Fedora 12, the latest innovative Linux distribution from the Fedora Project, a global, collaborative partnership of free software community members sponsored by Red Hat."

Microsoft Kernel Engineers Talk About Windows 7’s Kernel

Thom Holwerda 2009-11-17 Windows 71 Comments

Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference is currently under way, and as usual, the technical fellows at Microsoft gave speeches about the deep architecture of Windows - in this case, Windows 7 of course. As it turns out, quite some seriously impressive changes have been made to the very core of Windows - all without breaking a single application. Thanks to BetaNews for summarising this technical talk so well.

Chip Designer ARM Leads Android Alliance

Thom Holwerda 2009-11-17 Wireless 1 Comment

"ARM on Tuesday announced the launch of an alliance of 35 tech companies to support development of Android-based products using its widely used chips. ARM-based chips power the world's most popular smartphones, including - in the US - the Apple iPhone, Blackberry Storm, Palm Pre, and Motorola Droid. The Solution Center for Android alliance will serve as a resource for designers and developers of ARM technology-based products running on the Android operating system, which is the software on the popular Motorola Droid smartphone and Acer Liquid."

Respected Developers Begin Fleeing from App Store Platform

Thom Holwerda 2009-11-16 Apple 35 Comments

"Continued issues with the App Store approval process are prompting developers to shun the platform entirely. Though there are tens of thousands of other developers pumping out over 100000 iPhone apps, will continued migration away from iPhone development result in less quality software for the platform? Worse yet, will users even care?"

Atlas Beta Launched

Submitted by Alex Popov 2009-11-16 General Development 8 Comments

The beta for Atlas has been launched on November 15. Atlas is a visual development tool for creating web applications using the Cappuccino framework. "Atlas is a development tool for building Cappuccino applications. In addition to managing your project files and editing code, it includes a powerful visual layout tool for designing your interfaces without ever having to touch code. Designers are empowered to interact with their designs instantly, which means programmers get to finished applications faster."

Guest post by snydeq 2009-11-16 In the News 2 Comments

InfoWorld has compiled a list of 10 not yet widely adopted enterprise technologies that will have the greatest impact on IT in the years to come. From whitelisting, to NoSQL, to I/O virtualization, each class of technology is analyzed for its potential to solve significant IT challenges - mobile app dev, power conservation, data glut - over the long haul, as opposed to how it may currently be implemented or how today's iterations currently perform.

Palm Launches Pixi, webOS 1.3.1

Thom Holwerda 2009-11-16 Wireless 24 Comments

This weekend, Palm launched its second webOS phone, the Palm Pixi. At the same time, the company also released webOS 1.3.1 for Pre owners in the US (other countries will follow later this month). At the same time, Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein talked to The New York Times about his company.

Episode 28: Watch This Mobile Space

Kroc 2009-11-15 Podcasts 32 Comments

OSnews Publisher David Adams and I discuss the mobile computing landscape, how the emergence of mobile computing is changing our lives and changing the design and market share of operating systems. Is there room in the market for 7 competing mobile phone platforms? Are we just repeating the 1980s PC market again?

Apple Scores Massive Win in Psystar Case

Thom Holwerda 2009-11-14 Legal 208 Comments

As Murphy's Law dictates, this news was destined to come while I'm down and out with the flu, while being miserable on the couch. Dragged my bum to the computer for this one (my iPhone alerted me, oh the irony): Apple has scored a major win in its case against Psystar. Judge William Alsup more or less agreed with just about everything Apple said, granting Apple's motion for a summary judgement. Instant update: Mind, though, that this ruling only covers Leopard. Snow Leopard will be handled in the Florida case.

Microsoft Roundup: Bugs, Holes, Patents and GPL Violations

Kroc 2009-11-14 Microsoft 40 Comments

Thom's down with flu, so to avoid moving a lot of interesting news to pg.2, I am creating a combined item here covering a number of Microsoft related news items submitted to us.

Android “Eclair” Open Sourced

Eugenia Loli 2009-11-14 Google 9 Comments

Google engineer (and my husband!) Jean-Baptiste "JBQ" Queru just open sourced the latest Android version, codenamed "Eclair". This will open the doors for device manufacturers to get the latest version of Android. You can read all about it in his message here.

Qualcomm Hopes Snapdragon Smartbooks Take Bite Out of Atom

Thom Holwerda 2009-11-13 Hardware 4 Comments

"Qualcomm has revealed that its 1Ghz Snapdragon ARM chip will ship in an upcoming Lenovo smartbook. AT&T has already partnered with Lenovo to sell the product. New smartbook products will bring ARM into the small form-factor laptop market and could give Intel's Atom some serious competition."

World’s Cheapest Laptop

David Adams 2009-11-13 Hardware 73 Comments

Techvideoblog has a video review of the Menq Easypc E760, an $80 ARM-based laptop that runs Android. From the looks of it, I don't think this is a very good gadget, because it's slow (less powerful than an iPhone 3GS, but of course also a lot cheaper), but I agree with the Techvideo guy: the Easypc is important because it's the vanguard of a likely wave of cheap, ARM-based devices that will very soon have the necessary power for a pleasant and productive web browsing experience. Once that happens, a sizable portion of the current laptop and netbook userbase will move downmarket, and some of the constituents that the OLPC program was trying to serve (young students and the lower economic stratum) will have a network communication device available to them that's more accessible.

MPAA Shuts Down Municipal WiFi Due to Single Illegal Download

Submitted by Tom Curtis 2009-11-13 Legal 60 Comments

As regular readers on OSNews will know, I'm quite opposed to the concept of post-sale restrictions, but also the insane countermeasures undertaken by the film and music industry against individuals who illegally download content. The reason I'm so opposed to these things is not because I approve of the act of illegal downloading - no, it's all about the slippery slope effect.

Arrington: Chrome OS To Debut Next Week

Thom Holwerda 2009-11-13 Google 36 Comments

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington is claiming Google's Chrome OS will debut next week - but his story does have an odd ring to it. He goes on and on about how driver support will be shoddy, but that makes no sense - isn't Chome OS supposed to be built on Linux? The only way I can see initial driver support to be shoddy is when Chrome OS has its own, custom graphical layer, instead of using X. However, were that to be the case, I'm sure Google would at least support some NVIDIA, ATI, and Intel chipsets. In any case, it's a rumour - do with it as you please.

Submitted by irbis 2009-11-13 Gnome 38 Comments

GNOME 3, the much talked about next generation GNOME introduces a radical shift from the interface found in GNOME 2.x. Digitizor has a quick visual tour of GNOME 3 in Ubuntu 9.10.

A 2x Faster web: SPDY

Kroc 2009-11-12 Google 65 Comments

Google have created a new HTTP-based protocol "SPDY" (pronounced "Speedy") to solve the problem of the client-server latency with HTTP. "We want to continue building on the web's tradition of experimentation and optimization, to further support the evolution of websites and browsers. So over the last few months, a few of us here at Google have been experimenting with new ways for web browsers and servers to speak to each other, resulting in a prototype web server and Google Chrome client with SPDY support."

Submitted by s1oan 2009-11-12 SuSE, openSUSE 41 Comments

We're in the middle of the distribution release frenxy, or so it seems. After Ubuntu 9.10 and Mandriva Linux 2010.0, it's OpenSUSE time now: the team has pushed out OpenSUSE 11.2. A minor version number, but there's enough in there, still.