OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

KDE Reaches 1000000 Commits

Submitted by lemur2 2009-07-22 KDE 30 Comments

The KDE project has announced that it has reached its one millionth commit to its Subversion repository, indicating that the KDE project is very healthy indeed. "This is a wonderful milestone for KDE," said Cornelius Schumacher, President of the KDE e.V. Board of Directors, "It is the result of years of hard work by a large, diverse, and talented team that has come together from all over the globe to develop one of the largest and most comprehensive software products in the world."

A Look at Kodak V1073’s Touchscreen UI

Eugenia Loli 2009-07-22 Multimedia, AV 9 Comments

Geeks.com, home to many Kodak digital cameras, sent us in the Kodak V1073 10MP digicam, one of the first touchscreen digicams in the market. Naturally, we had to put its user interface under some scrutiny, and compare it to the UI of the non-touchscreen Kodak cameras.

When Will You Get Windows 7 RTM?

Thom Holwerda 2009-07-22 Windows 11 Comments

"I recognize this is an important question to have answered. Many of you have said you want to know exactly when you will be able to get your hands on RTM. Last Monday, I gave an update on RTM to close out some myths. In that update, I also gave a broad timeline on when different groups of people - or 'audiences' - would get the final RTM code. While I have nothing new to add regarding RTM today, I do however have more precise information to give on when you will be able to get RTM. Again, when you can get RTM depends on who you are."

Microsoft Makes Second GPLv2 Code Contribution

Submitted by caffeine deprived 2009-07-22 Microsoft 9 Comments

Microsoft has made its second release under the General Public License in two days with software for the open-source online learning system Moodle. It comes on the heels of Redmond contributing drivers to the Linux community.

UAE Blackberry Update Is Spyware

weildish 2009-07-21 Privacy, Security 6 Comments

Blackberry phones in the United Arab Emirates recently received a text from Etisalat, a major provider in the UAE, prompting for users to download and install an update to enhance performance. It was an ill radio wave that brought that text to phones because it turns out that the "update" downloaded was really software designed to collect received messages and send them back to a central server: essentially spyware.

Apple Reports Best Non-Holiday Quarter Results in Apple History

Thom Holwerda 2009-07-21 Apple 19 Comments

While Apple faced bad news today, it also faced some seriously good news. The company announced the financial results for the third quarter of the year, and they are - again - very good, despite the sorry state of the world economy and the PC industry. We can now also say who of the two analyst firms were correct.

IBM Lifts Veil on Power7 Chips

Thom Holwerda 2009-07-21 IBM No Comments

With every new server processor generation, there is always the possibility that the chip and its associated chipsets and system components are so different that both the chip and the server platform have to change at the same time. This will not be the case for the Power7 processors due next year, says IBM.

Submitted by kaiwai 2009-07-21 Hardware 40 Comments

This is one sad story to report on. Sun Danyong, 25-year-old employee at Chinese manufacturing company Foxconn, has committed suicide after being subjected to apparently rather rigorous interrogation methods by Foxconn's Central Security Division. Danyong handled a shipment of 16 iPhone prototypes, and one of them went missing. Update: Apple responds: "We are saddened by the tragic loss of this young employee, and we are awaiting results of the investigations into his death. We require our suppliers to treat all workers with dignity and respect."

Submitted by thibauld 2009-07-21 In the News 5 Comments

In a world where applications are everything, it's nice to see new ways of obtaining said applications. When they're free, open source, and quality, that just tops the ice cream with your favorite chocolate or caramel sauce. Allmyapps.com, a fairly new alternative online catalog launched earlier this month providing simple installation of a growing variety of apps on Ubuntu. It was designed with new and unknowledgable users in mind so as to provide an easier way to find and install applications. Allmyapps has been collaborating with Intel to create a new app store for the forthcoming Moblin platform as Moblin had none beforehand, and what they've got brewing looks pretty promising. The Moblin app store will be debuted in September.

Cutting Chrome Out of Nautilus

Thom Holwerda 2009-07-21 Gnome 64 Comments

Quite a little interesting tidbit on Planet GNOME today. As we all know, the default file manager for the GNOME desktop is Nautilus. While there's nothing inherently wrong with it, it does have this odd interface where actually more screen space is dedicated to controls and buttons than to the actual part that matters: your files. As part of Ubuntu's Papercuts project, a fix has been worked on.

Red Hat Attains S&P 500 Status

weildish 2009-07-20 Red Hat 3 Comments

"When Red Hat had its IPO in 1999, many saw it as the real coming of age of Linux. While there is little doubt that IPO was a big event for Red Hat and Linux, perhaps an even more important one from a milestone point of view will officially occur this Friday. As of Friday, July 24, Red Hat will join the S&P 500 index."

Guest post by snydeq 2009-07-20 Apple 11 Comments

InfoWorld's Peter Wayner provides an inside look at the frustration iPhone developers face from Apple when attempting to distribute their apps through the iPhone App Store. Determined to simply dump an HTML version of his book into UIWebView and offer two versions through the App Store, Wayner endures four months of inexplicable silences, mixed messages, and almost whimsical rejections from Apple -- the kind of frustration and uncertainty Wayner believes is fast transforming Apple's regulated marketplace into a hotbed of bottom-feeding mediocrity. 'Developers are afraid to risk serious development time on the platform as long as anonymous gatekeepers are able to delay projects by weeks and months with some seemingly random flick of a finger,' Wayner writes of his experience. 'It's one thing to delay a homebrew project like mine, but it's another thing to shut down a team of developers burning real cash. Apple should be worried when real programmers shrug off the rejections by saying, "It's just a hobby."'

Recommend an Open Source Wiki Platform

David Adams 2009-07-20 OS News 52 Comments

If you haven't been to our OS Resources page lately, you haven't missed much action, because like many online resource pages, a lot of effort went into it long ago when it was launched, but it's been lacking attention since, with only occasional updates. Alas, thus is the sorrow of Web 1.0. We'd like to drag OS Resources into the participatory web, and let the OSNews community help keep it up to date. Wiki seems like an obvious solution. So I'd like to ask, dear readers, is there a Wiki system that you think would be especially good for a small-but-growing OS Resource guide? There's Mediawiki, of course, but it seems a bit heavyweight and user-unfriendly for something small and simple. I've had good experience with Mindtouch Deki, but thought I should examine other options before picking it. So what do you think? Is Wiki the way to go, if so, which one? And what would you like to see in our new OS Resources?

Guest post by oso2k 2009-07-20 Hardware 42 Comments

Whenever there is a new company popping up, offering to install OSX on "Hackintoshes", everyone questions: Is this company for real? Do they think they can really take on Apple's Legal Team? What are their motivations? They're probably just in it for a quick buck or looking to be bought out once they achieve minor success. Here, I outline what I learned about Quo Computer on July 10th, 2009 and some of the things people can expect.

OpenSolaris: a Bad Linux Distribution?

Thom Holwerda 2009-07-20 Solaris 124 Comments

The Linux desktop has come a long way. It's a fully usable, stable, and secure operating system that can be used quite easily by the masses. Not too long ago, Sun figured they could do the same by starting Project Indiana, which is supposed to deliver a complete distribution of OpenSolaris in a manner similar to GNU/Linux. After using the latest version for a while, I'm wondering: why?

Guest post by lemur2 2009-07-20 Multimedia, AV 45 Comments

In a recent interview, Wikimedia deputy director Erik Moller talks about the site's upcoming suite of editing tools and sharing options. "Although videos have been part of the Wikimedia stable for a couple years through the open-source Ogg Theora format, the offering has been limited. Now, however, a Firefox 3.5 plugin called Firefogg will allow for server-side transcoding to the Ogg format. In addition to allowing for downloading and editing, the Ogg format also consumes significantly fewer resources during video playback. The linked article also indicates that there are other video sites (apart from Wikimedia and Dailymotion) that are moving to the open standards format for video, noting that "hundreds of thousands of public domain videos from sources such as the Internet Archive and Metavid will be available in the new format".

Microsoft Releases Office 2008 for Mac SP2

Thom Holwerda 2009-07-20 Microsoft 4 Comments

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 2 (SP2) was released today. This midcycle free update is designed to improve speed, stability and compatibility. SP2 delivers highly requested features throughout the suite as well as a new tool, Document Connection for Mac, that helps improve access and browsing to documents on SharePoint Products and Technologies and Microsoft Office Live Workspace.

Double-Take: Microsoft Contributes Drivers to Linux Community

weildish 2009-07-20 Microsoft 35 Comments

It all started with some free lunch four years ago, and then it morphed into a free patch. Along came Moonlight and some other developments, and now Microsoft has donated 20,000 lines of driver code to be included in the Linux tree. Yes-- Microsoft contributed drivers to the Linux community.

Episode 18: AmiRISCBeOS

Kroc 2009-07-20 Podcasts 18 Comments

We are joined on the show this week by our guest Tess Flynn, a consultant and technology trainer in the US midwest. She helps us discuss the past present and future of operating systems including the Amiga, BeOS and RISC OS camps and what monstrosity (or majesty) would arise if we combined their powers.

FSF: Microsoft’s Community Promise “Empty”

Submitted by Brandon L 2009-07-20 Mono 49 Comments

As you would have guessed, the Mono debate is long from over. Two weeks ago, Microsoft extended its legally binding and perpetual community promise to cover the C# and CLI ECMA standards, which was generally seen as a good thing for Linux-centric fans of the C# language as well as for the Mono project. The FSF has responded now, and it isn't too impressed with Microsoft's move.