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Portable Ubuntu for Windows

Submitted by Accident 2009-04-04 Ubuntu 40 Comments

Using CoLinux, the Xming X server, and PulseAudio for Windows, the boys and girls behind the Portable Ubuntu for Windows project have turned the entire Ubuntu distribution into a executable that you can run within Windows. You can see some screenshots, and download it from their web page.

pt. XI: Bling and Compositing

Thom Holwerda 2009-04-04 Graphics 34 Comments

This is the eleventh article in a series on common usability and graphical user interface related terms. On the internet, and especially in forum discussions like we all have here on OSNews, it is almost certain that in any given discussion, someone will most likely bring up usability and GUI related terms - things like spatial memory, widgets, consistency, Fitts' Law, and more. The aim of this series is to explain these terms, learn something about their origins, and finally rate their importance in the field of usability and (graphical) user interface design. After a rather long hiatus, this eleventh instalment will focus on bling, desktop effects, and compositing, and what they can contribute to the desktop experience.

BeOS Behind the Sinister Dollhouse

Eugenia Loli 2009-04-04 Multimedia, AV 36 Comments

"Firefly" is the best Joss Whedon work to date, but I always try to give the benefit of the doubt on new sci-fi shows. So tonight, as I was watching "Dollhouse" on TV with my ex-Be engineer husband, JBQ (currently at Android, along with many other ex-Be engineers), I noticed something familiar at the Dollhouse supervisor's computer screen. It seems that the Dollhouse's business runs on... BeOS. Click in for some snapshots of the scene. Update: mikesum32 tells us that they used a screenshot of BeOS full screen! In the screenshot BeShare and 'Jabber for BeOS' were open. I recognize quite a few names in their lists (some of them are OSNews readers to this day), so congrats for those who made it to... TV!

FreeBSD 7.2 Beta 1 Released

Thom Holwerda 2009-04-03 FreeBSD 21 Comments

The FreeBSD team has pushed out the first test build of FreeBSD 7.2, a beta release. "The first of the test builds for the FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE cycle is now available. Testing of two recent changes to the system would be particularly valuable. The bce(4) network driver was updated a few days ago. And some significant work was done on the threading libraries a short time ago that is known to fix several major issues but testing to see if it introduced any regressions would be appreciated."

Windows Server 2008 R2 To Be Released This Year

Thom Holwerda 2009-04-03 Windows 3 Comments

Thanks to Windows Server boss Bill Laing, we now know that Windows Server 2008 R2 will be released this calendar year. Since Windows Server 2008 R2 is the server version of Windows 7, we can deduce from this announcement that the successor to Windows Vista will certainly arrive before the end of the year. And what's up with the "quite major announcements" about Windows 7 Microsoft is talking about?

Microsoft Releases ASP.NET MVC Source Under Open License

Thom Holwerda 2009-04-03 .NET 7 Comments

"Microsoft launched ASP.NET MVC 1.0 at the MIX09 event last month. This new ASP.NET enhancement brings a Rails-like model-view-controller framework to Microsoft's Web development stack. In a blog entry published on Wednesday, Microsoft developer division vice president Scott Guthrie announced that the framework is now open source. The source code is available under the terms of the Microsoft Public License (MS-PL), a permissive open source software license that has been approved by OSI and is characterized by GNU as a free software license. Microsoft's move to open the framework will enable third-party developers to modify the source code, incorporate it into their own software, and share it with other users."

Report: IBM Eyeing Sun Buyout at USD 9.55 a Share

Thom Holwerda 2009-04-03 In the News 41 Comments

After weeks of negotiations, IBM reportedly is eyeing a $9.55-per-share buyout for Sun Microsystems, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Such a price would value the deal at roughly $7 billion and offer Sun investors nearly double the price of the stock before reports surfaced earlier this month that the parties are in buyout talks. A report in The New York Times, meanwhile, notes the parties are discussing a purchase price of $9.50 a share. In either case, Sun's investors haven't seen the hardware maker's stock trade at those levels since August. Last spring, Sun was trading at a 52-week high of $16.37 a share.

Submitted by google_ninja 2009-04-03 Windows 60 Comments

Remember, back in the day, before USB drives became common place, you had to use those weird square disks? We called them floppies, and they had about as much storage capacity as my current computer has in its power switch alone. One of the problems with floppy drives was that it was impossible to determine whether there was a floppy in the drive without actually spinning up the drive. Windows 95 almost had a feature that could detect whether or not there was a floppy in the drive without spinning it up.

Distributing Computing with RPyC

Thom Holwerda 2009-04-03 General Development No Comments

RPyC is a seamless library for integrating Python processes on many machines/processes. This article looks at the advantages or drawbacks RPyC has over other distributed Python frameworks such as XML-RPC and Pyro. A few simple examples of using RPyC are included to give you a feel for the library.

Shuttleworth: Windows 7 Is Yet Another Opportunity for Linux

Thom Holwerda 2009-04-02 Ubuntu 181 Comments

According to Canonical head honcho Mark Shuttleworth, Windows 7 presents the ideal opportunity for Linux to gain significant inroads into the desktop market. He said so in an interview with InternetNews. While I certainly do hope so, an eerie sense of deja vu creeps up on me: isn't this like the 923298th opportunity where Linux is supposed to make inroads into the desktop market?

Palm Demoes Pre Third Party Apps, Says SDK Ready for Release

Thom Holwerda 2009-04-02 Wireless 10 Comments

After a bit of a long pause, Palm has fed the media with some more details on its upcoming lifesaver, the Palm Pre smartphone with its webOS. Even though Palm didn't give a launch date or pricing information, it did show us a number of third party applications. And there was also something for those of you who still swear by PalmOS Garnet: a fully functional PalmOS emulator for the Pre. There's also some news on the Mojo SDK.

Submitted by poundsmack 2009-04-02 KDE 49 Comments

We're really in a KDE/GNOME mood today, it would seem. The KDE team has released the second maintenance release for the KDE 4.2 series, KDE 4.2.2. The three biggest improvements in this release are stability fixes in KRunner, performance enhancements in KMail, and bugfixes, performance improvements and optimization in KHTML. As always, this release will find it way to your distributor of choice soon enough, but if you're impatient, you can always build it yourself.

Submitted by KugelKurt 2009-04-02 KDE 13 Comments

My first thought was that this was an April Fool's joke, but as it turns out, this is real (I actually downloaded and tested it). The openSUSE KDE team has created a KDE 2.2.2 live CD using openSUSE 11.1 as a base. It boots like any other live CD, but instead of the latest and greatest KDE 3.x or 4.x desktop, you're presented with a fully functional KDE 2.2.2 desktop. That sure brought back some memories!

Submitted by Rahul 2009-04-02 Gnome 127 Comments

Only a few days ago, we ran an article on the future of KDE and GNOME, and which of the two had the brighter future based on their developmental processes. Barely has that discussion ended, or the GNOME engineering team comes with a pretty daunting plan to introduce a fairly massive reworking of the GNOME interface for GNOME 3.0 (2.30). Read on for the details.

The Fourth Generation iPod Nano

Eugenia Loli 2009-04-02 Apple 32 Comments

Geeks.com, home of cheap iPods, sent us in the 4th Gen Apple iPod Nano to take it for a spin. Let's see how it stacks up against the 1st generation Nano that we also happen to have available in our lab, and the iPod Touch.

‘I Invented… the Apple Logo’

Thom Holwerda 2009-04-02 Apple 10 Comments

"A few years ago, Matt Rodbard wrote an article on the invention of the Apple Logo in Sync Magazine. The magazine died, the articles got buried, and Matt was kind enough to let me re-publish it here, so that you can enjoy it and it doesn't get lost."

Microsoft Releases Windows Server 2008 Foundation

Thom Holwerda 2009-04-01 Windows 22 Comments

It had been announced a while ago already, but today Microsoft finally took the wraps off its latest server offering: Windows Server 2008 Foundation. Foundation is a cut-down version of the Server 2008 family, but Microsoft uncharacteristically did not remove all that much. It won't be sold as a stand-alone product; rather, OEMs get to sell it pre-installed.

OSNews Goes Open Source

Adam Scheinberg 2009-04-01 Web 2.0 63 Comments

We here at OSNews take open source software seriously. That's why, today, we're making our site's source code available to the public. While some sites have inline SQL statements, embedded passwords, afterthought modules, and sensitive data embedded into their pages, at OSNews, we have a strict system that employs no hacks whatsoever to extend functionality. This is why our site rarely changes look-and-feel and rolls out new features slowly, only after they've been rigorously tested. This code is offered under the BSD license: feel free to use it as you wish! So, today, we're proud to offer you the code that powers OSNews.com. Be sure to start with the README file to get started! Enjoy responsibly.

Conficker Worm a Big Letdown

Thom Holwerda 2009-04-01 Bugs & Viruses 31 Comments

We're well and deep into April 1 now, and if you were to believe some of the reports and hype on the internet, we should've all been paying in bottle caps right about now. As any sane person already saw coming, the Windows worm Conficker didn't do anything. It just kind of sat there, patiently mocking all those who did not update their machines properly.

Rackable Systems Buys Bankrupt SGI

Thom Holwerda 2009-04-01 SGI and IRIX 16 Comments

Silicon Graphics Inc., the perma-struggling workstation-turned-server-maker, filed for bankruptcy protection today, and was immediately bought by Rackable Systems. Rackable has signed to take on all of SGI's liabilities. The deal is expected to complete in 60 days. The combined company will target the hyper-competitive market for x86 boxes for cluster and high performance computing, internet and cloud services. "This combination gives us the potential for significant operational synergies, a strong balance sheet, and positions the combined company for long-term growth and profitability," said Rackable CEO Mark Barrenechea.