Introducing Page 2

OS News 17 Comments
As you may have noticed by now, we've introduced a little something called 'page 2' (look to your right). We added this feature because we felt we needed a way to 'tier' the news we publish on OSNews, because a regular (and valid) complaint has been that people felt that interesting, one-of-a-kind items were being drowned out by run-of-the-mill items like software releases, short distribution reviews, and so on. Read on for a little more insight into this one.
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Benchmarks: Mac OS X 10.5 vs. Ubuntu 8.10

Benchmarks 24 Comments
Phoronix compared the performance figures of Mac OS X 10.5.5 with those of Ubuntu 8.10. They conclude: "Apple's Mac OS X 10.5.5 Leopard had strong performance leads over Canonical's Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex in the OpenGL performance with the integrated Intel graphics, disk benchmarking, and SQLite database in particular. Ubuntu on the other hand was leading in the compilation and BYTE Unix Benchmark. In the audio/video encoding and PHP XML tests the margins were smaller and no definitive leader had emerged. With the Java environment, Sunflow and Bork were faster in Mac OS X, but the Intrepid Ibex in SciMark 2 attacked the Leopard. These results though were all from an Apple Mac Mini."
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Lotus Symphony 1.2, Now with Mac OS X Support

  Submitted by poundsmack IBM 3 Comments
IBM has released Lotus Symphony 1.2, with a beta release for Mac OS X. "Lotus Symphony release 1.2 is now available and includes Beta support for the Mac OS X platform in English. I know many of you have been waiting for this new platform and hope you will take the time to try it out and give us your feedback. We expect to have a Generally Available version for Mac in all the languages we support in 1Q09." You can get it from here.
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The End of an Era: Windows 3.x

  Submitted by Michael Windows 65 Comments
I collect manuals. I have so many of them, that I'm starting to wonder where on earth I'm supposed to put them all. Somewhere in the back of a closet, I keep all my manuals in three huge boxes, with manuals dating from the early '80s to just a few days ago when I bought a new mouse. However, none of them are as dear to my as my extensive, fully illustrated Dutch manuals for Windows 3.0, which accompanied my parents' first PC in 1990. An enormously detailed manual covering every aspect of Windows 3.0 - with special sleeves for the various floppy disks that held the Windows 3.0 operating system. I still have those original floppies, and they're still fully functional. Last week, the era of Windows 3.x finally came to an end when Microsoft ceased to give out licenses for the operating system.
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State of Open Specification Hardware: Where Are We Headed?

  Submitted by umccullough Open Source 25 Comments
It seems that Haiku hacker Francois Revol (mmu_man) posted a few messages to a thread in MSI's forums asking to provide hardware with open specifications and/or (non-GPL) FOSS drivers such that alternative operating systems like Haiku and others could benefit and be supported as well. His messages were seemingly squelched by a forum moderator as "rubbish" while other, pro-Linux, postings seem to have remain untouched. Francois decided to respond with a public blog rant of his own opinions regarding the state of open source driver support and vendors' responsibility to their customers.
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What’s up with the GNOME Linux Desktop?

Gnome 8 Comments
Seems that both Motorola and Google have interest in seeing the Linux mobile footprint evolve. With a combined contribution of $20,000, they are focusing on major changes for GNOME 3. "It will be more than a tweak," Stormy Peters stated. "It will be the whole user experience, from the look and feel, to how files are managed to how it syncs with your mobile phone -- really the whole package. It will be very much a change for users and how they use their computers."
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The Xiph.Org Foundation Announces Theora 1.0

  Submitted by Luis Open Source 28 Comments
Theora is a video codec with a small CPU footprint that offers easy portability and requires no patent royalties. While the Theora bitstream format was standardized in 2004 and our beta releases have been used by millions, this 1.0 release is an important milestone reflecting the maturity and stability of the Theora codebase. A number of leading multimedia web groups already support Theora. Upcoming releases of Mozilla Firefox, the world's most popular open source browser, will support Theora natively, as will releases of the multi-platform Opera browser. Top-10 website Wikipedia uses Theora for all of its video.
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Russinovich on MinWin; New Taskbar on Build 6801

Windows 14 Comments
Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference might be over, but that doesn't mean news about Windows 7 suddenly stops coming in. We have news for you on the elusive MinWin kernel, which created a sort of crazy hype a year ago, and Rafael Rivera found a way to enable the new taskbar on the pre-beta build handed out to PDC attendees. This build, carrying number 6801, didn't have the latest taskbar revamp - you needed a newer build for that, build 6933, which hasn't been released to the public.
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The Intel Core i7 Nehalem Processor

  Submitted by Dan Warne Intel 33 Comments
APCMag has tested Intel's latest Core i7 processor architecture that does away with the Front Side Bus and replaces it with the company's QuickPath Interconnect and has (back from the dead) hyperthreading. "This month, Intel moves on from the Core microarchitecture to the next generation of processors for mobile, desktop and servers, codenamed Nehalem and officially named the Core i7 family. We've spent a few weeks with Intel's test kit for the new desktop part, codenamed Bloomfield, as well as the new compatible motherboard chipset the X58 Express, codenamed Tylersburg."
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How Linux Supports More Devices Than Any Other OS, Ever

Linux 102 Comments
Greg Kroah-Hartman is a longtime developer of the Linux kernel, known for his work maintaining USB drivers. O'Reilly Media recently interviewed Greg about his claim that the Linux kernel now supports more devices than any other operating system ever has, as well as why binary-only drivers are illegal, and how the kernel development process works."I went and asked every single hardware manufacturer, the big guys that ship the boxes, Dell, IBM, HP--what do you ship that isn't supported by Linux? They came back with nothing. Everything is supported by Linux. If you have a device that isn't supported by Linux that's being shipped today, let me know.".If you would like to take up Greg KH on his claim, his email address is greg AT kroah.com
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Gruber: Opera Never Submitted Mini to Apple

  Submitted by Cam Opera 15 Comments
Earlier, we reported that Apple had rejected Opera Mini from the App Store. A New York Times blog entry claimed that Opera's CEO and co-founder Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner said that Apple wouldn't let them release Opera Mini for the iPhone because it competed with Mobile Safari. John Gruber, of Daring Fireball, did some researching of his own, and found out via anonymous sources who do not wish to be identified, that the situation is a little bit different.
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QNX Neutrino RTOS 6.4 Released

  Submitted by corey QNX 26 Comments
If there is one operating system that has a special place in my heart, it's QNX. This microkernel operating system served as my main desktop operating system for months and months back in the day, during the short-lived QNX Desktop scene - which died out due to a lack of interest from QNX' parent company, QNX Software Systems. The money is in the embedded and high reliability markets, and that's where QSS - understandably - focused its efforts. QNX was sort-of open sourced in September 2007, and today the company has announced the release of QNX 6.4, the first major release since 6.3 in 2004.
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