Windows x64 Watch List

Windows 44 Comments
A Windows developer and Sysadmin has compiled a "Watch List" of the small but annoyingly important things to keep in mind when moving from 32 bit Windows to Windows x64.
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SDK Shoot-Out: Android vs. iPhone

  Submitted by snydeq Wireless 23 Comments
Neil McAllister delves into the Android and iPhone SDKs to help sort out which will be the best bet for developers now that technical details of the first Android smartphone have been announced. Whereas the iPhone requires an Intel-based Mac running OS X 10.5.4 or later, ADC membership, and familiarity with proprietary Mac OS X dev tools, the standard IDE for Android is Eclipse. And because most tasks can be performed with command-line tools, you can expect third parties to develop Android SDK plug-ins for other IDEs. 'By just about any measure, Google's Android is more open and developer-friendly than the iPhone,' McAllister writes. This openness is essential to Android's prospects. 'Based on raw market share alone, the iPhone seems likely to remain the smartphone developer's platform of choice — especially when ISVs can translate that market share into application sales,' McAllister writes. 'In this race, Apple is taking a page from Microsoft's book, while Google looks suspiciously like Linux.'
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Rethinking the Taskbar

Windows 33 Comments
Back when Microsoft's Julie Larson-Green demonstrated Windows 7's multitouch framework during the All Things Digital conference, many noted the different taskbar that she was using on the demo machine. When Walt Mossberg asked her about it, she smiled and replied "It's something we're working on for Windows 7 and I'm not supposed to talk about right now, today..." Personally, I was quite intrigued by this revamped taskbar, seeing how static and old the current one already is (Windows 95, people). Microsoft has remained mum on the issue ever since, but last Tuesday, the silence was broken when Microsoft's Chaitanya Sareen posted a detailed entry on the taskbar on the Engineering Windows 7 blog.
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Epiphany, the Ultimate Gnome Browser

  Submitted by fsmag Internet 32 Comments
"Epiphany is the web browser for the GNOME desktop. Its goal is to be simple and easy to use. Epiphany ties together many GNOME components in order to let you focus on the Web content, instead of the browser application." This article starts out with a little history about the Epiphany browser and goes on to talk about the advantages of this light-weight browser.
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Linux Foundation’s Zemlin Declares Solaris All But Dead

  Submitted by snydeq Rumors 124 Comments
Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin has said it is time for Solaris to simply move out of the way and yield the future to Linux. 'The future is Linux and Microsoft Windows. It is not Unix or Solaris,' he claims, contending that Sun's strength in long-lifecycle apps is giving way to Linux, as evidenced by the rise of Web apps, where Linux holds a decided advantage, Zemlin claims. With capabilities such as ZFS and DTrace, Sun is trying to compete based on minor features, he says. 'That's literally like noticing the view from a third-story building as it burns to the ground.'
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GNOME 2.24 Released

Gnome 50 Comments
The GNOME project has released GNOME 2.24 today. In case you're new here: "GNOME 2.24 is the latest version of the GNOME Desktop: a popular, multi-platform desktop environment for your computer. GNOME's focus is ease of use, stability, and first class internationalisation and accessibility support. GNOME is Free and Open Source Software and provides all of the common tools computer users expect of a modern computing environment, such as e-mail, groupware, web browsing, file management, multimedia and games. Furthermore, GNOME provides a flexible and powerful platform for software developers, both on the desktop and in mobile applications." GNOME 2.24 comes packed with changes.
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Apple Adds NDA to App Store Rejection Notices

Apple 66 Comments
The situation regarding Apple's App Store for the iPhone is getting weirder by the day. Several applications have been rejected from the App Store based on seemingly dubious claims such as duplication of functionality (even though they didn't duplicate anything), or alikeness to default applications. Two such cases made headline news over the past few days; Podcaster and MailWrangler. The developers of these applications openly protested against these rejections, and apparently, Apple doesn't really like that. Apple now reiterates that rejections fall under the NDA, prohibiting developers from speaking up about rejections.
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The Android Awakens & Nokia’s Response

  Submitted by irbis Wireless 29 Comments
After months of anticipation T-Mobile and Google have unveiled the G1, the first commercially available handheld to run Google's Linux-based Android mobile operating system. The smartphone, made by HTC, will be available on Oct. 22. The G1 will support 3G, EDGE and WiFi, includes a wide touchscreen besides of a slideout QWERTY keyboard, a 3-megapixel camera, a music player and applications like Google Maps with Street View. More applications are expected soon, developed by the community.In response to Android's entry into the market, the leading cell phone maker Nokia is planning on freeing and making its Symbian platform royalty-free too. Nokia's David Rivas, head of technology management at Nokia's S60 business sees little future for the practice of billing handset vendors for each phone sold with a particular operating system.
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Major Corruption Bug in e1000e Driver in Linux Kernel 2.6.27

  Submitted by AdamW Linux 9 Comments
I'm generally not very fond of reporting on security breaches or bugs, but OSNews reader and Mandriva employee Adam Williamson warned us of a pretty serious bug in pre-releases of the Linux kernel. "A major bug has been found in the e1000e module (which supports some Intel onboard ethernet adapters) in Linux kernel 2.6.27 pre-releases (up to and including 2.6.27rc7). It can cause the EEPROM of the adapter to become corrupted, rendering it non-functional. This may affect current pre-releases of distributions. Mandriva has posted a detailed notification about the issue, as has SUSE." So, watch out.
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HA and DR for Virtual Environments

  Submitted by snydeq OS News No Comments
Logan Harbaugh examines five products for ensuring high availability and performing disaster recovery in complex virtual environments. 'HADR is fraught with complexity, due to the intricacies of virtualization itself,' Harbaugh writes. 'Just as there is no single solution for HADR in general, there is no single solution within virtualization: Different products address different areas, including backups, failover, deployment, and storage virtualization.' Harbaugh's comprehensive article helps sort out the complexities of achieving 'always-on virtualization.'
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Cisco IP Alliance Formed, Based on Open Source OS

  Submitted by Rabby Internet 6 Comments
Cisco and a group of leading tech companies have formed an industry alliance that promotes the Internet Protocol (IP) for interconnecting millions of embedded devices such as thermometers and light switches, forming an "Internet of Things". Many OSNews readers should be familiar with the technical basis of the alliance: embedded open source developer Adam Dunkels' lightweight uIP TCP/IP stack from the Contiki operating system. Nice to see that open source OSes besides Linux and BSD also have a major impact on the technology industry.
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Did Google Reverse-Engineer Windows?

Google 43 Comments
"Since its release a few weeks ago, curious developers have been sniffing through the source code for Google's new Chrome web browser. Chrome's source is interesting for a variety of reasons: there's the new V8 JavaScript virtual machine with its boasts of near-native code performance, the WebKit rendering engine that does all the hard work of understanding and displaying web pages, and (last but not least), Chrome's secure sandbox designed to minimize the impact of any security flaws that might exist in both the browser and plugins alike. It is this secure sandbox that has piqued the curiosity of some observers, and for a reason that many may find surprising. From reading the source, it looks as though Google has reverse-engineered Windows, and that's explicitly prohibited by the Windows EULA."
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