OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Russinovich on MinWin; New Taskbar on Build 6801

Thom Holwerda 2008-11-03 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.

The Intel Core i7 Nehalem Processor

Submitted by Dan Warne 2008-11-03 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."

Could Zoomable User Interfaces Be the Future?

Submitted by Dirk Sievert 2008-11-02 Graphics 15 Comments

Oliver Hamann released a new version of his futuristic user environment called Eagle Mode. But the most interesting news is probably his project philosophy. There he lists pros and cons for replacing most of today's user interfaces by zoomable user interfaces. But unlike others, he don't want to replace the concept of desktop windows.

Guest post by Rahul 2008-11-02 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

Gruber: Opera Never Submitted Mini to Apple

Submitted by Cam 2008-11-02 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.

QNX Neutrino RTOS 6.4 Released

Submitted by corey 2008-10-31 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.

Detailing Device Stage, Libraries

Thom Holwerda 2008-10-31 Windows 10 Comments

And yet some more information about Windows 7 has found its way to users. Ars Technica is present at Microsoft's Professional Developer Conference, and they dove into the new Device Stage feature, as well as the new Libraries feature in the Windows Explorer file manager.

OpenBSD 4.4 Released

Thom Holwerda 2008-10-31 OpenBSD 45 Comments

The OpenBSD team has released OpenBSD 4.4. "As in our previous releases, 4.4 provides significant improvements, including new features, in nearly all areas of the system." Information on how you can obtain OpenBSD can be found on the OpenBSD website.

Solaris 10 10/08 Released

Submitted by Robert Milkowski 2008-10-31 Solaris 15 Comments

A new update of Solaris 10 has been made available today. There are a lot of ZFS enhancements and the next-gen file system is now supported as an installable root file system. You can download it for x86 and SPARC here. Other than that there are new drivers, security enhacements, etc. Fore more information, check the what's new page.

Fedora 7 to 10 Benchmarks

Submitted by Michael 2008-10-31 Fedora Core 8 Comments

Earlier this week Phoronix published a set of comparative benchmarks regarding Ubuntu, testing various recent releases to compare their performance figures on all sorts of different tasks. They've now done the same thing for Fedora, so we can compare Fedora and Ubuntu in terms of performance.

Guest post by Rahul 2008-10-31 Linux 29 Comments

InternetNews talks to developers and vendors about the rise of Btrfs as a successor to Ext4. Though Ext4 adds extents, Chris Mason, Btrfs developer noted that BTRFS adds a number of other features beyond that. Among those features are items like snapshotting, online file consistency checks and the ability to perform fast incremental backups. BTRFS (pronounced better FS) is currently under development in an effort led by Oracle engineer Chris Mason. With the support of Intel, Red Hat, HP, IBM, BTRFS could become the engine that brings next generation filesystem capabilities to Linux.

Guest post by Rahul 2008-10-31 Red Hat 7 Comments

Back in July we shared Red Hat's intentions to replace RHGB with Plymouth, a new graphical boot process that is able to benefit from the latest Linux graphics capabilities. Red Hat engineers had primarily designed Plymouth around a forthcoming feature we've talked about quite a bit known as kernel mode-setting, which provides end-users with a cleaner and flicker-free boot experience. In September in The State of Kernel Mode-Setting we then shared more information on Plymouth along with a brief video. Most recently we published another video of Plymouth that shows the tighter integration between the boot process and starting the GNOME Display Manager. Today though we are looking at Plymouth and its different plug-ins along with providing a few more videos.

Guest post by Flatland_Spider 2008-10-31 Hardware No Comments

Real World Technologies has posted a code level dissection of the Intel Core 2 Duo X6800 and an AMD Athlon FX-62. While rather dated, the two processors were state of the art in 2006, the article does an excellent job of detailing why the processors behave the way they do. Many publications will say, "Game X runs better on processor Z, so processor Z wins", but that does not tell the reader why. This Real World Technologies article, on the other hand, explains why. For instance, they used the game Prey to test the CPUs and found "Prey tends to favor more complex x86 instructions that likely either use 3 inputs, or have 2 output."

The ‘Why’ of Windows 7’s New Interface

Thom Holwerda 2008-10-31 Windows 21 Comments

Yes, we're still on the subject of Windows 7's user interface overhaul. We know what's going to change, we know what it looks like, but there's one important question that has not really been given much stage time: why? At PDC, one session was dedicated to just that question. Speaking is Chaitanya Sareen , part of the windows user interface team. He'll place the changes in Windows 7 into context, talk about Windows' user interface history, and he'll explain why certain changes were made. An interesting insight into the goals of the Windows 7 interface.

Review: Acer Aspire One

Eugenia Loli 2008-10-31 Hardware 29 Comments

Geeks.com, known for their cheap laptops, sent us the Acer Aspire One for a review. Thom wrote a review of the popular laptop recently, but here's my take on it. Update: After this review went up, and within two hours, I installed Ubuntu 8.10 (time is 4:10 AM here, couldn't sleep until I had Ubuntu in there). Using this very nice tutorial, I have everything up and running.

No ‘Legacy Switch’ for New Taskbar

Thom Holwerda 2008-10-31 Windows 32 Comments

When Office 2007 came out with its new ribbon-based interface, a lot of people were up in arms because Microsoft deliberately left out a legacy switch - you couldn't go back to the old-fashioned Office user interface. Now that Windows 7 is getting a major UI overhaul, many wondered if Microsoft would build a legacy switch into its new operating system. Ars talked to Steven Sinofsky about this one, and got an answer. They also discussed the new jump list feature.

Guest post by Rahul 2008-10-31 Fedora Core 6 Comments

OLPC Project uses a derivative of Fedora as the operating system for it's XO laptops. One of the unique features of these laptops, is an environment called Sugar developed as a collaboration between Red Hat and other developers and now being maintained by Sugarlabs, an independent non-profit organization. The Fedora Project has released a new spin, a live CD with the Sugar environment by default and a number of additional activities including sugar-browse based on XULRunner and sugar-write based on Abiword. Furthermore, the Fedora liveusb-creator software has been updated to include support for this spin. For people developing the Sugar environment or those curious about it but don't have an OLPC system, this live cd can be a handy way to dive in.

Manipulating UAC Behaviour

Thom Holwerda 2008-10-30 Windows 6 Comments

Windows Vista's most prominent - and most hated and misunderstood - feature was most likely User Account Control, designed specifically to not only make the system more secure, but also to annoy users and developers, forcing them into making applications that do not require administrator privileges. In Windows 7, Microsoft has done a lot to alleviate the annoyances.

Forbes: 10 Apple Flops

Thom Holwerda 2008-10-30 Apple 28 Comments

With the success of the iPod, the subsequent resurgence in popularity of the Macintosh platform, and the recent iPhone smash hit, it's hard to imagine that Apple was once a company that tried to enter every market possible, leaving a trail of flopped products in its wake. Forbes lists ten of them, and we take a look at some of them, and add one of our own.

Submitted by M-Saunders 2008-10-30 Ubuntu 67 Comments

Bang on target, the new version of Ubuntu Linux is available for our downloading pleasure. Amongst various changes it sports updates to the installer, improved networking, and a new 'Mobile USB' version geared towards the blossoming netbook market. Grab a copy from the Ubuntu website, and check out Linux Format's hands-on look. Or the one at Simple Thoughts. Or the one at PolishLinux. And probably a few other websites as well.