C++0x Gets Finalised

  Submitted by CPPfanboy General Development 24 Comments
The proposed new standard for the C++ programming language, C++0x, has reached feature completeness. "This is 'it', feature-complete C++0x, including the major feature of 'concepts' which had its own extensive set of papers for language and library extensions (if you get the impression that concepts is a big feature, well, it is indeed easily the biggest addition we made in C++0x)."
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Would The Internet Exist Without Linux?

  Submitted by irbis Linux 84 Comments
Would the internet as we know it exist without Linux? "Absolutely not", says Rich Menga. "Where Linux shines the most is in its server applications".In the 1990's "There were thousands of Mom n' Pop ISPs that operated out of a garage and the vast majority of them were all running Linux. Windows couldn't do it back then and neither could MacOS. What would you have used that you could afford? Netware? Lotus Domino? HP-UX (that requires those refrigerator-sized HP servers)? Linux was literally the only OS out there that had the right price (free), ran similar to a Unix and could use existing computers of the time to connect customers.The internet as we know it today predominantly runs on Linux. There's an extremely high probability that the internet connection you're using right now is connected through a Linux server - and routed through many other Linux servers along the way."
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Apple Not Accepting Opera Mini on iPhone

  Submitted by Geir Johasen Opera 80 Comments
An interesting NYT Bits blog entry covers Opera's mobile browser. Buried in the middle of the article is this quote: "Opera's engineers have developed a version of Opera Mini that can run on an Apple iPhone, but Apple won't let the company release it because it competes with Apple's own Safari browser." It also talks about Opera on the Wii and browsers in cars. A good read. My Take: But back to the iPhone. As tempted as I am to just shrug it off, since Apple is free to run its App Store any way it pleases, as an enthusiastic iPhone user, I think Apple is shooting itself in the foot here, as it is with all the "competitive" apps being rejected. Apple does stand to lose some Google revenue by letting people use other browsers, but they have much more to gain by unleashing the creativity of the developer community and giving them the freedom to improve or replace core iPhone functionality. Hopefully competition from Android forces them to wake up.
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Clutter is Good for Intel’s Moblin Linux

Intel 9 Comments
With Moblin 2.0, Intel is integrating in an open source technology called Clutter. Clutter is an open source animation framework that allows for the development of applications in the same way you would develop games. The underlying complexity is abstracted such that intricate UI can be built with a minimum of code. "Because it's developed like a game engine, all the graphics happen on the GPU, freeing up CPU do to application work," he said. "When combing with Atom and the various GPU's we use in Moblin supported platforms, you end up with advanced UI platforms. We really think it will create a huge opportunity for application innovation on top of Moblin."
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Why Windows 7 Will Suck Less Than Vista

  Submitted by Jeremy13 Windows 26 Comments
Loyd Case over at ExtremeTech attended Microsoft's technical briefing of Windows 7 and can't help but compare how the new operating system will be better than Vista. Key features are better user support, stability, performance, and many other things. Sounds like a broken record? Probably, but Microsoft learned a lot after Vista launched, and they'll be careful not to repeat a lot of the same mistakes twice.
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More Details on HP’s Virtualization Efforts

Unix 1 Comment
OSNews recently ran a story on UNIX virtualization functionality which was a bit shallow on technical details. HP's Christophe de Dinechin (who had already begun working on virtualization at HP when we interviewed him several years ago, but couldn't talk about it then) contacted us to tell us he'd gone into more technical detail on his blog here and here saying, "They are a bit long, and probably boring to a general audience, but since your readers are generally more interested in OS technology than the average population, I thought I'd bring these to your attention."
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Sinofsky Demoed Windows 7 on a Netbook

Windows 21 Comments
I've been running Windows Vista Ultimate on my Acer Aspire One netbook (with 1.5GB of RAM, and a 30GB hard drive) for a while now, without any problems or performance issues. I have the full Aero Glass experience, and I didn't need to do any performance tweaking or fiddling with services. I even made a few very crappy videos to show it all off. Apparently, Steven Sinofsky thinks Vista - and therefore, Windows 7 - can run just fine on a netbook too, and that's why he demonstrated Windows 7 running on a netbook this morning during the Windows 7 keynote. In an interview with Ars he gave a little more details.
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Overhauling the Windows Interface

Windows 75 Comments
Windows 7 is out and about. Microsoft has been unusually secretive about Vista's successor, but now that PDC is under way, they have unveiled the various enhancements to the user interface. Windows 7 might not have any significant under-the-hood changes (in fact, all your applications and devices will still work), but on the outside, Windows 7 represents the biggest change for the Windows user interface ever since Windows 95 came out.
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SDK Released for Microsoft Surface

  Submitted by Caffeine Deprived Microsoft 2 Comments
Microsoft offered a software development kit for Surface, the company's tabletop computer, to about 1,000 people at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. The article features a some details on apps already available for Surface. (For example, designers at Vectorform have built an application that lets people can "carve" a jack-o'-lantern on the Surface by using their fingers to trace a design in an image of a pumpkin.)
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Ubuntu 7.04 to 8.10 Benchmarks: Is Ubuntu Getting Slower?

Ubuntu 42 Comments
With the release of Ubuntu 8.10 only a few days away, Phoronix decided to take a look at the performance figures over the past releases - from Ubuntu 7.04 to Ubuntu 8.10. Phoronix used its own extensive test suite on fresh installations, with the same parameters, on the identical hardware. The results are rather surprising. Update: I've added some more information about this, gathered from the Ubuntu mailing list. You can find it in the 'read more'.
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The Home Computer as Nerve Center for a House

OS News 14 Comments
As part of our ongoing series, "Building the Wired Home," we've been experimenting with what could be a sea-change in the whole concept of a home computer. Home computers, of course, have long ago become commonplace, and computers have even taken on some roles that used to be delegated to standalone consumer electronics, such as audio and video storage and playback. They've gone from being exotic oddities to ever-more-useful home appliances. Interestingly, though, as our home computers have become more powerful, sophisticated, and useful, they have also become decentralized and have, in most inefficient fashion, been chopped up and redistributed around the house. "Read more" to learn how our experiment worked out.
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Battle of the Thumb Drive Linux Systems

Linux 10 Comments
Lifehacker reviews some of the popular Linux distributions that have provided tools to make Live USB keys, a easy task. These include Damn Small Linux, Fedora with it's cross platform liveusb-creator , Puppy Linux and Xubuntu. All systems were tested with UNetbootin except for Fedora which was run using it's own liveusb-creator. For every distribution, the minimum requirements, image size, boot time, features, things that need improvement and which users it is recommended for, is listed.
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Microsoft Announces Windows Azure Cloud Services

Windows 15 Comments
Microsoft today announced Windows Azure, a cloud services platform. According to the website, "Windows Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting, and service management environment for the Azure Services Platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host and manage web applications on the internet through Microsoft data centers."
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