OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Ubuntu MID Edition 8.04 Released

Submitted by Michael 2008-06-24 Ubuntu 6 Comments

Canonical has released Ubuntu 8.04 Mobile Internet Device Edition, a version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution geared towards netbooks, mobile internet devices, UMPCs, subnotebooks, or whatever they're called this day of the week. It has a whole slew of optimisations geared specifically towards Intel's Atom platform, as well as a set of open source applications designed specifically for MIDs, all courtesy of Intel's Moblin project.

The Vista ‘App Gap’ Doesn’t Exist

Thom Holwerda 2008-06-24 Windows 28 Comments

Analysts continue to trump the lack of applications being developed for Vista. Yet, as Randall Kennedy points out, "developers who write for Windows rarely target a specific version. Rather, they select a particular API framework and proceed from there." The supposed Vista 'app gap' is a straw man, Kennedy argues. "The real question should be: Why aren't developers leveraging the various iterations of the .Net framework?"

Kernel Devs: Closed Source Modules ‘Harmful and Undesirable’

Thom Holwerda 2008-06-24 Linux 86 Comments

A constant thorn in the eye of many Linux kernel developers is the existence of closed-source kernel modules, most notably those by Nvidia and Ati, but also some file system drivers and other elements. Most of the Linux developers have been against these modules ever since they were first used, and in fact, bug reports originating from a tainted kernel are often disregarded and ignored. The kernel developers have now rallied together by issuing a statement urging vendors to release open source Linux kernel modules and drivers.

Review: ‘Opera 9.5 Gives Firefox 3 a Run for Its Money’

Thom Holwerda 2008-06-24 Internet 46 Comments

Linux.com has a review of Opera 9.5, which also includes various benchmarks for Opera, Firefox, Safari, and IE on both Windows and Linux. Linuxcom concludes: "Opera 9.5 is full to the brim with features and improvements and highly customizable. By rolling in apps such as the mail client and IRC chat application, and integrating them into a user's browsing experience, Opera 9.5 is a worthy challenger to Firefox 3. It surely has enough power and features to make it my favorite browser. If only it were free software and open source!"

Nokia Now Controls Symbian; Empowers Symbian Foundation

Eugenia Loli 2008-06-24 Wireless 19 Comments

The Symbian OS was a team effort between Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson, Panasonic, Samsung and Siemens. Reports said, that in the eve of the 10th year anniversary from the creation of Symbian, Nokia has bought the 8.4% Siemens stake for 70 million Euros ($108.6 million) and will now have over 56% of controlling interest in the group, but the press release says that Nokia takes it all. This could have created quite some uneasiness to the other players, but Nokia will play nice.

Five Undisclosed Features of Apple’s Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Eugenia Loli 2008-06-24 macOS 25 Comments

Although Apple is marketing Mac OS X Snow Leopard as an operating system update with "no new features," under the hood improvements will actually translate into a slew of new enhancements, five of which are described herein.

PsyStar’s Open Computer: the Alterna-Mac

Thom Holwerda 2008-06-23 Apple 21 Comments

PsyStar introduced its Mac clone to much media attention back in April, causing many discussions about the company's legal status, the validity of the Mac OS X EULA, and even PsyStar's very existence. It soon turned out PsyStar was a real company, and was actually shipping the OpenComputer Mac Clone to its customers, to generally rather favourable reviews - not stellar of course, but acceptable, with the biggest downside being the inability to use the Software Update tool, forcing users to download OS updates straight from PsyStar's servers - to prevent updates from Apple hosing the OpenComputer. We're a few months later now, and a few things have changed.

Submitted by snydeq 2008-06-23 OS News 22 Comments

InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy reviews Hyper-V RC1, and though he finds the Windows Server hypervisor lacking the sophistication of VI3, the company's try and try-again attitude might help the company in gain an advantage over VMware. "For many shops, Hyper-V will prove to be plenty good enough, allowing Microsoft to begin eating away at VMware's market share while preparing the next-generation product for the final assault that topples the leader."

Toshiba Unveils Laptop with Cell-Derived Coprocessor

Thom Holwerda 2008-06-23 Hardware 26 Comments

The first laptops to make use of the SpursEngine, a multimedia co-processor derived from the Cell chip that powers the PlayStation 3, will go on sale in Japan in July. Toshiba will launch its Qosmio G50 and F40 machines with the chip, which contains four of the "Synergistic Processing Elements" from the Cell Broadband Engine processor. The Cell chip used in the PlayStation 3 has eight of the SPE cores plus a Power PC main processor. The SPE cores perform the heavy number-crunching that makes the console's graphics so stunning. The SpursEngine SE1000 will work in much the same way in the laptops. The operating system will run on an Intel Core 2 Duo chip and the SpursEngine will be called on to handle processor-intensive tasks, such as processing of high-definition video. This arrangement means the laptop should be capable of some tricks that haven't been seen on machines until now.

Submitted by sjvn 2008-06-23 Linux 34 Comments

Installing software on Linux. In the world of online minefields, this is the big one. Back in the day, you installed software on Linux by compiling it manually. Time-consuming, but assuming you had a decent knowledge of gcc, make, and maintaining library files, this could actually work. Later one came the package management systems that were supposed to make installing software on Linux a breeze: rpm, dpkg, and so on, and so forth. Since human beings have the innate tendency to assume that everyone else is wrong and only they are right, we are now stuck with 3453495 different Linux package managers. Denis Washington, a Fedora developer, is taking steps to resolve this issue.

Firing Up Browser Security

Thom Holwerda 2008-06-23 Mozilla, Gecko 8 Comments

"Mozilla released its latest browser, Firefox 3.0, last week. SecurityFocus contributor Federico Biancuzzi tracked down two key members of Mozilla's security team, Window Snyder and Johnathan Nightingale, to learn more about the security features included in this major release. They discussed the protection against phishing and the new malware protection, the new update mechanism for add-ons, Mozilla's security policies and processes, and the hardening of their Javascript implementation."

Submitted by diegocg 2008-06-23 Unix 12 Comments

HP has announced that they will open source the AdvFS under the second version of the GPL. AdvFS is a mid-90's file system that is used by the Tru64 UNIX operating system. The Wikipedia page on AdvFS provides the necessary background information and feature set of the AdvFS file system.

NetBSD Moves to 2 Clause BSD License

Submitted by Jan Schaumann 2008-06-22 NetBSD 28 Comments

Alistair Crooks, president of the NetBSD Foundation, announced recently that it "has changed its recommended license to be a 2 clause BSD license". This makes NetBSD more easily available to a number of organisations and individuals who may have been put off by the advertising or endorsement clauses.

Submitted by paolone 2008-06-22 Amiga & AROS 8 Comments

A new version of this AROS distribution has been released. VmwAROS is available in two flavours: a virtual environment for VMware, and a live-cd that runs on top of real hardware, which can be installed on the hard drive as any other operating system. This new version includes lots of new games and applications for AROS, includes a complete C, C++ environment and E interpreter, and fixes an annoying compatibility problem that plagues current nightly builds on some hardware, by using a second "emergency" kernel. Users who couldn't boot the 0.7 versions should try this new one.

Firefox 3.0: Cut the Superlatives, Please

Thom Holwerda 2008-06-20 Mozilla, Gecko 77 Comments

I've seen superlative after superlative concerning the release of Firefox 3.0, and in all honesty, it is making my stomach ache. Yes, Firefox 3.0 is a great release. It has a slicker interface (the UI on Vista looks quite pretty) and the use of native widgets in Linux is a very, very welcome addition. On top of that, it actually delivers what I was craving for the most from my favourite Windows web browser: much improved performance. But does Firefox 3.0 change the web, or alter the way we use the intertubes?

Review Roundup: openSUSE 11.0

Thom Holwerda 2008-06-20 SuSE, openSUSE 23 Comments

openSUSE 11.0 is one of the most anticipated Linux distribution releases of recent times. The openSUSE team released version 11.0 yesterday, and it comes with the latest KDE4, GNOME, kernel, all the usual latest and greatest. In addition, it carries a few new Compiz Fusion plugins, improved package management (still a weak spot for openSUSE), and a brand new front-end to the installer. Reviews are starting to trickle in, and they are almost exclusively positive.

Apple’s Other Open Secret: LLVM

Submitted by Aron Allen 2008-06-20 macOS 15 Comments

"SproutCore, profiled earlier this week, isn't the only big news spill out from the top secret WWDC conference due to Apple's embrace of open source sharing. Another future technology featured by the Mac maker last week was LLVM, the Low Level Virtual Machine compiler infrastructure project. Like SproutCore, LLVM is neither new nor secret, but both have been hiding from attention due to a thick layer of complexity that has obscured their future potential."

Submitted by Rahul 2008-06-19 Office 44 Comments

The battle between the OpenDocument Format and Microsoft's Open Office XML was long, and here and there rather nasty, but it appears as if we finally have a winner. The company behind OOXML already conceded by announcing it would implement support for ODF in Office 2007 SP2, but now it has also said it quite literally: ODF has won.

Submitted by Rahul 2008-06-19 Java 55 Comments

Back in May 2006, Sun announced during the JavaOne conference it would release Java as open source, licensed as GPL software. While it was released as GPL, it still contained about 5 percent proprietary, non-free code - the Java trap, as the FSF calls it. The FSF called to dismantle this trap, and now the IcedTea project has reached an important milestone.

Cutting the Cat 5 Cord? Not So Fast!

Submitted by Mark Wielaard 2008-06-19 Internet 53 Comments

While the history of wireless computer networks dates back to the 1970 with the University of Hawaii's ALOHAnet (I wish we retained that name instead of 802.11x), it has only been during the past, say, 10 years that the technology started to make serious inroads into the consumer market - your home. The latest and greatest variant is 802.11n, and while promoted as the best thing since sliced bread, Frank Ohlhorst has his reservations, and debunks 5 myths concerning 802.11n.