Review: Dreamlinux 3.0

Linux 11 Comments
DistroWatch takes a look at Dreamlinux 3.0. "Dreamlinux is still beautiful and now that the look has been recreated for a GNOME version and in the implementation of CompizFusion, it should appeal to a larger audience. It very well could be a viable alternative to Ubuntu. Overall, Dreamlinux was a fairly solid release. I had issues with the installer, wireless and suspend support, and some applications were a bit crashy. But it looks good, comes with some good application choices (except Iceweasel that I find buggy), and the Dreamlinux tools were nice. So, I have mixed feelings. I don't feel comfortable recommending it across the board. If you like the appearance, features, and software stack, then perhaps it'd best to try it on your hardware to see if it's for you."
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Novell Developing Stand-Alone Xen-Based Hypervisor Product

Novell and Ximian No Comments
Novell is quietly working on a stand-alone hypervisor product that will be based on the Xen hypervisor found in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10. Novell executives demonstrated the product, which is currently under development, at its recent BrainShare conference in Salt Lake City, said Roger Levy, senior vice president and general manager for the Open Platform Solutions business unit at Novell.
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New AROS Distribution Announced

  Submitted by paolone Amiga & AROS 2 Comments
VmwAROS started in november 2007, as a pre-installed AROS environment for VMware, but starting with the new version 0.7, published today, it has turned into a complete distribution called VmwAROS LIVE!. From now on, it will be available in two flavours: pre-installed in a virtual machine, and as a live-CD. New users will be able to boot their computers straight into a enhanced AROS environment, with DHCP network support and preliminary web browser. A complete list of new features is available at this site. VmwAROS VM beta 0.7 can be downloaded from here. VmwAROS LIVE! 0.7 can be downloaded from here.
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Announcing Pash: Open Source Implementation of PowerShell

.NET 36 Comments
Igor Moochnick announced Pash, an open source implementation of Microsoft's PowerShell. "The main goal is to provide a rich shell environment for other operating systems as well as to provide a hostable scripting engine for rich applications. The user experience should be seamless for people who are used to Windows version of PowerShell. The scrips, cmdlets and providers should runs AS-IS (if they are not using Windows-specific functionality). The rich applications that host PowerShell should run on any other operating system AS-IS. Secondary goal: the scripts should run across the machines and different OS’s seamlesly (but following all the security guidelines)."
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Mini-Review: Linux Mint 4.0 ‘Daryna’

Linux 31 Comments
From Linux Mint's About page: "Linux Mint's purpose is to produce an elegant, up to date and comfortable GNU/Linux desktop distribution." To reach this goal, lead developer and founder Clement Lefebvre used (surprisingly) Ubuntu as the base, and added multimedia codecs to the distribution, by default. Later on, Mint deviated more from Ubuntu by adding its own artwork, web-based package front-end, and configuration tools (MintTools) to the mix. I installed the latest stable release, Daryna (4.0), released on 15 October of last year, to see what's what.
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‘Why Modular Windows Will Suck for Microsoft and for You’

  Submitted by Francis Kuntz Windows 70 Comments
Ars analyses the concept of a modular Windows, and concludes: "Modularization - and the discriminatory pricing it permits - might appeal to accountants and economists. But it is bad for consumers, bad for Windows, and ultimately, bad for Microsoft. A modularized Windows, or worse still, a modularized subscription-based Windows, undermines the purpose and value of the Windows OS. If it comes to pass it will surely sound the death knell of the entire Windows platform."
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Displayport Goes Internal

Hardware 34 Comments
"Intel's next generation laptop platform, code named Montevina, has a nice feature that remains quite unheraleded, Displayport. Not only does it allow you to drive an external DP monitor, it uses it internally." My take: So let me get this straight. We are finally leaving the days behind where TVs were TVs and computer monitors were computer monitors, entering a brave new world where a TV can be a computer monitor and vice versa, all thanks to DVI/HDMI - and now we're getting Displayport on computers, recreating the wretched OR situation of yore? If I had any hair, I'd be pulling it out right now.
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Gates: Microsoft Windows 7 Sometime Next Year

Windows 41 Comments
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said on Friday he expected the new version of Windows operating software, code-named Windows 7, to be released "sometime in the next year or so". The software giant has been aiming to issue more regular updates of the operating system software that powers the majority of the world's personal computers. Nevertheless, Gates' comments suggested that a successor to the Vista program might be released sooner than was generally expected.
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Microsoft Windows XP Dies June 30, As Planned

Windows 133 Comments
Microsoft will shutter its Windows XP line June 30, as planned, ceasing sales of Windows XP Professional and Windows XP Home to retailers and direct OEMs, Microsoft confirmed to eWEEK April 3. The statement from Redmond executives ends weeks of speculation that Microsoft would extend the life of the operating system as users turn up their nose at Vista, the operating system meant to supplant XP, and OEMs argue lighter versions of desktops and notebooks don't have the juice to run Vista.
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Gentoo Linux 2008.0 Beta 1 Released

Gentoo 19 Comments
The first beta of Gentoo Linux 2008.0 has been released. "You can help make 2008.0 amazing! Test out this beta and report any functionality issues you encounter. Since this is the first beta, we're looking only for bugs in functionality, not bugs in appearance such as desktop backgrounds or other artwork. We expect to release a second beta once your testing has helped us fix problems with this first beta. A migration to RPM was carefully considered again for this release, but in the end we decided to wait for the few remaining RPM-using distributions to migrate to the superior packaging format of ebuilds."
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Computing in 2020: Erasing the Boundary Between Human & PC

Hardware 5 Comments
"It's easy to view the computer interface as nearly static. Since the advent of mouse-driven, windowed interfaces over 20 years ago, much of human-computer interface (HCI) has gone the same route. But a proliferation of mobile devices is beginning to change that and, even if that weren't the case, important differences are developing in what information is available to computers, and how we access it. In March 2007, Microsoft Research invited 45 leading researchers to discuss where HCI would be in 2020; a report summarizing their conclusions has now been made available."
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