Fair User Scheduling for Linux

  Submitted by JohnnyUtah Linux 20 Comments
The Completely Fair Scheduler was merged for the 2.6.23 kernel. One CFS feature which did not get in, though, was the group scheduling facility. Group scheduling makes the CFS fairness algorithm operate in a hierarchical fashion: processes are divided into groups, and, within each group, processes are scheduled fairly against one another. At the higher level, each group as a whole is given a fair share of the processor. The grouping of processes is done in user space in a highly flexible manner; the control groups (formerly 'process containers') mechanism allows a management daemon to classify processes according to almost any policy.
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Ubuntu 7.10 Pragmatic Visual Presentation Critique

  Submitted by Farhad Shakiba Ubuntu 49 Comments
"The purpose of this article is not to emphasize the strengths and merits of Ubuntu user experience, but instead to shed a brighter light on areas that have been neglected due to shortage of time and resources, usability testing, and various software and artwork defects. I hope those who are sometimes overprotective of open-source software will take my recommendations with a pinch of salt and see this article for what it really tries to be: a vocal user experience report and constructive criticism."
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ZFS Puts Net App Viability at Risk?

  Submitted by Oliver Legal 45 Comments
In a blog post, Sun's Jonathan Schwartz has announced that Sun will counter-sue Net App, after negotiations proved to be fruitless. "So now it looks like we can't avoid responding to their litigation, as frustrated as I am by that (as I said, we have zero interest in suing them). I wanted to outline our response (even if it tips off the folks at Net App), and for everyone to know where we're headed. First, the basics. Sun indemnifies all its customers against IP claims like this. Second, Sun protects the communities using our technologies under free software licenses. Third, we file patents defensively."
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Asian Linux Distributor Strikes Patent Covenant with Microsoft

  Submitted by flanque Linux 14 Comments
Turbolinux has followed Novell, Linspire, and Xandros in signing a patent and technology agreement with Microsoft. "In a deal that could lead to the creation of a unique cross-platform authentication system for heterogenous networks, Tokyo-based Linux distributor Turbolinux announced this morning, Japan time, it has reached an agreement with Microsoft for a cross-licensing of the two companies' patent portfolios."
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Mac OS X Leopard Gets Last Minute Tweaks

macOS 22 Comments
At the last minute, Apple has changed the appearance of the Dock in Mac OS X Leopard when it is placed on the sides of the screen. If so, the dock will lose its much-criticised 3D appearance in favour of a more traditional 2D look. When placed at the bottom, the dock does retain its 3D appearance; however, a smart hacker has already found out that via a single command in the terminal, you can give the bottom dock the same 2D appearance. In other words, everybody who criticised the new dock (including yours truly): rejoice!
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Apple Reports a Stellar Quarter

Apple 48 Comments
Apple sold 1.1 million iPhones during its fourth quarter, the company said in its results statement on Monday. This brought total sales of the iPhone to 1.39 million since its launch and pushed the company's revenue to USD 6.22m (GBP 3.04m) for the quarter. The good news was not solely to do with the iPhone, however, as the company also reported shipping 2.1 million Mac computers, representing 34 percent growth over the fourth quarter of 2006. Apple 'exceeded the previous quarterly record for Mac shipments by 400,000', the company said in the statement. Additionally, News.com tries to look beyond the marketing.
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Experimental ‘Functional’ Language Emerges from Microsoft Research

General Development 47 Comments
Are the C programming language and its object-oriented offspring - C++, C#, Objective-C - still well-suited to the requirements of multithreaded, network-oriented computing environments today? That's the question on the minds of engineers at Microsoft Research, whose latest programming language is today being officially moved off the back burner. The F# language has received the company's official blessing.
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AMD 8.42 Linux Driver Brings Fixes, Aiglx

  Submitted by pixelnate 3D 50 Comments
Ati AMD has released a new version of its graphics drivers that fix some long overdue bugs. "Today it's now time where the fglrx driver reaches yet another milestone. Not only does today's release address many of the outstanding bugs for the earlier GPU generations while also introducing a few new features, but it also delivers AIGLX support! Yes, you read that right. You can finally run your ATI graphics card with the fglrx driver and run Compiz, Beryl, or Compiz Fusion without using XGL!"
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FreeBSD 7.0 Beta 1 Released

  Submitted by Oliver FreeBSD 25 Comments
FeeBSD 7.0-beta1 has been released, with 6.3-beta1 on its way. "We have entered the final phases of the FreeBSD-7.0 Release cycle which also means the beginning of the FreeBSD-6.3 Release cycle. Because the people who support the ports for FreeBSD also need to go through a freeze cycle as part of releases we had decided to combine the two releases to try and minimize the impact on the ports maintainers."
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‘Driver Updates Causing Vista to Deactivate’

  Submitted by Dan Warne Windows 72 Comments
"After weeks of gruelling troubleshooting, I've finally had it confirmed by Microsoft Australia and USA - something as small as swapping the video card or updating a device driver can trigger a total Vista deactivation. Put simply, your copy of Windows will stop working with very little notice (three days) and your PC will go into 'reduced functionality' mode, where you can't do anything but use the web browser for half an hour. You'll then need to reapply to Microsoft to get a new activation code. How can this crazy situation occur? Read on for the sorry tale."
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Fedora 8 Renews Tradition of Innovations

  Submitted by Rahul Fedora Core 29 Comments
"Not all major software versions carry the same weight. Consider the last two releases of the Fedora distribution. Fedora 7 offered little that was obvious to desktop users, despite some behind-the-scenes improvements and the opening of the release process to public scrutiny. By contrast, if Test 3 of Fedora 8 is any indication, the upcoming release, scheduled for next month, returns to the distribution's tradition of introducing a variety of innovations. Some of these innovations, like the new firewall tool, are minor, if still welcome. Others, like the IcedTea version of Java and Codec Buddy, are flawed, but may eventually find their way into other distributions."
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Sun Scrapping Mobile Java, Moving Devices to Standard Java

Java 31 Comments
Sun's starting to phase out mobile Java that's been the standard on cellphones and other small devices in favor of their standard edition, which are made for PCs everywhere. Sun VP James Gosling's reasoning for shifting everyone over to Java Standard Edition is because 'cellphones and TV set-top boxes are growing up', meaning they're getting enough processing power to handle all the demands of full-featured Java.
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Thoughts on ‘MinWin’, Windows 7, and Virtualisation

Windows 72 Comments
Earlier today, OSNews ran a story on a presentation held by Microsoft's Eric Traut, the man responsible for the 200 or so kernel and virtualisation engineers working at the company. Eric Traut is also the man who wrote the binary translation engine for in the earlier PowerPC versions of VirtualPC (interestingly, this engine is now used to run XBox 1 games on the XBox 360 ) - in other words, he knows what he is talking about when it comes to kernel engineering and virtualisation. His presentation was a very interesting thing to watch, and it offered a little bit more insight into Windows 7, the codename for the successor to Windows Vista, planned for 2010.
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A History of the Amiga, Part 4: Enter Commodore

Amiga & AROS 15 Comments
Ars Technica has published part four in their series on the history of the Amiga, starting with Amiga being bought by Commodore. "One hugely positive benefit about being owned by a large computer company was that the Amiga team no longer (for the moment, anyway) had to worry about money. The team was moved 10 miles to a spacious, rented facility in Los Gatos, California. They could afford to hire more engineers, and the software development team went from having 10 people sharing a single Sage workstation to everyone having their own SUN on their desk."
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