OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

In-depth Fedora 7 Review; Community Remix

Submitted by Steve Emms 2007-08-08 Fedora Core 20 Comments

If you're a Fedora user the end of May means one thing... time for a new release! This year was no different as the Fedora project continued its aggressive six month release schedule. Fedora 7, code named “Moonshine”, is the latest version of the Red Hat influenced Linux distribution. Read the Fedora 7 review. Meanwhile, this Red Hat Magazine article details how to "remix" Fedora.

Setting Up Vista for the Family

Submitted by mikemuch 2007-08-08 Windows 50 Comments

Got a computer that's shared by the whole family? Or a computer in an office that has to support more than one user? Vista has a much stronger user accounts feature than XP. Here's how to set up Windows Vista so that everybody's happy.

Review: VMware Fusion 1.0

Submitted by luna6 2007-08-07 OS News 32 Comments

This is a review of the new VMware Fusion 1.0 for Mac. The article takes an in-depth look at the new virtualization software from VMware and compares it to Parallels Desktop 3.0.

Motorola Ships US Linux Mobile Phone, Native SDK

Eugenia Loli 2007-08-07 Wireless 10 Comments

Motorola last month quietly shipped its first Linux-based RAZR2 V8 phone "bound for North America," in its words. Additionally, the world's third-largest handset vendor (Motorola was passed up by Samsung this year) is offering new "MotoMAGX" tools supporting native Linux third-party apps.

GPE 2.8 Released

Eugenia Loli 2007-08-07 GTK+ 9 Comments

The release 2.8 of GPE is complete and available for download. The new release comes with a large number of bugfixes and improvements such as an improved calendar, many fixed import/export and synchronisation issues as well as support for Maemo in additional components like Starling (the new audio player) and gpe-filemanager.

Smartphone Browser Shootout: Palm, BlackBerry, HTC vs. iPhone

Eugenia Loli 2007-08-07 Internet 33 Comments

Has Apple succeeded in setting a new mobile Web-browsing paradigm? InformationWeek examines how the Palm Treo, BlackBerry Curve, and HTC Wing stack up against the iPhone. Unfortunately, this article completely snobs the UIQ and S60 Symbian smartphones.

Apple Releases New iMac, iLife ’08, iWork ’08

Thom Holwerda 2007-08-07 Apple 168 Comments

Apple has released new iMacs, with a new interior (up to 2.8Ghz Core 2 Duo) as well as new exterior (thinner, with a black back, as well as black 'eyeliner' around the screen), including a new keyboard, during a press event in Cupertino today. Apple also released new version of its iLife and iWork suites. iLife has seen updates on all its applications, while iWork has also received a new spreadsheet application called Numbers. Update: The Mac Mini has been updated too.

Shuttleworth: Microsoft Fracturing the Open-Source Community

Submitted by JK 2007-08-07 Ubuntu 75 Comments

Microsoft has succeeded in fracturing the Linux and open-source community with the patent indemnity agreements it has entered into with several prominent vendors, Ubuntu leader and Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth told eWEEK. The strategy behind that was to drive a wedge into the open-source community and unsettle the marketplace, Shuttleworth said. He also took issue with the software maker for not disclosing the 235 of its patents it claims are being violated by Linux and other open-source software.

Submitted by wakeupneo 2007-08-07 KDE 47 Comments

"KDE 4.0 is very exciting, though not yet production ready, and that shows with this weeks' release of the first beta. It's a beta release for a major software project (using the traditional definition of beta, and not Google's it's-production-ready-but-we-don't-want-to-support-it-officially-yet definition of beta) and thus, it comes complete with bugs, crashes, missing artwork, and other goodies one would expect such as new code, new technologies and fun toys. For those of you who are unaware, KDE is one of the largest open source projects ever conceived. A major milestone release such as 4.0 is a long time in the making. Here follows a number of things to look forward to for those of you brave enough to try this early beta."

Submitted by lqsh 2007-08-07 Fedora Core 24 Comments

Fedora 8 Test 1 has been released. "Fedora 8 Test one has been loosed upon the world today. Included in this release is a 'Fedora' installable 'choose your own adventure' style set of isos and trees for i386, x86_64, and ppc(64). Also included are Live images of both the Fedora Desktop and the Fedora KDE desktop." And there are screenshots.

Submitted by GhePeU 2007-08-07 Gnome 65 Comments

"About half a year ago I was looking around me and seeing stagnation in the GNOME community. I was concerned that GNOME had lost its momentum and that we were just making boring incremental releases that added very little new functionality. I think I was very wrong. I'd like to take this time to list some things that are happening right now in the GNOME community that have me very excited. These are the projects that are actively improving the future of the GNOME desktop." Let's hope a punctuation checker will be part of GNOME too. One Aaron is enough.

Submitted by Francis Kuntz 2007-08-07 macOS 2 Comments

Apple has an article on the core elements of Leopard. "The Mach kernel and related core technologies, including Bonjour and the file system, have all been significantly enhanced. Full POSIX compliance and UNIX03 certification means you can move all your critical UNIX applications to Mac OS X quickly and easily. Security, always a strong point of Mac OS X, gets even better with improvements to authorization and certificate management."

Dell Launches Linux PCs in the UK, France, Germany

Submitted by JK 2007-08-07 Hardware 10 Comments

Dell has launched two PCs in Europe with Ubuntu 7.04 Linux factory installed. The Inspiron 6400n and the Inspiron 530n are now in the UK, Germany and France, as Dell's initial response to calls from Linux enthusiasts for the open source operating system to be pre-installed.

MidnightBSD 0.1 Released

Submitted by Lucas Holt 2007-08-07 BSD & Darwin 23 Comments

MidnightBSD 0.1 is now available. It includes several software packages such as ksh, sudo, OpenNTPD, gcc 3.4.4, BIND 9.3.4 (plus patch), and others in the base system. "MidnightBSD is a desktop operating system for x86 compatible, and soon amd64 compatible architectures. It was originally based on FreeBSD 6.1 Beta. The goal of the project is to create a BSD with ease of use and simplicity in mind."

Sun Extends UltraSparc Reach

Submitted by Glenn Jobs 2007-08-07 Oracle and SUN 2 Comments

Sun Microsystems plans to announce its new UltraSparc T2 microprocessor, along with plans for servers based on the chip. The UltraSparc T2, an eight-core, 64-thread microprocessor will hit the market in the second half of the year.

AmigaSYS 3 Plus Released

Submitted by Dary 2007-08-07 Amiga & AROS 5 Comments

AmigaSYS 3 Plus has been released. "AmigaSYS is a pre-installed Amiga operation system pack for WinUAE and for high performance Amiga computers. AmigaSYS contains everything you need for emulation. AmigaSYS supports Workbench 3.0, 3.1, and AmigaOS 3.9."

Review: Sony Ericsson W580i

Eugenia Loli 2007-08-06 Wireless 8 Comments

Hi-Mobile sent us over the Sony Ericsson W580i Walkman feature phone for a review, and we give it a whirl. It's been over a year since the last time we tested the non-smartphone Sony Ericsson platform and it's interesting to see the advancements in the software department.

DragonFly BSD 1.10 Released; Interview: Matthew Dillon

Submitted by anonymous 2007-08-06 BSD & Darwin 43 Comments

The sixth major DragonFly BSD release, version 1.10, was announced today by project creator Matthew Dillon. Billed as "more stable than the 1.8 release", it includes improved virtual kernel support, a new disk management infrastructure, improvements to wireless networking, and support for the new syslink protocol. As to what all that means, KernelTrap has just posted an interview with Dillon. Going beyond today's 1.10 release, the interview explores DragonFly's new clustering high-availability filesystem which sounds superior to ZFS, the project's goals for the 2.0 release expected in six months, and a comparison of the BSD license versus the GPL.

Submitted by netpython 2007-08-06 Hardware 55 Comments

"Lenovo, the world's No. 3 PC maker, said on Monday it would start selling laptop computers preloaded with Linux software from Novell instead of Microsoft's Windows operating system." Ars Technica has more on the announcement. "ThinkPad customers will soon have a new configuration option, as Lenovo and Novell have announced that the popular laptops will begin shipping with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (SLED) preinstalled. Although the ThinkPad has been certified for Linux for some time, this marks the first time Lenovo will ship a laptop with Linux preinstalled - while providing both hardware and OS support." Lenovo is the third big name to sell consumer computers with Linux installed (after Dell and Acer).

Openbox 3.4.4 Released

Thom Holwerda 2007-08-06 Desktop environments 38 Comments

Openbox 3.4.4 has been released. "Openbox is a minimalistic, highly configurable, next generation window manager with extensive standards support. Openbox lets you bring the latest applications outside of a full desktop environment. Most modern applications have been written with GNOME and KDE in mind. With support for the latest freedesktop.org standards, as well as careful adherence to previous standards, Openbox provides an environment where applications work the way they were designed to."