OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Should All KDE3 Bugs Be Closed After KDE 4.0?

Submitted by diegocg 2007-12-11 KDE 62 Comments

Some interesting tidbits concerning KDE 4. Firstly, there is a debate whether to close all bugs of KDE 3.x (or not) once 4.0 has been released; you can vote on a poll posing this question too. Secondly, some unscientific benchmarks show that KDE 4.0 from svn is less resource hungry than current KDE 3.x builds. Update: KDE 4.0 RC2 has been released.

Submitted by RJop 2007-12-11 Hardware 21 Comments

I guess the cat is out of the bag. "Everex has confirmed plans to ship a UMPC with a 7-inch screen, similar to competitor Asus's EEE PC. A source close to the company revealed that the device - codenamed 'Cloudbook' - will ship with the Google Apps-oriented 'gOS' Linux distribution early next year."

Red Hat’s Open Source IDE

Submitted by anonymous 2007-12-11 General Development 32 Comments

Six months ago, Linux vendor Red Hat acquired the closed source Exadel Studio Pro IDE and pledged to turn it into a fully open source Red Hat product. On Monday, Red Hat officially released JBoss Developer Studio, based on the Exadel product as a 100 percent open source IDE. The new Eclipse based IDE offering from Red Hat's JBoss division will provide a development environment that will work on both Windows and Linux for Java middleware solutions from JBoss.

A History of the Amiga, Part 5: Postlaunch Blues

Thom Holwerda 2007-12-10 Amiga & AROS 35 Comments

Ars has published part 5 of their history of the Amiga. "By July 1985, Commodore had everything going for it. The Amiga computer had been demonstrated in public to rave reviews, and everyone was excited at the potential of this great technology. That's when the problems started."

Microsoft Releases Windows Update Blocker

Thom Holwerda 2007-12-10 Windows 50 Comments

Microsoft has released a toolkit to let businesses block service pack updates for Windows XP, Vista and Server 2003. Although service packs - particularly in the case of Vista - are keenly awaited by many users, some businesses prefer to test the packs before upgrading to assure compatibility with existing hardware and applications.

The iPod Touch

Eugenia Loli 2007-12-10 Multimedia, AV 54 Comments

PureMobile sent us in a 16GB iPod Touch for the purposes of this article. This is one of the few times an - essentially - mp3 player comes with a powerful operating system (other examples include the Linux-based Archos and Sandisk offers). Read on for more.

Top 10 Free Linux 3D Games

Eugenia Loli 2007-12-10 Games 88 Comments

Addictive 3D games for Linux users to fill their time with. These games are really good and some have won awards or have been featured on magazines. Most are cross platform and all of them completely free. You don't have to use 'Wine' to be able to play as they come with Linux installers.

Submitted by Bobthearch 2007-12-09 Hardware 76 Comments

Like a first love or a first car, a first computer can hold a special place in people's hearts. For millions of kids who grew up in the 1980s, that first computer was the Commodore 64. Twenty-five years later, that first brush with computer addiction is as strong as ever. "There was something magical about the C64," says Andreas Wallstrom of Stockholm, Sweden."

Microsoft Publishes Detailed Vista SP1 Changelog

Thom Holwerda 2007-12-08 Windows 88 Comments

"Leading up to next week's public beta-test release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate, Microsoft today has published a 17-page document outlining in fine detail exactly what difference SP1 makes to Vista. Some of the contents has been shared in bits in the past, but this is so far the most comprehensive 'changelog' we've ever seen and probably will see as the final version is not expected to differ much from the RC, with the exception of WGA modifications."

Submitted by vermaden 2007-12-08 NetBSD 18 Comments

The fifth release candidate for NetBSD 4.0 has been released. "We hope that this release candidate to be the last one before the final release of NetBSD 4.0. Please help us to test it as much as possible to make NetBSD 4.0 a solid release."

Ruby on Rails 2.0 Released

Submitted by Bill Davenport 2007-12-07 General Development 35 Comments

Ruby on Rails 2.0 has been released. "Rails 2.0 is finally finished after about a year in the making. This is a fantastic release that’s absolutely stuffed with great new features, loads of fixes, and an incredible amount of polish. We’ve even taken a fair bit of cruft out to make the whole package more coherent and lean." On Zenbits, they give tips on how to install 2.0.

Adobe Premiere Elements 4 and Photoshop Elements 6 Bundle

Eugenia Loli 2007-12-07 Graphics 33 Comments

A few weeks ago Adobe released the Premiere Elements 4 and Photoshop Elements 6.0 applications. The bundle sported a new user interface but also new features. Read on for more for a quick rundown.

Dethroning Ubuntu: What Would It Take?

Eugenia Loli 2007-12-07 Ubuntu 206 Comments

"Many people are looking to Ubuntu to be something that it is not: A mass market ready operating system designed to work with the same level of compatibility as Microsoft Windows. Where people get confused is in believing that if Ubuntu, king of the Linux distros, is not able to take the marketplace by storm, then something must be broken with desktop Linux. In this article, I’ll explain what it will take to dethrone the mighty Ubuntu and gain a market share so large that it will eclipse anything seen by Ubuntu to date." More here.

Submitted by AdamW 2007-12-07 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 6 Comments

An update on the status of Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring development, including the publication of the release schedule and the technical specifications for this release. Highlights include PulseAudio, a switch to the fork of RPM that SUSE and Fedora are using, a parental control tool, mail import support for the Windows migration tool introduced in 2008, and automatic repository configuration via geoip.

Submitted by poundsmack 2007-12-07 Qt 87 Comments

Jambi ships as a single Java library, or JAR (Java Archive) file, plus a handful of tools, including an interface layout and design tool, and an Eclipse plug-in. Trolltech uses its vaunted Qt C++ library as the GUI engine and puts Java wrappers around it. This approach uses the JNI (Java Native Interface) to call the necessary functions from Java. More here.

Development Release: openSUSE 11.0 Alpha 0

Eugenia Loli 2007-12-07 SuSE, openSUSE 34 Comments

Stephan Kulow has announced the availability of the first development release of openSUSE 11.0: "We'd like to kick start the development of openSUSE 11.0 with releasing the current state of Factory as Alpha0 release. Since the release of 10.3, we checked in 2,187 packages including such fundamental package updates as GCC 4.3.0, Linux kernel 2.6.24-rc4, X.Org 7.3, KDE 3.5.8 and 4.0 RC1, CUPS 1.3.4, ALSA 1.0.15, GIMP 2.4 and YaST 2.16. The change between 10.3 and Alpha0 is big, but it still works pretty nicely." More here.

Review: Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

Thom Holwerda 2007-12-06 macOS 117 Comments

Since my Cube could not run Leopard, and I did not have any other Macs, I was unable to delve into Leopard right away. Apple NL was kind enough to fix this problem for us, by generously loaning me a brand new MacBook with Leopard installed so I could review it for OSNews. Read on for the findings.

More on Microsoft’s Effort to Put XP on XO

Thom Holwerda 2007-12-06 Hardware 97 Comments

Microsoft is serious about getting Windows XP to work on OLPC's low-cost laptop, but the company still isn't sure it will be able to make a go of it. In an interview, James Utzschneider, the general manager of Microsoft's emerging market unit, says Microsoft has devoted about 40 employees and contractors to work on its effort. However, there are plenty of technical hurdles, he said. One of the biggest is the fact that the XO has no hard drive and only 1GB of built-in memory. The company concluded it needed at least 2GB of memory just for Windows and Office, so it convinced the OLPC folks to include an SD slot on the laptop's motherboard.

Microsoft Releases Battling OS Release Candidate

Thom Holwerda 2007-12-06 Windows 8 Comments

"Microsoft has started printing up the invites for the launch of Windows Server 2008 as it finally sets loose release candidate 1 of the long-awaited server operating system. Microsoft's decision to put a red ring around 27 February came as it released another test version of Vista Service Pack 1, the update it is banking on to breathe some life into the so-far zombified desktop operating system."

Submitted by vermaden 2007-12-06 FreeBSD 12 Comments

"The 7.0-BETA4 builds are now available. If you would like to use cvsup to update an older machine the branch tag to use is still RELENG_7. For users of FreeBSD Update due to some last-minute bumps in system libraries, installed third-party applications must be recompiled as per normal for a 'major' upgrade, even if upgrading from an earlier 7.0 BETA."