Sun Joins Porting Effort for OpenOffice.org for Mac

"I'm excited to let you all know that as of now Sun engineering will add its support to the ongoing Mac/Aqua porting effort. The MacOSX porting history is basically as old as OpenOffice.org itself. Practically from the start there was the plan to have a native version for Mac, however as a first step the community decided to produce an X11 port which - since OOo already had several X11 ports from the start - seemed to be a good way to get a version quickly as temporary solution. As usual the 'temporary solution' tended to be quite long lived."

OLPC Project: No Plans for Windows Support

"Late last week the One Laptop Per Child project had a media event in Cambridge, and while I couldn't make the event, I did tape a video interview for the BBC on the project. During my preparation I kept coming across these claims that Microsoft and OLPC had partnered to put Windows XP Starter Edition on the OLPC, and according to one report, this was being done to get the XO laptop into US schools. None of this jibed with what I had been hearing from sources, so I decided to look into it further. As it turns out, a number of new outlets, including the AP and Reuters, mischaracterized the situation."

Fedora Core 5 End of Life

"Several months ago, the Fedora Board (in consultation with Red Hat Engineering) decided to increase the length of time that Fedora releases are supported, in terms of updates. This decision was retroactively applied to Fedora Core 5, allowing it to remain a fully maintained release for several months longer than it would have under the old policy. Fedora Core 5 will reach its end of life for updates on Friday June 29th, 2007."

Fiwix 0.3.1 Released

GNU/Fiwix is a 32-bit x86 operating system kernel based on the Unix architecture and fully focused on being Linux compatible. It is designed exclusively for educational purposes, so the kernel code is kept as simple as possible for the benefit of students. In the latest version, the virtual memory manager code has been improved to support SVGAlib-based applications and to add the ability to mmap() physical addresses. The way to map physical addresses in the /dev/mem driver has been improved. The mmap() and readpage() methods have been added to the VFS structure. Among other improvements in the VFS layer, the code to build with gcc 4.x has been fixed.

Steve Jobs on a Greener Apple

Steve Jobs writes about Apple's efforts to become a more enironmental friendly company. "Apple has been criticized by some environmental organizations for not being a leader in removing toxic chemicals from its new products, and for not aggressively or properly recycling its old products. Upon investigating Apple's current practices and progress towards these goals, I was surprised to learn that in many cases Apple is ahead of, or will soon be ahead of, most of its competitors in these areas. Whatever other improvements we need to make, it is certainly clear that we have failed to communicate the things that we are doing well." Among other things, Apple will introduce LEDs in displays to Macs this year.

Silverlight on Linux: We’re in, Says Mono Founder

"The Mono open-source project will create a Linux version of Silverlight by the end of year, said Miguel de Icaza, a Novell vice president and head of Mono. At the Mix '07 conference on Monday, Microsoft touted the ability to write Silverlight Web applications that run on Internet Explorer, Firefox and the Safari browser on Mac OS. Next up for Silverlight is an edition for mobile devices, including Windows Mobile. Asked about plans for Linux, Microsoft executives have been non-committal, saying that it will depend on demand. But de Icaza, who is attending Mix, was able to commit without hesitating."

Nintendo Wii: Competing Hard

The Wii (pronounced as the pronoun wee) is the fifth home video game console released by Nintendo. The console is the direct successor to the Nintendo GameCube. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3, but it competes with both as part of the seventh generation of gaming systems.

Review: Windows Vista

ITtoolbox reviews Windows Vista, and they conclude: "If you value innovation, new technology and you can afford it, Vista is a great buy and I seriously doubt you'd regret it. If you're a business user, the justification for the additional cost just isn't there quite yet (with a few exceptions). I was pleasantly surprised how nicely it has come together (at least at this point)." My take: Soon, I will write an article about how I feel about Vista after having used it for a much longer time than was the case in my previous review. I will also have something to say on using Vista on some lower-end hardware (it ain't pretty).

Interview: AROS Developer Nick ‘Kalamatee’ Andrews

The AROS Show has interviewed Nick 'Kalamatee' Andrews. Nick discusses a variety projects he has worked on for AROS during his 10 years with the project and various other topics. "There's a few things I personally could use that I feel would greatly improve the AROS user experience - a decent standards compliant web browser, reworking the existing data types to support streamed data, a decent media player, productivity tools (word processing packages and so on) - let's face it, there's tons of apps we could really benefit from."

Hyperion Replies to Amiga Accusations

Hyperion has replied to the litigation started by Amiga Inc. "Whilst it is not Hyperion Entertainment’s policy to comment on ongoing litigation, we would like to reassure our customers that development of AmigaOS 4.0 related components is still ongoing and will continue apace during the duration of the litigation with Amiga Inc. We welcome the opportunity to finally present our case in a court of law which was regrettably the only remaining avenue after Amiga Inc. repeatedly and consistently stonewalled any attempt to resolve the outstanding issues. In closing, we would like to remind dealers and other third parties that distribution of Amiga OS 4.0 without the prior permission of Hyperion VOF and certain third party developers is illegal under EU, US and international copyright legislation and therefore entirely at their own risk."

Progeny Linux Shuts Down

Progeny Linux has shut down. The notice on the webpage reads: "We are sorry to inform you that Progeny Linux Systems, Inc. ceased operations April 30, 2007." OSNews reader m_yates informed us that the following email was sent to the Progeny mailing list: "We are sad to inform you that Progeny Linux Systems is ceasing operations. This mailing list that we are hosting will be closed and decommissioned later tonight, Eastern Daylight Time. If you want the list archives, please download them now. Thank you."

OpenBSD 4.1 Released

OpenBSD 4.1 has been released. "We are pleased to announce the official release of OpenBSD 4.1. This is our 21st release on CD-ROM (and 22nd via FTP). We remain proud of OpenBSD's record of ten years with only two remote holes in the default install. As in our previous releases, 4.1 provides significant improvements, including new features, in nearly all areas of the system."

Linux vs. Windows: OS Impact on Uptime, Speed

"There are many factors which affect Website availability and performance from end user perspective, namely ISP Internet connection, server location, server parameters, programming language, application architecture and implementation. One of the critical parameters is a selected Operational System (OS). Most users often need to select between Linux and Windows, two popular choices for web servers. By providing free monitoring service, we at mon.itor.us collected large amount of data to perform a unique analytical research examining OS correlation with uptime and performance."

Vista: Benchmarking or Benchmarketing?

"There is a lot of variety in the hardware market: hundreds of types of processors, motherboards, hard drives, graphics cards and other components to choose from. And although consolidation has been going on for several years, leaving only AMD/ATI, Intel and Nvidia as the main players, along with a few motherboard makers and storage giants, finding the right products still can be an exhausting task. This is where benchmarking comes into play, because it helps to measure qualities and characteristics by applying a certain metric. Windows Vista now provides a built-in benchmarking solution to assess component and system performance, but does the so-called Experience Index correspond to what Tom's Hardware and other tech publications find on the test bench?"

Microsoft Takes Silverlight Beyond Windows

Microsoft plans to extend its mainstream development tooling to Silverlight, its Flash challenger, and add support for dynamic languages. At the Mix '07 Web developer and designer conference, Microsoft executives said the company will allow .Net developers to create applications for Silverlight, its alternative to Adobe Systems' Flash format. Microsoft on Monday released an alpha version of Silverlight 1.1 that will allow people to write applications using .Net applications such as C#. Version 1.0 of Silverlight will be available this summer.

It’s Official: Dell To Offer Pre-Installed Ubuntu

After yesterday's unconfirmed rumour about Ubuntu being pre-installed on Dell machines, it has now become official. In a joint statement released today, Dell and Canonical announced that Dell will now offer laptops and desktop computers pre-installed with Ubuntu Linux 7.04. The computers will be sold via Dell's web site, said Canonical's director of operations Jane Silber. "We have worked with Dell to get Ubuntu fully supported and fully certified on Dell hardware," she said. "Ubuntu has the full endorsement of Dell." Update: Ubuntu Linux 7.04 Feisty Fawn review by Extremetech.