OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing - Page 877

Office 2003 To Get Security Upgrade

Submitted by Zizour 2007-04-27 Microsoft 2 Comments

Microsoft plans to make some of the security improvements and features it built into Office 2007 available for Office 2003. Service Pack 3 for Office 2003 will be focused on security, said Joshua Edwards, a technical product manager for Office at Microsoft.

Review: 22″ Viewsonic Widescreen LCD Monitor

Eugenia Loli 2007-04-27 Hardware 39 Comments

It's been 12 years since I got my first PC. Back then, it came with a 14" 800x600 CRT monitor. But times change. Now, for just $250 you can get a 22" LCD monitor with a 1680x1050 resolution! Geeks.com were very kind to send us one of their LCD monitors, the Viewsonic VX2235wm, for a review. We tested the monitor under Windows, Linux and the Mac and here is what we found.

How to Install VMware Server on Debian 4.0

Submitted by falko 2007-04-27 Debian 23 Comments

This tutorial provides step-by-step instructions about how to install the free VMware Server (version 1.0.2) on a Debian Etch system. With VMware Server you can create and run guest operating systems (virtual machines) such as Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, etc. under a host operating system. This has the benefit that you can run multiple operating systems on the same hardware which saves a lot of money, and you can move virtual machines from one VMware Server to the next one (or to a system that has the VMware Player which is also free). Also, VMware acquired the VDI provider Propero.

Vista Sales Propel Microsoft Profits to USD 5bn Beating Expectations

Eugenia Loli 2007-04-27 Microsoft 91 Comments

"Microsoft Corp. posted a 65 percent rise in quarterly profit Thursday, topping Wall Street estimates thanks to better than expected demand for its new Windows Vista operating system." More here.

OLPC ‘USD 100 Laptop’ to Cost USD 175, Also Run Windows

Eugenia Loli 2007-04-27 Hardware 45 Comments

"The founder of the ambitious "$100 laptop" project, which plans to give inexpensive computers to schoolchildren in developing countries, revealed Thursday that the machine for now costs $175, and it will be able to run Windows in addition to its homegrown, open-source interface." More here.

OpenSUSE Drops ZENworks, Opens YAST

Submitted by editingwhiz 2007-04-27 SuSE, openSUSE 34 Comments

Novell openSUSE project has had a recent history of trouble with its update programs. Now, to make updating openSUSE more pleasant, the project is dropping its support for ZENworks and opening up YAST to community development. DesktopLinux.com has the story here and some other info here.

Oracle Linux Gets Backing From EMC, Others

Submitted by E. Stride 2007-04-26 Linux 15 Comments

It was another small step forward for Oracle Enterprise Linux this week as a handful of ISVs pledged support, but it's still a long road ahead for the Red Hat clone. Says searchenterpriselinux, "The news came a day after Oracle announced that a handful of other hardware ISVs had also pledged to support its brand of Linux. For Tony Iams, a senior analyst with Rye Brooke, N.Y.-based Ideas International Ltd., the news was indicative of an upward trend for the company's Linux distribution, which was launched in October."

Mandriva Linux 2007.1 PowerPack, Discovery/LX review

Submitted by Valour 2007-04-26 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 33 Comments

"After making a lot of progress with Mandriva Linux 2007, I thought perhaps Mandriva had turned over a new leaf, and was using that release as a starting point for an overall better quality operating environment. I was totally wrong. Both the PowerPack Edition and Discovery/LX have slid so far back with version 2007.1 that I have serious doubts as to the future of Mandriva's viability as a commercial desktop operating system." Read more at SoftwareInReview.

Adobe to Open Source Flash Tool ‘Flex’

Submitted by Flatline 2007-04-26 General Development 25 Comments

Adobe Systems plans to open-source Flex, its development framework for building Flash and Apollo-based applications. The company on Wednesday is expected to announce the move, which will start when it releases a beta of the next version of Flex, code-named Moxie, in June.

Fedora 7-test 4 Released

Submitted by RJop 2007-04-26 Fedora Core 58 Comments

"The Fedora Project is pleased to announce the release of the fourth and final test release of Fedora 7! Test 4 is for beta users." Announcement and release notes here. Update: Screenshots.

Future of Reiser4?

Adam Scheinberg 2007-04-26 Linux 38 Comments

According to kerneltrap: "The future of Reiser4 was raised on the lkml, with the filesystem's creator, Hans Reiser, awaiting his May 7th trial. Concerns that the filesystem wasn't being maintained were laid to rest when Andrew Morton stated, 'the namesys engineers continue to maintain reiser4 and I continue to receive patches for it.'"

Windows Longhorn Server Beta 3 Public Download

Submitted by Arnold 2007-04-26 Windows 7 Comments

NeoSmart has the goods on the release of Windows Longhorn Server Beta 3, and the availability of public ISO images for x86, x64, and Itanium versions of the English, German, and Japanese localizations of the various Windows Server flavors. According to NeoSmart, it's the same as the April CTP, but with some bug fixes and compiler optimizations.

PR: The Mac is Clearly Gaining Market Share

Submitted by Governa 2007-04-26 Apple 39 Comments

"Apple Inc. surpassed even the most optimistic forecasts for its usually tepid second quarter, delivering an 88 percent increase in profit on strong sales of Macintosh computers and iPod music players," Laurie J. Flynn reports for The New York Times." There were 1.52 mil Macs and 10 mil iPods sold in the quarter. Elsewhere, check this article on Macs in the enterprise.

Linux Kernel 2.6.21 Released

Submitted by RJop 2007-04-26 Linux 40 Comments

Linux Kernel 2.6.21 has been announced. Linus writes: "So the big change during 2.6.21 is all the timer changes to support a tickless system (and even with ticks, more varied time sources). Thanks (when it no longer broke for lots of people ;) go to Thomas Gleixner and Ingo Molnar and a cadre of testers and coders." More info here and here.

Mass Interview With Mark Shuttleworth

Submitted by muszek 2007-04-26 Ubuntu 21 Comments

Ubuntu Open Week is a series of IRC meetings of people behind the distribution and the community. Mark Shuttleworth answered various questions on Tuesday and Wednesday. The interview covers many issues, including: GPL v3, proprietary software, Microsoft's $3 project, Launchpad, non-free stuff in Ubuntu, April 19th siege of ubuntu.com, Canonical vs. Ubuntu Foundation, becoming F/OSS contributor. Full logs are available on Ubuntu wiki. Ubuntu News has a digest with the most interesting pieces. Also, another interview with Mark is here and four interesting Ubuntu articles are here, here, here and here.

Project Aims to Bring DX10 Gaming to XP, Linux, OS X

Submitted by Flatline 2007-04-25 Games 73 Comments

"Last Wednesday, a company called Falling Leaf Systems announced the availability of an alpha of something called the Alky Project. The Alky Project has a lofty goal: to liberate DirectX 10 gaming from the confines of Vista and bring it first to Windows XP, and then to Linux and OS X. The project plans to do this by building a converter that can take in a DX10 game executable and spit out a modified version that can be run on a (non-Vista) target OS. The target OS must be x86-based, which rules out the PPC version of OS X, since the converter doesn't do any binary translation."

The Road to KDE 4: Solid Brings Hardware Configuration to KDE

Submitted by elsewhere 2007-04-25 KDE 28 Comments

"One of the many new technologies for KDE 4 is the often mentioned, but seldom explained Solid hardware API. Hardware has always been a bit of an annoying element of using Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems, but Solid hopes to fix that for KDE 4. In many ways, Solid is like Phonon, in that it's a Qt/KDE style API around already existing components at the lower level, such as freedesktop.org's HAL. It is already quite functional in the backend, and it's already affecting visible KDE components."

Preview: Windows Home Server April CTP

Submitted by stare 2007-04-25 Windows 30 Comments

Paul Thurrott reviews the latest CTP of Windows Home Server. "I remain excited about WHS and while one might easily come up with a number of features they'd like to see added to the product - a server-based version of Media Center comes to mind - know this: This is the initial version of WHS, Microsoft plans to keep improving it over time, and they're listening to your suggestions and ideas. As with the first version of Media Center, the technology is in a nascent stage but is already quite compelling. If this first version of WHS is so good, I can only imagine what the future holds."

Recoll: a Search Engine for the Linux Desktop

Submitted by FreeRhino 2007-04-25 OS News 29 Comments

"Desktop search engines are all the rage these days. While Beagle may be the most popular desktop search engine for Linux, there are alternatives. If you are looking for a lightweight and easy-to-use yet powerful desktop search engine, you might want to try Recoll. Unlike Beagle, Recoll doesn't require Mono, it's fast, and it's highly configurable. Recoll is based on Xapian, a mature open source search engine library that supports advanced features such as phrase and proximity search, relevance feedback, document categorization, boolean queries, and wildcard search."

Linux Kernel Reaps the Fruits of Real-Time Technology

Submitted by Rahul 2007-04-25 Linux 13 Comments

"More than half of the 1.2 million lines of code for the real-time kernel technology have been moved into the mainline Linux kernel over the past year, Tim Burke, the director of emerging technologies at Red Hat, said at the Linux/Open Source on Wall Street conference on April 23."