OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

1 Month On: Mandriva 2007 Spring – Toshiba Laptop

Submitted by AdamW 2007-05-24 Mandriva, Mandrake, Lycoris 22 Comments

A review of one month's use of Mandriva Linux 2007 Spring on a Toshiba Satellite 2410, by Sam Bailey: "For the last month (and a bit) I’ve been running Mandriva 2007.1 Spring PowerPack on my Toshiba Satellite 2410. To avoid people having to skip to the conclusion, I’m sticking with Mandriva Linux Spring on my laptop permanently!"

The Top 10 Dead (or Dying) Computer Skills

Eugenia Loli 2007-05-24 OS News 99 Comments

"Those in search of eternal life need look no further than the computer industry. Here, last gasps are rarely taken, as aging systems crank away in back rooms across the U.S., not unlike 1970s reruns on Nickelodeon's TV Land. So while it may not be exactly easy for Novell NetWare engineers and OS/2 administrators to find employers who require their services, it's very difficult to declare these skills -- or any computer skill, really -- dead." My Take: "C" dying should have been "x86 Assembly".

Review: Darter Ultra Notebook

Adam Scheinberg 2007-05-23 Hardware 69 Comments

If online articles and blogs are any indication of things, the number of Linux users migrating to, and satisfied with, Ubuntu GNU/Linux seems to be staggering. Given that, it was only a matter of time before a capable company had the resources to offer accessible, affordable Linux desktops and notebooks that delivered the way that Apple's products have. Colorado-based System76 sent us their Darter Ultra for review, and proved that there is an OEM hardware/software combination capable of being the primary PC for the general public.

Submitted by irbis 2007-05-23 Oracle and SUN 32 Comments

After just over a year as chief executive, Jonathan Schwartz is moving into a new phase as the leader of Sun Microsystems. Much of his opening months was spent emerging from the shadow of the highly visible Scott McNealy, boosted by Schwartz's high-profile blog. Now that the introductory period is over, Schwartz is working to show that the Silicon Valley stalwart can regain its former stature.

Submitted by lugduweb 2007-05-23 Morphos 5 Comments

The Efika book is a free multilanguage ebook dedicated to the Efika mainboard from Genesi. It contains information about the Efika hardware, its setup and its supported operating systems (Linux distributions, MorphOS). The latest version can already be freely downloaded in English, French and Swedish. Some older versions can also be found in Czech, Italian and Russian. It will be available soon in other languages such as Spanish, German, Turkish, Greek, Portuguese and Polish. This book follows his previous work on the Pegasos book.

Review: Linux OCR

Submitted by Austin 2007-05-23 Linux 18 Comments

"The one 'hole' in my workflow has been OCR. For years, people have been able to scan a document and have it converted into real text. One of my old printers even came with OCR software included - for Windows of course. But when I've really needed OCR, I've just assumed that there were no high quality packages available for Linux. Recently I decided to find out for myself (a complete OCR virgin) what is available, how to use it, and what the results are like. I installed every free OCR package I could find, and systematically tested them. They all work very differently, so I tried to design a simple test for my specific needs."

Book Review: Foundations of GTK+ Development

Eugenia Loli 2007-05-23 GTK+ 25 Comments

Often I complain that GTK+ documentation (non-reference) is non-existent. The few GTK+ books that were ever written are now old and most of their included source code does not even compile anymore. All hail "Foundations of GTK+ Development" by Andrew Krause.

‘New PCLinuxOS 2007 Looks Great, Works Well’

Thom Holwerda 2007-05-23 Linux 35 Comments

"PCLinuxOS is a live CD distribution that enables users to test Linux without actually having to install it. The highly anticipated new version, PCLinuxOS 2007, was released on Monday. Its intuitive selection of software, high level of stability and functionality, and the quality of the graphics make this the distribution's best release ever."

BeleniX 0.6 Released

Thom Holwerda 2007-05-23 Solaris 19 Comments

"After some gap due to a busy few months for many of the BeleniX folks a new release is now available. Get it from the download page. Lots of changes have happened and here is a summary: Based on OpenSolaris build 60, fully modular Xorg 7.2, Compiz 0.5.0 3D manager integrated into Xfce and KDE, and much more."

Insecure Passwords on Gaim/Pidgin

Eugenia Loli 2007-05-23 Privacy, Security 106 Comments

Today, while I was trying to create a SIP Presence account for VoIPBuster, Pidgin kept crashing. I had to find its settings in my personal folder in order to manually edit the accounts.xml file and remove the entry (so Pidgin could start up again normally instead of keep crashing on load). When I opened the accounts.xml file with a plain text editor, all the passwords of all my accounts were listed out in the open in plain text. This is not a new issue, it was discussed many times before, but it can still be a surprise for most users.

Dwm 4.1 Released

Thom Holwerda 2007-05-22 Desktop environments 19 Comments

Dwm 4.1 has been released. "dwm is a dynamic window manager for X. It manages windows in tiled and floating layouts. Either layout can be applied dynamically, optimizing the environment for the application in use and the task performed. It is the little brother of wmii."

Submitted by irbis 2007-05-22 Gnome 17 Comments

"Looking for a way to limit users' functionality on a publicly available machine, such as a kiosk machine for conference attendees? No one wants people trying to alter their systems for fun or malice. If you're running the GNOME environment, you can turn to a tool called Pessulus - a lockdown manager for the GNOME desktop."

Review: PC-BSD 1.3.4

Submitted by Nix_User 2007-05-22 PC-BSD 38 Comments

LinuxHelp has reviewed PC-BSD. "PC-BSD is turning out to be an excellent alternative to other desktop operating systems. After testing and using PC-BSD for some time now, I can't but admire the sheer amount of work that is put into creating, developing and molding an OS for the lay person albeit with a strong slant towards FreeBSD. The fact that PC-BSD is able to accomplish all the tasks expected by an end user - be it using the Internet for communication, listening to music, watching movies or using it for recreation purposes holds it in good stead as a viable desktop operating systems."

Submitted by kev009 2007-05-22 Unix 52 Comments

Prior to the general availability of AIX 6, IBM intends to make a pre-release version of AIX 6 available in an open beta. "AIX is an open, standards-based UNIX operating system that provides the enterprise information technology infrastructure for thousands of clients around the world. IBM intends to take the next step in the evolution of the AIX operating system with the release of the AIX V6.1 OS."

KDE 3.5.7 Released

Submitted by Olaf Schmidt 2007-05-22 KDE 24 Comments

KDE 3.5.7 has been released. "This release has a renewed focus on KDE PIM applications. KAddressBook, KOrganizer and KAlarm received attention with bugfixes, while KMail additionally witnessed new features and improvements with both interface work and IMAP handling: it can manage IMAP quota and copy and move all folders." In addition, Munich's KDE distribution LiMux has been certified to meet the international usability standard ISO 9241.

A Day Without X

Eugenia Loli 2007-05-22 Unix 98 Comments

Would you be able to survive one full day without using the X server? Linux offers us a wide assortment of CLI based tools which use curses and/or framebuffer for functional user interfaces. There is no reason why you shouldn't be able look up stuff online, read your email, look at pictures, watch movies and listen to music as you are trying to configure X.

IBM Powers up Performance with Power6 Processor

Thom Holwerda 2007-05-22 IBM 69 Comments

IBM finally took the wraps off its much anticipated Power6 microprocessor, which company executives said will double the clock speed of its current Power5 chip, without stretching the power envelope. The Power6 processor, unveiled at an event on May 21 in London, is a dual-core chip with a top clock speed of 4.7GHz, double the 2.3GHz of the Power5+ processors. The new chip also includes 8MB of L2 cache - four times as large as the current Power5 offering - and an internal bandwidth of 300GB per second. Ars' John 'Hannibal' Stokes obviously also has his say.

AfterStep 2.2.6 Released

Thom Holwerda 2007-05-22 Desktop environments 8 Comments

AfterStep 2.2.6 has been released. As was the case with the last release, the changelog simply reads: "Everything got touched. It's all good." If you have 2.1.0 or later installed, you can use the upgrade package. Alternatively, you can wait for your distribution to package it for you.

Submitted by Jon Dough 2007-05-22 Linux 212 Comments

Why is it that the average computer user still chooses to spend hundreds of dollars on Windows or Mac when there are countless Linux alternatives that they could download, install and make use of completely free of charge? Some answers here.

Submitted by SEJeff 2007-05-21 Ubuntu 40 Comments

Dell has given an overview of what customers can expect from their initial Ubuntu offering. "The default software from the Ubuntu media will be installed on the system, including kernel and applications. The peripheral options offered with Ubuntu will be a subset of what is offered with other operating systems. We're offering the hardware options on each system that have the most mature and stable Linux driver support. These hardware options have been thoroughly tested by the Linux team here at Dell. We configure/install open source drivers for hardware, when possible. We use partial open-source or closed source ('restricted' in Ubuntu terms) drivers where there is no equivalent open-source driver. This includes Intel wireless cards and Conexant modems."