OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

It’s Official: Pirates Crack Vista

Submitted by danwarne 2007-03-04 Windows 137 Comments

"A genuine crack for Windows Vista has just been released by pirate group Pantheon, which allows a pirated, non-activated installation of Vista (Home Basic/Premium and Ultimate) to be properly activated and made fully-operational. Unlike cracks which have been floating around since Vista RTM was released in late November, this crack doesn’t simply get around product activation with beta activation files or timestop cracks - it actually makes use of the activation process."

Submitted by falko 2007-03-04 Ubuntu 15 Comments

"This is a step by step tutorial on how to install the server component of Puppet (puppetmaster) on one machine, and the Puppet client (puppetd) on another. We then perform a simple test to make sure Puppet is working properly. If you're not familiar with Puppet, it's a configuration automation tool that allows you to centralize management of the various *nix flavors running on your network. Puppet supports central management of the important aspects of your systems, such as: files, packages, users, services, cron, mounts, etc."

Submitted by Rahul 2007-03-03 Red Hat 26 Comments

Though Red Hat is poised to roll out its much-anticipated Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 release shortly, work still continues on previous versions of RHEL. This week Red Hat rolled out a beta release of its fifth update to RHEL 4 officially tagged Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5, providing users with a small taste of the virtualization that is to come in RHEL 5.

New Version of WinAROS Released

Submitted by Ola Jensen 2007-03-03 Amiga & AROS 17 Comments

A new version of WinAROS has been released. "WinAROS is a preinstalled AROS Environment that runs under Windows, using QEMU. WinAROS is a way to use AROS under Windows and try your programs, made with AmiDevCpp. The new Version comes with Themes and GhostScript installed."

Submitted by RISCOSMike 2007-03-03 RISC OS No Comments

RISC OS Open is to manage the RISC OS allocations service after Alan Glover was said to have stepped down from the role. The list was maintained by Alan for several years on a voluntary basis. Now seemingly with the blessing of both Castle, the owners of RISC OS and developers of ROS 5, and RISCOS Ltd, developers of RISC OS 4 and 6, RISC OS Open have offered to fill Alan's shoes. The database is used by developers to officially reserve resources for new products and software, such as filetypes and system variable names. Castle boss Jack Lillingston said ROOL were this week "officially authorised" to take over the allocations system from Alan.

New Linux WLAN Subsystem Integrated Into ‘mm’ Kernel Tree

Thom Holwerda 2007-03-03 Linux 18 Comments

"Almost a year ago the Linux WLAN developers announced the switch to a new WLAN subsystem. Today the new system finally found its way into the mm kernel tree of Andrew Morton. In May and April 2006 it became clear that the devicescape WLAN stack will be the future base for the Linux WLAN drivers. The aim was to overcome the current situation of having several different subsystems for different drivers and to create a common, well documented subsystem. The new stack will feature a reworked driver for Broadcom bcm43xx drivers as well as a Ralink rt2x00 driver. And, as already mentioned, Intel's ipw3945 driver will be implemented without the need for a proprietary deamon."

Fedora 7 KVM Virtualization Howto

Submitted by Michael Larabel 2007-03-03 Fedora Core 4 Comments

"One of the areas where Linux has rapidly progressed is in the field of virtualization. Among the virtualization options are Xen, QEMU, QEMU with KVM, and VMWare. With Fedora 7 it's so easy to use KVM virtualization that you can start virtualizing your favorite operating system and barely even touch the keyboard! In this guide we will tell you how as we work on virtualizing a battery of operating systems from Microsoft Windows Vista to Mandrake 9.2."

Followup: Dell w1700

Thom Holwerda 2007-03-02 Hardware 24 Comments

It is rare for me to post a follow up to a review. However, this time I am left with no choice. Remember the television I reviewed? It was a fairly positive review; despite a few annoying glitches, I found the TV to be excellent value for money. Well, apparently, there's a clear cut reason why this television set is cheap. Read and weep.

Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04 Herd 5 Released

Submitted by poningru 2007-03-02 Ubuntu 64 Comments

Herd 5 of Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn has been released (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Edubuntu). Improvements include VPN plugins for Network Manager, easier access to desktop effects (Compiz), and much more. Read about Herd 5, and download it.

New Leopard Build Seeded

Thom Holwerda 2007-03-02 macOS 23 Comments

Apple seeded developers with a new build of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard late Thursday night. The new build, 9A377a, arrived roughly six weeks after the last Leopard seed, 9A343, was delivered. According to accompanying release notes, 9A377a delivers performance improvements over 9A343, features a new iSync plug-in maker, offers more powerful searching, and features Safari compatibility for rich text editing. In addition, the build features a new Sharing preferences pane and enhancements to the Address Book for taking photos.

Novell’s Revenue Sags, Linux Business Soars

Thom Holwerda 2007-03-02 Novell and Ximian 40 Comments

"Novell on Mar. 1 announced preliminary financial results for its 2007 fiscal year first quarter, showing net revenue of USD 230 million. The first quarter's revenue represented a decline of USD 12 million, or about 5 percent, from the prior year's first quarter revenue of USD 242 million. Despite the unexceptional overall results during the first fiscal quarter 2007, however, Novell reported USD 15 million of revenue from Linux Platform Products, up 46 percent year-over-year, and USD 91 million of invoicing, up a whopping 659 percent year-over-year. Linux - make no doubt about it - is Novell's future."

Dell Ends 2006 Horror with USD 1bn Drop in PC Sales

Thom Holwerda 2007-03-02 Hardware 18 Comments

A sedate Dell posted fourth quarter results that didn't horrify investors even though its PC and notebook sales fell in dramatic fashion. Dell reported USD 14.4bn in revenue – down from USD 15.2bn in the same period last year. The company's net income came in at USD 673m, which marks quite the fall from last year's haul of USD 1bn. Officials declined to face off against financial analysts and discuss the results in a conference call as is customary, primarily because Dell counts its fourth quarter results as 'preliminary' due to a pair of investigations into its past accounting.

Berners-Lee: ‘Keep the Internet Free’

Thom Holwerda 2007-03-02 Internet 14 Comments

World wide web father Tim Berners-Lee told politicians on Thursday that it's critical to shield his seminal innovation from control by a single company or country. A top priority for policymakers going forward must be "making sure the web itself is the blank sheet, the blank canvas, something that does not constrain the innovation that's around the corner," the knighted engineer told a US House of Representatives panel that writes internet and telecommunications laws.

The Road to KDE 4: Dolphin, Konqueror

Submitted by C2H5OH 2007-03-02 KDE 28 Comments

"As some of you who monitor the KDE news sphere may have noticed, there has been a recent addition to the kdebase module. The Dolphin File Manager has been added to complement Konqueror's browsing capabilities. Read on for more information about this new File Manager and its relationship to Konqueror and the rest of KDE."

Submitted by Flatline 2007-03-02 Apple 56 Comments

"Poke around the net for a while searching for information on what it's like to switch to a Mac, and you'll quickly get a face full of hyperbole, zealots, platform bigots, feature weenies, and naysayers - from both the Windows and Mac camps. But there are precious few places to get an honest word about what it's like to switch, other than some deeply technical face-offs. So, I've been taking notes for the past few years, and thought I'd write them down."

Java 2007: Year in Preview

Submitted by BlueVoodoo 2007-03-02 Java 8 Comments

"2007 will go down in history as the year Sun Microsystems gave up the reins of the Java platform, releasing it under an open source license to the Java developer community. In this article, Java developer Elliotte Rusty Harold predicts new directions for the Java platform, in everything from scripting to bug fixing to new syntax."

Submitted by wuda 2007-03-02 Mozilla, Gecko 20 Comments

"If the Firefox browser were a car, it would be in the garage right now being souped up by an anxious group of gearheads. When Firefox 3.0 is released later this year, the open-source browser is likely to contain a host of new features, including offline support for Web applications and new bookmark and search features. Mozilla released the second alpha version of Firefox 3.0 earlier this month."

Submitted by _DoubleThink_ 2007-03-01 OS News 59 Comments

"MINIX is an operating system designed for 'resource limited' or embedded computer systems. Versions 1 and 2 were teaching operating systems upon which the famous book, Operating Systems Design and Implementation, by Andrew S Tanenbaum and Albert S Woodhull, is based and also was the inspiration for Linux. With this latest release, version 3, MINIX aims to be a complete, stable, secure desktop operating system for everyday use. Does it live up to those claims? Read on to find out."

ROX Desktop Sees Updates

Thom Holwerda 2007-03-01 Desktop environments 13 Comments

Various parts and applications of the ROX Desktop have been updated recently. Firstly, ROX-All 1.1 (a single archive containing launchers for most of the ROX applications) has been released; the main improvement is that it's now compatible with Ubuntu Edgy. Also, ROX-Filer 2.6 (the file manager at the core of the ROX desktop) has been released. Filer can be updated via the built-in update tool. Lastly, various important panel applets have been updated.

Submitted by Rahul 2007-03-01 Fedora Core 48 Comments

"The Fedora project is undergoing several changes before the release of its next version. In preparation for Fedora 7, which will fuse the Core and Extra software repositories, Fedora's developers are auditing the repositories for non-free and non-open software that doesn't meet the project's guidelines. Eventually, the project may change its package guidelines to only allow Free Software."

It’s Official: Pirates Crack Vista

Centralised Management with Puppet on Ubuntu

Red Hat Previews Enterprise Linux 4.5