Sun, Intel Announce New Partnership

Oracle and SUN 13 Comments
In their joint announcement, Intel agreed to support the Solaris OS, while Sun will use a number of different Xeon processors in its x86 line of servers and workstations. In a collaboration that one CEO called 'historic', Sun Microsystems and Intel jointly announced a new partnership that will see both companies support the other's technology. The announcement, which had first been reported in the Wall Street Journal and formally detailed at a joint news conference in San Francisco on Jan. 22, will allow Sun to develop x86 servers using Intel's Xeon processors.
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Malware More Compatible with Vista Than Anti-Malware Products

  Submitted by Governa Windows 32 Comments
Malware writers appear to be much further along in developing malware for Vista than the security industry is in making products to protect the new operating system. Speaking exclusively to IT PRO, Tim Eades, senior vice-president of sales at security company Sana Security said that 38 per cent of malware is already Vista-compatible. "Malware writers have gone through the WHQL list to make sure that their code works on new machines," he said. "They have managed to port code to Vista quicker than the security industry."
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Vista Service Pack 1 Is Coming

  Submitted by danwarne Windows 47 Comments
Reckon you won't upgrade to Vista until the first service pack is released? That's looking likely to be the second half of this year, according to Microsoft's latest email blast. The company has put out a call for "customers and partners (to) actively test and provide feedback on Windows Vista SP1 to help us prepare for its release in the second half of CY07". Microsoft hasn't released details of exactly what changes will be wrought in Vista SP1, which has been assigned the codename 'Fiji' but some OS components which missed the RTM cut-off will almost certainly be rolled into the update. One of the candidates for this better-late-than-never brigade would be the Windows PowerShell, previously Microsoft Shell - a .NET-based command line shell with its own scripting language.
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Can Red Hat Rival Microsoft?

  Submitted by WillM Red Hat 23 Comments
"Oracle's Linux initiative has so far failed to make a serious dent in Red Hat's business or even in its stock price. Red Hat is actually worth slightly more today than it was when Larry Ellison launched his apparently not-so-scary RHEL clone the week before Halloween. But it is a little early to conclude that we are living in the best of all possible worlds for Red Hat. True, the company's financial results for the November quarter reassured easily-stampeded Wall Street investors who panicked in the first days after Oracle's announcement. But the fact remains that Red Hat's stock is worth 25% less today than it was a year ago. This decline reflects fundamental concerns not about the immediate threat from Oracle but about the long term value of Red Hat's business model."
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Windows on the Mac Changes Everything

  Submitted by alcibiades Apple 65 Comments
"The lines between the Mac OS and Windows are starting to blur. And that portends major changes going forward in the world of PCs. At last week's MacWorld, a little company called Parallels won awards for the latest version of its hit product, which enables you to run both operating systems at the same time on a Macintosh. It's a major breakthrough."
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Novell: Desktop Linux Costs 10% of Microsoft’s Vista

  Submitted by Robert Novell and Ximian 38 Comments
Novell might have signed a patent and interoperability deal with Microsoft Corp but it is not about to give up competing with the software giant and last week released a study that suggests its Linux desktop product is better value than Windows Vista. The company's competitive guide compares SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop with Windows Vista and claims that the Linux product provides 90% of Vista's functionality and 10% of the price.
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Five Eclipse Plugins for Discovering Bad Code

  Submitted by Frank General Development 1 Comment
"What if you were able to discover potential problems in your code prior to building it? Interestingly enough, there are Eclipse plugins for tools such as JDepend and CheckStyle that can help you discover problems before they are manifested in software. In this installment of Automation for the people, automation expert Paul Duvall provides examples of installing, configuring, and using these static analysis plugins in Eclipse so that you can prevent problems early in the development life cycle."
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‘Ten Reasons You Should Get Vista’

Windows 69 Comments
Yesterday we reported on 'Ten Reasons Not to Get Vista', featuring two rebuttals. APCMag, the publisher of the first article, now also published a rebuttal. "I've been running Vista at APC since the earliest leaked builds, and witnessed its extraordinary evolution as Microsoft meandered its way towards the final product. Sure, the earlier versions included some bold features which were dropped for the sake of familiarity in the final version, but there's still lots to appreciate about the 'RTM' version of Vista. I'm not talking here about a nicer user interface or security - I figure APC readers already know how to run a secure XP box and how to de-Fisher-Price it. Here are the real benefits: things that will actually make a difference to you day-to-day." Instant Update: The original author has now published a rebuttal to the two rebuttals. Isn't the internet fun?
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Group Formed to Support Linux As Rival to Windows

  Submitted by anonymous Linux 80 Comments
Linux, the free operating system, has gone from an intriguing experiment to a mainstream technology in corporate data centers, helped by the backing of major technology companies like IBM, Intel, and HP, which sponsored industry consortiums to promote its adoption. Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, with the system's penguin symbol, will assist the Linux Foundation. Those same companies have decided that the time has come to consolidate their collaborative support into a new group, the Linux Foundation, which is being announced today. And the mission of the new organization is help Linux, the leading example of the open-source model of software development, to compete more effectively against Microsoft, the world's largest software company.
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Ars Reviews AmigaOS 4

  Submitted by anonymous Amiga & AROS 32 Comments
The Amiga is alive - sort of, and AmigaOS 4 is finally out. Ars takes AmigaOS 4 out for a spin to see where the once-popular platform stands these days. "The release of AmigaOS 4 proves one thing: you can't keep a good platform down. But is AmigaOS merely a fun hobby OS to play around with, or does it offer real value? My answer is that it is a little of both. As a fan of alternative platforms, you won't find many that are more esoteric than AmigaOS. But beyond being different for the sake of being different, OS4 provides something more interesting: a chance to experience a whole new way of computing."
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Apple’s Latest Leopard Server Seed Packs Some Punch

macOS 5 Comments
Apple is distributing a new pre-release version of its next-generation server operating system software that packs significant boosts to flexibility and stability, but also carries enough problems to put off any expectations of a near-term release. Testers experienced with this latest version said that its changes are more substantial than those of its mainstream sibling and revolve around substantial reworkings of the workgroup import process and Server Admin utilities, amongst other enhancements.
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Month of Apple Bugs: Week 3

Apple 24 Comments
"We're back with our third look at the past week's news coming out of the Month of Apple Bugs project. As with last week's coverage, there's a healthy mix of security disclosure and internet drama in this week's reports. At this point, about the only absolute fact is this: after three weeks of all kinds of accusations, counter-accusations, insults, veiled threats, and general internet asshattery, there are still no official fixes from Apple for any of the documented security vulnerabilities (as of this afternoon)."
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Office 2007: From Bloated to Sleek

Microsoft 46 Comments
The New York Times has taken a look at Microsoft Office 2007. "After a radical redesign, Word, Excel and PowerPoint are almost totally new programs. There are no more floating toolbars; very few tasks require opening dialog boxes, and even the menu bar itself is gone. (Evidently, even Microsoft saw the need for a major feature purge. 'We had some options in there that literally did nothing,' said Paul Coleman, a product manager.)"
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