OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

iPhone: Optimised OS X Sits on ‘Versatile’ Flash

Submitted by Governa 2007-01-15 Apple 52 Comments

The iPhone is running an optimised but full version of OS X that weighs in at "considerably less" than half a GB, according to Apple vice president of worldwide iPod marketing Greg Joswiak. Joswiak confirmed that the operating system sits in the flash memory of the device and that Apple will "provide updates to the operating system like we do today."

Submitted by kloty 2007-01-14 Editorial 64 Comments

"There are dozens of articles like this one on the net. Over and over people suggested solutions like this for different reasons and although I know that such thing probably won't happen any time soon, from my point of view now it is the best moment ever in the history of both operating systems to merge in a one powerful alliance. And the hell has already frozen over, hasn't it? First I will give short description of both OSes, so we can see the strong and the weak sides of them and see if the combination should eliminate the shortcomings and make the good points even better." Update: Sun is giving out free Solaris 10 DVD sets.

RISC OS Open Licence in Hands of Lawyers

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-14 RISC OS 14 Comments

The shared source licence being drawn up as part of the RISC OS Open project is in the hands of lawyers, it was revealed this week. In a report to be published by Archive magazine, Castle are said to have spent a 'lot of money' on legal bills to make the licence watertight. The company fears loopholes may be found in their complex shared source agreement which could allow royalty free use of the source code for commercial purposes or let people avoid disclosing updates to the RISC OS blueprints.

BeOS 5 PE Max Edition v4 Announced

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-14 Haiku 23 Comments

Vasper has breathed life into his BeOS Max project. "Well, as you might have seen on BeOS News sites, I have posted info on the haikumax.org site on an upcoming version of BeOS Max. It will be Version 4 to be exact. So to answer the major question. Why? Although Zeta is being developed, Magnussoft is not doing its best to keep it alive. I find it quite annoying that I have to return the product I purchased from Yellowtab, to get an upgrade. This for me is a show stopper. I don't want to wait in line at a post office, to send a package back to a company whose products I order from the Internet."

Sun’s Fortran Replacement Goes Open-Source

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-14 Oracle and SUN 18 Comments

Sun took a new open-source step this week, enlisting the outside world's help in an attempt to create a brand-new programming language called Fortress. On Tuesday, the company quietly released as open-source software a prototype Fortress 'interpreter', a programming tool to execute Fortress programs line by line. "We're trying to engage academics and other third parties," Eric Allen, a Sun Labs computer scientist and Fortress project leader, said about the open-source move.

KDE on Windows: Progress

Submitted by an Anonymous Reader 2007-01-14 KDE 106 Comments

This week's KDE Commit Digest tells about an installer for KDE on Windows and the problems the developers encountered setting up a working environment for KDE to run on. Many screenshots included, showing the first applications (such as Konqueror) running natively.

Submitted by sharkscott 2007-01-14 Linux 3 Comments

"PuppyLinux is one of the most popular 'flavors' of Linux, I have used it on several old P-II and P-III machines that I donated and it got them to work when the original OS (95 and 98) would not even so much as boot up. It was just after PuppyLinux's offer to be the OS for the One Laptop Per Child and the new 'Unofficial PuppyLinux Guide' came out that I first contacted Kenneth of PuppyLinux. I wanted to know more about Puppy, the OLPC and what goes into making a guide for a Linux distro, Kenneth was kind enough to share his experinces with me."

How Big Blue Became Linux’s Best Friend

Submitted by Anonymous 2007-01-14 IBM 24 Comments

"When open-source developers and IBM took gambles on each other, free software showed it can flourish in the heartland of corporate computing." This is chapter 7 (free sample, so to speak) of a book on Linux and free software's rise to fame and use in the corporate world.

Submitted by brother bloat 2007-01-14 Ubuntu 31 Comments

The next alpha release of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (Herd 2) is out. The Kubuntu announcement is here. "The Feisty Fawn Herd 2 is the second alpha release of Ubuntu 7.04, and with this new alpha release comes a whole host of excellent new features. The feature list for 7.04 has been slowly growing more exact since Feisty opened late last month." Update: Screenshots for Ubuntu and Kubuntu.

Submitted by Oliver 2007-01-14 FreeBSD 37 Comments

FreeBSD 6.2 has been released to mirrors. The release notes for your specific platform are also available. "FreeBSD is an advanced operating system for x86 compatible (including Pentium and Athlon), amd64 compatible (including Opteron, Athlon64, and EM64T), ARM, IA-64, PC-98 and UltraSPARC architectures. It is derived from BSD, the version of UNIX developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It is developed and maintained by a large team of individuals. Additional platforms are in various stages of development."

The Very Different Worlds of Mr. Jobs and Mr. Gates

Eugenia Loli 2007-01-14 Rumors 34 Comments

"When Steve Jobs took the stage this week to present one of the most important products in his company's history, he knew that the very name of the iPhone was in dispute and that U.S. communications officials had not even approved the device. Those facts might have concerned other business leaders in his position. But Mr. Jobs didn't miss a beat." More here.

More iPhone Info

Eugenia Loli 2007-01-13 macOS 64 Comments

Some more information about the Apple iPhone is keep hitting the web: the ARM CPU is apparently made by Samsung, applications will only be developed by third party companies that have a license agreement with Apple and make sure they follow specific guidelines (and possibly the apps will only be available by iTunes) while other sources say that the iPhone indeed runs a modified version of Darwin with a few OSX components (incorrectly reported by Slashdot today that it's not). Desktop OSX apps won't run on the iPhone of course. David Pogue also has two FAQs on the product (1,2).

A Look at Mugshot: Seven Months Later

Eugenia Loli 2007-01-13 Internet 19 Comments

Last June a spin-off department of Red Hat, lead by desktop guru Havoc Pennington, announced Mugshot. Originally, Mugshot was in the midst of controversy whether it's a social networking application or not. Apparently, it instead is a "social networking aggregator". In order for this to work, access to third party data is a must.

Built-in Vista Components a Problem

Submitted by Rohit Sharma 2007-01-13 Windows 45 Comments

The author of this article tells how tightly coupled are the Vista built in modules. As of date there is no known way to fix an individual component in case it gets corrupted.

POSIX Parallel Programming, Part 2: Message Passing

Eugenia Loli 2007-01-13 General Development 7 Comments

Following on from the tutorial in part 1 of this series, David Chisnall explores some more-flexible mechanisms for allowing processes to communicate on a POSIX-compliant system.

Submitted by Charles A Landemaine 2007-01-13 PC-BSD 42 Comments

In his 'A week with...' series, Justin has used PC-BSD 1.3 this week and is sharing his experience. In other news, the PC-BSD team unveiled a sneak peek of the new look of the software installation wizard.

Submitted by sogabe 2007-01-13 Haiku 24 Comments

As announced on the Haiku website and reported by IsComputerOn.com, Eric Petit has announced the development of a VMWare graphics driver for Haiku. Based on Be's driver sample code and code inspired by the X.org driver, Eric's driver so far implements RECT_BLIT and cursor functions (the latter are disabled as they are still buggy). The driver is already working as can be confirmed from this screenshot. On his initial post to the Haiku mailing list, Eric is asking for feedback, and has made the sources available in this tarball for those brave souls who would like to test the drivers.

Ubuntu 6.10, OpenSUSE 10.2 Rise to Vista’s Challenge

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-12 Linux 97 Comments

"While the eyes of the IT world have spent years squinting to see Microsoft's slowly unfolding vistas, the companies and individuals that drive open source have been steadily building a case for broader adoption of Linux-based operating systems. Two of the best all-around Linux distributions to emerge from this process are OpenSUSE 10.2 and Ubuntu 6.10, both of which bundle together the best of what open source has to offer into operating systems that merit consideration for desktop and server workloads."

Equinox Desktop Environment Ported to MINIX3

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-12 OS News 13 Comments

Two new important ports to MINIX3 have been released. First and foremost, the Equinox Desktop Environment: "Equinox Desktop Environment (shortly EDE) is small desktop environment, built to be simple and fast. It is based on modified FLTK library (called extended FLTK or just eFLTK). Comparing to other desktop environments, EDE is much faster and smaller in memory space (EDE's window manager use less memory than xterm)." Secondly, ImageMagick can now be run on MINIX3.

Suggestion for Apple: Safari on Windows

Thom Holwerda 2007-01-12 Apple 57 Comments

A few days ago, Adam explained on his blog why it would make sense for Apple to port Safari to Windows: "Maybe it's making a leap of faith, and yes, the browser market is one where making a noticeable entrance will be challenging, but the less of a jump into the deep end buying a Mac is, the easier it is to make your Apple brand accessble, available, and not scary. The best way to start? Safari on Windows." Yesterday, Mary Jo Foley dug up from deep within Mozilla's Wiki the following prediction by the Mozilla Foundation: "Apple may have Safari on Windows with likely ties to iTunes and .Mac." This line has now been changed into a more general statement ("WebKit may be ported to Windows" - which already happened) but point remains: does it make sense for Apple to port Safari to Windows?