OSnews - Exploring the Future of Computing

Opera Released for the Wii

Submitted by anonymous 2006-12-24 Opera 13 Comments

Opera for the Nintendo Wii has been released. "Opera on Wii adds a new dimension and functionality to a video game console system. It is a unique Web experience that everyone can use, and the Intelligent Zoom feature allows consumers to read Web content on the TV from the comfort of their couch." Ars has a review. Update: 5 2 screenshots of Opera for Wii rendering OSNews.

Building a Game Engine with Cocoa

Eugenia Loli 2006-12-24 Games 2 Comments

Classic board games like Checkers are hard to beat, but after so many holiday seasons and family get-togethers, variety becomes essential. Lines of Action (LOA) is a game slightly off the beaten path that you can play with an ordinary Checkers set the next time you decide to dust it off--but in the meantime, let's fire up Xcode and build a small game engine for playing board games like Checkers and LOA using some artificial intelligence.

On Favouritism, Apologies, and Black Helicopters

Thom Holwerda 2006-12-23 Wayland 101 Comments

Apparently, my article a few days ago caused a bigger stir than I had anticipated, not at all unrelated to the fact that my wordings may not have been optimal. So, let me clarify things a bit.

Vista Won’t End Windows XP Availability

Thom Holwerda 2006-12-23 Windows 14 Comments

"I can't count how many times people have asked me if Windows XP would be available on new PCs following Vista's release. In the near term, the answer is as much a factor of user demand and OEM and system builder policies. That said, Microsoft will make Windows XP available for from 12 to 24 months after Vista's general availability, depending on the sales channel."

Linux Desktop 2006: Better Than Ever

Thom Holwerda 2006-12-23 Linux 38 Comments

"I recently read a story that asked, 'Has the Desktop Linux Bubble Burst?' Burst!? No, I don't think so. Actually, it still isn't even half as big as it will be when it's full. The author goes on to explain that he feels this way because GNOME 'lacks any form of a vision', while KDE4 is full of wonderful ideas, but not enough money and effort behind turning concepts into code. I don't see that at all. I think both popular Linux desktop environments are making good progress."

Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection

Submitted by PR 2006-12-23 Windows 30 Comments

"Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called 'premium content', typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This document analyses the cost involved in Vista's content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry."

Submitted by dumbkiwi 2006-12-23 KDE 87 Comments

This is a response to the article yesterday on the progress of GNOME and KDE. Aaron Seigo, a lead KDE developer, sets out the current state of progress with KDE 4, pointing out that KDE 4 is on track for a release in mid 2007. "Thom points to a quote from me that our goal is to have a 4.0 ready sometime in the first half of next year. That gives us until sometime in June and I'm still thinking we can make it."

Fedora 6 Zod Live CD Released

Submitted by anonymous 2006-12-23 Fedora Core 8 Comments

After lots of feedback, bug fixing and testing of the beta live CD announced 3 weeks ago, The Fedora Project is pleased to announce the first official Fedora live CD. This live CD is based on packages from the Fedora Core 6 and Fedora Extras package collections and is such 100% free software.

Submitted by Hakime 2006-12-22 macOS 26 Comments

More evidence: "Mac OS X Leopard (Build 9a321) features support for ZFS. The rumors were true, you can create disk images with a ZFS filesystem, well at least in theory, because Build 9a321 is far away from being stable. The DiskUtility itself crashes again and again. Trying to create an actual ZFS image produces kernel panics. There is no pool support to create stripes, mirrors or even RaidZ in DiskUtility yet. It seems that all the other rumor sites stopped right there, which is why we had to set up this website to show you how well ZFS is already implemented. We show you what works and what doesn't. After reading you will know what the deal is, with ZFS and the upcoming Mac OS."

VMware Mac Fusion Beta – A Whole New Way to Slice it

Submitted by Andrei Dorofeev 2006-12-22 OS News 14 Comments

VMware today released a beta version of the new VMware desktop product for the Mac, codenamed Fusion. It supports a wide variety of x86/x64 guests, and is cross-compatible with virtual machines created in VMware Workstation, VMware Player, VMware Server and VMware Infrastructure 3. It supports Virtual SMP, drag & drop of files between OS X and virtual machines, and supports all USB 2.0 devices. Even devices that do not have drivers for OS X will work in a virtual machine.

IndieHIG Aims to Update Apple’s HIG

Submitted by bababooie 2006-12-22 macOS 29 Comments

"The IndieHIG Wiki is a place where developers and UI designers can come together to create a new set of Human Interface Guidelines to supplement Apple's guidelines. Apple has neglected to update their HIG with modern UI designs and controls, so developers have been forced to replicate these UI elements on their own to keep their applications from looking dated. Since each developer has slightly different implementations of these elements, it has resulted in a fairly inconsistent look and feel for Mac OS users." Meanwhile, for the first time in over three months, Apple is asking its developer community to begin testing and providing feedback on a forthcoming update to Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.

Submitted by Francis Kuntz 2006-12-22 Apple 22 Comments

"I have tested, and continue to run in a production setting, two instances of Windows 2003 Server hosted by Parallels Desktop, running on OS X Server 10.4.8 on a 3 GHz Xserve. To skip to the punch line, it works, and it's as fast as all get-out. Parallels does not stretch the truth when it claims near-native performance; Xserve is capable of knocking off any two-socket Netburst (Pentium 4) Xeon server going back at least two years. Compared to Xserve, those Intel boxes eat more electricity and give off more heat than they give back in capacity for work."

Submitted by brewin 2006-12-22 In the News 51 Comments

Hans Reiser, the prominent Bay Area Linux programmer charged with murdering his wife, says he's seeking to sell off his open-source file system company, Namesys, to help pay mounting legal costs. In the first interview since his arrest, Reiser spoke this week about the future of his company and his legal travails from within the walls of Santa Rita Jail, where he is being held without bail.

Microsoft Coughs up Vista APIs

Thom Holwerda 2006-12-22 Windows 30 Comments

Microsoft has released a first draft of programming interfaces meant to help security firms create products that work with kernel protection features in Windows Vista. The new application programming interfaces, or APIs, will let software makers extend the functionality of the Windows kernel in 64-bit versions of Vista, Microsoft said on its website on Tuesday. Security companies, including market leaders Symantec and McAfee, had complained that Microsoft locked them out of the kernel.

HTC’s UMPC-like Device Revealed

Thom Holwerda 2006-12-21 Wireless 30 Comments

HTC's eagerly anticipated entry into the ultra-mobile PC market has made an early, unscheduled appearance on the web, adding weight to the company's own admission that it could release a UMPC-like product as early as 2007. Mobile-Review has more photos of the device. Don't tell me you don't (secretly) want one.

Access z/OS Batch Jobs from Java

Submitted by anonymous 2006-12-21 Java No Comments

Java can provide a simple way to submit z/OS batch jobs to run -- but that is just the beginning. You can also use Java, from any platform, to check on the status of your z/OS batch jobs. This article showes you how to use Java to access z/OS JES Sysout files. In addition, extending the Commons Net Library allows the specific JES file attributes to be encapsulated in Java objects.

Jeremy Allison Resigns from Novell in Protest of Patent Deal

Submitted by John Mills 2006-12-21 Novell and Ximian 85 Comments

Jeremy Allison (of Samba fame) has resigned from Novell in protest over the Microsoft-Novell patent agreement, which he calls 'a mistake' which will be 'damaging to Novell's success in the future'. His main issue with the deal, though, is "that even if it does not violate the letter of the licence, it violates the intent of the GPL licence the Samba code is released under, which is to treat all recipients of the code equally." He leaves the company at the end of this month.

GNOME 2.17.4 Released

Submitted by Philipp Esselbach 2006-12-21 Gnome 17 Comments

GNOME 2.17.4 has been released. "This is our second development release on our road towards GNOME 2.18.0, which will be released in March 2007. New features are coming in at a nice rate, and that's great. A lot of bug fixes too. And some crashers are appearing here and there: that's the fun of unstable releases!"

Has the Desktop Linux Bubble Burst?

Thom Holwerda 2006-12-21 Wayland 275 Comments

In 2002, both KDE and GNOME released their last major revisions; KDE released KDE 3.0 on 3rd April, while GNOME followed shortly after with GNOME 2.0 on 27th June. For the Linux desktop, therefore, 2002 was an important year. Since then, we have continiously been fed point releases which added bits of functionaility and speed improvements, but no major revision has yet seen the light of day. What's going on?

Submitted by nedvis 2006-12-21 SuSE, openSUSE 29 Comments

In the seven weeks since Microsoft and Novell announced their controversial interoperability and patent protection agreement, Redmond has handed out some 16000 subscription certificates for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Redmond is also trumpeting the fact that several of its existing enterprise customers - such as Deutsche Bank AG, Credit Suisse and AIG Technologies - are among the first to take advantage of these certificates and the interoperability between Windows Server and SUSE Linux.